ing him on active service, Canada steps forward and assumes responsibility for settling the bill, so that from first to last the cost of Canada's army will be borne by the Canadian people. Nor has Canada's share in the war been confined to the military side, for, according to an Admiralty statement, ten submarines have been constructed in Canada and sent across the Atlantic to join Britain's undersea fleet.

In the early part of the war the supply of munitions was handled by a Shell Committee appointed by the Canadian Government. When, at the end of 1915, this committee was superseded by the Imperial Munitions Board it had entered into contracts with the British War Office to supply $340,000,000 worth of munitions, so remarkable had been the ability of Canadian manufacturers to adapt themselves to the requirements of the hour. They have made this change in a very short time and yet demonstrated that they could turn out an article as satisfactory as any in the world, and, what is still more surprising, at a much lower price than was thought necessary. According to J. H. Sherrard, on his retirement from the Presidency of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association in June, 1916, “Canadian firms are producing shells today, after one year of experience, at one-quarter of the Woolwich Arsenal cost." (Woolwich is the most important cannon and shell making centre in England, and is part of the army establishment.)

More than 400 Canadian firms are engaged in manufacturing shells, their component parts, and other warlike material. The number of persons employed is at least 250,000, while there

is also a legion of administrators, inspectors, and clerks occupied with incidental matters. The industrial development which the war has stimulated in Canada is indicated in this year's annual report of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, in which the President, Sir Edmund Walker, says: "If the outstanding contracts are filled and the war continues throughout 1916 it seems clear that during 1915 and 1916 there will have been spent in Canada for war supplies considerably more than $500,000,000. We have learned in meeting the sudden demand upon our industrial capacity to do many things which should count in our future. We have learned to shift our machinery rapidly to new uses, to make objects of a more complicated character, which allow less margin for bad workmanship, to smelt copper, lead, and zinc; indeed, to do many things which before the war did not seem possible in the present stage of our development." Add to this that the grain acreage has been increased to such an extent that Canada is now, after the United States and Russia, the greatest wheatproducing country in the world; and, further, that instead of going outside Canada for money, the Dominion has for the first time in its history financed itself by domestic loans.

Great Britain may well congratulate herself on the practical loyalty and usefulness of the greater Britains beyond the seas, the allies whose growth has been made possible largely by the policy of endowing them with the self-governing rights of nationhood. Of these allies among the "colonial nations none has proved more valuable than the Dominion of Canada.

T

HE great European war which started in August, 1914, and is still going on with increased fury in September, 1916, has opened the eyes of many people to dangers of whose existence they little dreamed before. Outside of the military clique in Germany, few people in other countries were aware of the ambition for world power which the Prussian Junkers cherished. Another great surprise in store for many who believed in human progress was the policy of frightfulness and terrorism with which the war has been carried on. No one outside of Germany suspected that ruthless war would be made by airships and under-water craft on defenseless noncombatants and even on neutrals.

Another great surprise in store was the indifference and apathy of the Roman Catholic part of the population of the British Empire. The situation in the Catholic portion of Ireland and in Quebec is almost identical, with a little to the good in favor of Catholic Ireland in the matter of recruiting for the British Army. The population of Quebec is about half that of Ireland, with about the same proportion of Catholics and Protestants in each-three Catholics to one Protestant in Ireland, and about four to one Protestant in Quebec.

In Ireland the statistics under the voluntary system give 75,000 recruits from the 1,000,000 of the Protestant population and 25.000 from the 3,000,000 Roman Catholics. In the two largest provinces in Canada the population is for Ontario 2,500,000 and for Quebec 2,000,000. The recruits thus far have been 150.000 from Ontario and 37,000 from Quebec. If Quebec had done as well as Ontario the recruits would have been about 120 000 instead of 37.000. Of the 37,000 men recruited in Quebec, about 7,000 were recruited from the 1,500,000

French Catholic population and the 30,000 were recruited from the 500,000 of the other race. To keep up the same proportion as the other sections of the population French Canadian Catholics would have to contribute 70,000 instead of 7,000. It appears that Catholic Ireland has done at least 30 per cent. better than Catholic Quebec.

Ireland was on the eve of getting the home rule that it was clamoring for for so many years when the war started. The strongest argument that had been used by the anti-home rulers was that with home rule Catholic Ireland would not only start a policy of persecution against the Protestant minority, but could not be trusted in case of war with other powers. Home rule advocates, on the other hand, maintained that with home rule Ireland, as a part of the British Empire, would be as loyal as the other parts of the empire. The recent rebellion in Ireland, however, has shaken the faith of many former sympathizers with home rule in England and Scotland and other places, and it is very doubtful if the Home Rule bill, passed before the war started, will be approved after the war by those in England and Scotland who voted for it before.

In Quebec the Catholic Church has special privileges that no other Church has in Canada, and still she does not seem to be satisfied. She is authorized by the treaty made at the conquest of Canada to collect tithes from her own adherents. Since the war started-and especially since the declaration of war by Italy against Austria—a violent antirecruiting campaign has been carried on by a section of the adherents of that Church without interference by the Dominion Government. It is suggested by some that the leniency shown to this faction, while strong measures have been taken against others for less heinous

offenses of the same character, is due to the fact that the present occupant of the Ministry of Justice was educated by the Jesuits.

