her dominating neighbour. "It is her own soul that Canada risks to-day," Rudyard Kipling cabled. These arguments were illustrated and driven home by rash prophecies of annexation by advocates of reciprocity in the United States. "We are preparing to annex Canada," the Speaker of the House, Champ Clark, had declared, and, more seriously, "I am for the bill because I hope to see the day when the American flag will float on every square foot of the British North American possessions clear to the North Pole." Lesser politicians and obscure journals were quoted to the same deadly effect. It was in vain that President Taft and Secretary Knox at once denied with vigour any thought of political union. A reference by Mr. Taft himself, to Canada's being at "the parting of the ways," was twisted out of its obvious meaning. When, after the elections, he made public an extraordinary letter he had written to Mr. Roosevelt while the pact was pending, pointing out that its effect would be to make Canada a mere "adjunct" of the United States, the sinister interpretation seemed to many to be posthumously confirmed, but Sir Wilfrid Laurier discounted it as "a borrowing of shallow rhetoric from Canadian jingoes."

This campaign did not go unanswered. It was not commercial union but limited reciprocity that was in question. National sentiment was now too strong to be in danger. True, there were annexationists in the United States, but few as compared with earlier days, and in any case it was the people of Canada, not crossroads politicians to the south, who would settle that

matter. Reciprocity in 1854 had killed annexation sentiment. If mounting imports from the United States in the past decade had not brought annexation, how could mounting exports bring it? How could the Canadian banker with reserves in Wall Street, the director seeking terminals in Chicago, the manufacturer joining in an international merger, ordain for their fellow-citizens "no truck nor trade with the Yankees"? If Mr. Kipling could sell his poetry for hundreds of thousands of American dollars without injuring the perfect bloom of his patented patriotism, could not a Saskatchewan homesteader sell a beef or a load of wheat without selling his country and his soul with it? But the answers were made in vain. For all the close business and social intermingling of recent years, there was still in Canada a deep-rooted political distrust of the great republic. There were men still fighting the battle of Lundy's Lane; there were more who had not forgotten the arrogance of the Olney doctrine and the Venezuela message. For fifty years, with rare intervals, the United States had shown itself unneighbourly in its public acts, and particularly in its tariff policy. It was not possible to wipe out these memories by a single generous gesture. Canadian human nature found it difficult to resist retaliating on the United States in kind for many a rejection of its trade advances. It might hurt the Dominion more than it hurt the Republic, but the country was prosperous and could afford the luxury,-particularly as it was the farmers

who would pay. Ontario Jeshurun, having waxed fat, kicked.

To divert the farmer from the opening doors of trade, it was not enough to wave the flag: the red herring of sectarian suspicion must be drawn across his path. Up and down the concession roads and the side-lines of Ontario the whispering campaign against a French and Roman Catholic premier was pushed with vigour. The appearance of the Speaker of the House and a Supreme Court Justice, both in their robes of office, in the Eucharistic Congress of the previous year, (though wholly of their own motion), and the allegation that the newly issued Ne-Temere decree meant that in Quebec the Roman Catholic Church had assumed the right to annul mixed marriages, were utilized to the full.

Nor was Quebec neglected. Here reciprocity was a minor issue; the navy and the Nationalists held the field. To defeat the government, ultras and antis joined hands. Mr. Bourassa, who was not himself a candidate, at first supported reciprocity as a boon to Canada and a blow to Chamberlainism, then declared it a very minor issue, and ended with direct attack. The Conservative campaign manager circulated "Le Devoir" throughout the province. Some twenty-eight candidates were nominated as Nationalist or as Conservatives with Nationalist support. In New Ontario, where the French-Canadian vote was a factor, two Conservative candidates sent for Mr. Bourassa and promised to support his naval policy. From end to end of Quebec the cry was raised

that the Laurier navy meant conscription,-"and neither Laurier nor Borden," added Mr. Bourassa, "has a son of his own." The Conservative leaders carefully played into the hands of Mr. Bourassa and of Mr. Monk, who was in charge of a distinct Autonomist oror-> ganization. Mr. Borden issued his first manifesto to the country on the day parliament was dissolved,—and Conservative and Nationalist newspapers in Quebec pointed out that there was in it not one word about the navy. He issued his second manifesto in August; this time he did speak of the naval question, but it was not to propose contribution to the British navy but to attack the Laurier naval plans as costly, inefficient and likely to "result in time of war in the useless sacrifice of many lives," and again Quebec Conservatives and Nationalists dotted the i's and crossed the t's of this timely and restrained utterance.

Into the campaign, for all his seventy years, Sir Wilfrid threw himself with energy. In four weeks he addressed over fifty meetings in the five Eastern provinces, and particularly in Ontario and Quebec. He had no illusions as to the uphill fight which faced him. Borden and Bourassa had enthusiasm and prejudice on their side, which his policy could no longer arouse. In Quebec it was often apparent that Laurier had the people's respect, but Bourassa had stirred their emotions. In Ontario the cheers were subdued and many old friends were absent. But his courage never faltered. At Simcoe he declared Sir John Macdonald was the Moses of Reciprocity who failed to reach

the Promised Land; "I am the Joshua who will lead the people to their goal." He warned the manufacturers: "On Thursday I will beat them and on Friday I will protect their just interests," but, again: "The manufacturers must understand that there are men who are not as magnanimous as we are, and forces will be aroused which it will be impossible for me to control. . . . They are preparing for themselves a rod which will some day fall across their own shoulders." He made light of annexation talk: "If it be true that President Taft said that Canada is at the parting of the ways, I would say to President Taft that he does not know what he is talking about. I would say, we are prepared to meet you in business, but if you want to talk politics keep to your own side of the line and we will keep to ours.'

As for the Bourassa-Borden-Monk-Sifton alliance, "what a salad!" Mr. Monk was the oil, Mr. Bourassa the vinegar, and Mr. Borden had to eat the dose. "A vote for Bourassa is a vote for Borden." 1 "The day when England's supremacy on the sea is destroyed," he told a Three Rivers audience, "your national and religious privileges will be endangered. And where is the French-Canadian who will say, 'No, I will not participate in that war'?" Yet it would be wholly for each man to decide for himself: the charge that conscription would follow was a monstrous and baseless lie. In St. John he ended a strong address with the appeal:

1 In Ontario, it is interesting to note, the Liberal slogan was precisely the reverse: "A vote for Borden is a vote for Bourassa."