press to publish a biographical sketch of him, considerably shorter
than the leader embodying the editor's views as to who should get
the electric light contract. But the Government might become the sole
employer of labour in those islands, Church and school might part
company for ever, landlords might be deprived of all but compassionate
allowances and, except for the degree of extravagance involved in these
propositions, they would hardly be current in Elgin. The complications
of England's foreign policy were less significant still. It was
recognized dimly that England had a foreign policy, more or less had
to have it, as they would have said in Elgin; it was part of the huge
unnecessary scheme of things for which she was responsible--unnecessary
from Elgin's point of view as a father's financial obligations might be
to a child he had parted with at birth. It all lay outside the facts
of life, far beyond the actual horizon, like the affairs of a distant
relation from whom one has nothing to hope, not even personal contact,
and of whose wealth and greatness one does not boast much, because of
the irony involved. Information upon all these matters was duly put
before Elgin every morning in the telegrams of the Toronto papers; the
information came, until the other day, over cables to New York and was
disseminated by American news agencies. It was, therefore, not devoid of
bias; but if this was perceived it was by no means thought a matter
for protesting measures, especially as they would be bound to involve
expense. The injury was too vague, too remote, to be more than sturdily
discounted by a mental attitude. Belief in England was in the blood,
it would not yield to the temporary distortion of facts in the
newspapers--at all events, it would not yield with a rush. Whether there
was any chance of insidious sapping was precisely what the country was
too indifferent to discover. Indifferent, apathetic, self-centred--until
whenever, down the wind, across the Atlantic, came the faint far music
of the call to arms. Then the old dog of war that has his kennel in
every man rose and shook himself, and presently there would be a
baying! The sense of kinship, lying too deep for the touch of ordinary
circumstance, quickened to that; and in a moment "we" were fighting,
"we" had lost or won.

Apart, however, from the extraordinary, the politics of Elgin's daily
absorption were those of the town, the Province, the Dominion. Centres
of