The strangest feature of the whole business is that the party now in power, known as the Tory or Conservative Party, had made an alliance at the time of its election with the extreme ultramontane party. While the Canadian hierarchy is said to have advised its people to do their part like their fellowcountrymen by enlisting in the imperial army, this advice seems to have no effect whatever, while the anti-recruiting party seems to be carrying the province. It has been suggested that the Church is playing a double game, and that, while it openly proclaims its loyalty, it is secretly working the other way through the confessional and otherwise.

In this connection we must try to examine the policy of the head organization of this extraordinary institution. The Church of Rome aims at world power; it claims to be the only supreme agency between God and man on earth. It never favored the rise of any strong political power that it could not control. Its antagonism to the policy of France and Italy in recent years is well known. It still wishes to get the City of Rome and the Lost Provinces under its control. The ultramontanes in Quebec have openly declared that they would not favor the crushing of Austria-their last hope for the restoration of the Pope's lost temporal power-between the upper and lower millstones of Russia's Greek Church and what they call infidel Italy.

What will happen after the war is a very interesting question. For over two hundred years after the overthrow of the power of the Church of Rome in the British Isles, Roman Catholics had practically no political rights at all. The laws against granting them political rights were made by people who had been Catholics and had thrown off the yoke of the Church. Emancipation laws were passed by Protestants who imagined that by giving their Catholic fellow-citizens equal rights they could be depended on to take their part shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors to defend their

country. All these expectations have lately been shattered by the extraordinary attitude of the major part of the Catholic population of Ireland and Quebec. It is true that a small number of them are doing their part nobly with the rest of their fellow-countrymen in defense of the empire, but unfortunately they are a very, very small section, and the heavy burden of the defense of their country, as well as ours, is laid upon the shoulders of the other portion of the population. Fortunately for the empire, however, when the total population of 400,000,000 is taken into consideration, this Catholic section that refrains from doing its share of this serious work is a very small section.

One redeeming feature in Canada is that English and French speaking Catholics are at loggerheads. The quarrel over the bilingual schools in Ontario, which the Quebec Catholics use as an excuse for refraining from taking their part in the war, is between the Irish and French Catholics, and is practically of no concern to other people at all. The Irish have lost the language of their own ancestors, and are now included among English-speaking people. Forgetting their own ancient language, however, and learning the English instead, has not made them more loyal in their co-operation in imperial matters with their English and Scotch neighbors, as some people foolishly imagined.

A strong effort has been made to recruit an Irish Catholic Regiment in Montreal. The movement started off with a great flourish of trumpets, with a Jesuit as chaplain, but it has been a complete failure after more than six months of strenuous work. The ranks have now been opened to Protestant sympathizers, and the recruiting still drags wearily along. Even some of the Catholic clergy have made strenuous efforts to induce their parishioners to rally and fill the ranks of their one and only Irish Catholic Regiment in Canada, but without avail. They had to try and fill it up with Protestants, as otherwise the movement seemed on the point of collapse.

The question now rises: Will people who refuse to take part in the defense

* If you

about one yard out of a line of 500 miles or more, you are liable to be inquiring very anxiously about the presence and power of British and French forces. Your ideas about charging to Berlin or of ending the war will also have undergone some slight modification. Suppose Great Britain won, without the help of Canada? Canada might still have retained her liberties, and might with the same freedom from external influences have continued her progress to material and political strength. But would you have been satisfied-you who have arrogated to yourself the high term of Nationalist? What of the soul of Canada? Can a nation's pride and patriotism be built upon the blood of others, or upon the wealth garnered from the coffers of those who in anguish and with blood sweat are fighting the battles of freedom? If we accept our liberties, our national life, from the hands of the English soidiers, if without sacrifices of our own we profit by the sacrifices of the English citizen, can we hope ever to become a nation ourselves? you were truly a Nationalist would have felt that, in the agony of her losses in Belgium and France, Canada was suffering the birth pains of her national life. These arguments might not have convinced you at the beginning of the war. But now that Canada has pledged herself body and soul to the successful prosecution of this war, now that we know that only by the exercise of our full and united strength can we achieve a speedy and lasting victory, now that thousands of your fellow-citizens have died, and also many more must yet be killed, how in the name of all that you hold most sacred can you still maintain your position? Could you have been here yourself to witness in its horrible detail the cruelty of war, to have seen your comrades suddenly struck down in death and lie mangled at your side, even you could not have failed to wish to visit punishment upon those responsible. You, too, would now wish to see every ounce of our united strength instantly and relentlessly directed to that end. Afterward, when that end has been accomplished, then, and then only, can there be honor or profit in the discussion of our domestic or imperial disputes.

Whatever criticisms may today be properly directed against the constitutional structure of the British Empire, we are compelled to admit that the spiritual union of the self-governing portions of the empire is a most necessary and desirable thing. *** All may not be perfection-grave and serious faults no doubt exist-vast progress must still be made; nevertheless that which has been achieved is good, and must not be allowed to disappear. The great communities which the British Empire has joined together must not be broken asunder. If I thought that the development of a national spirit in Canada

meant antagonism to the spirit which unites the empire today I would utterly repudiate the idea of a Canadian Nation and would gladly accept the most exacting of imperial organic unions.

The remainder of the letter is an eloquent statement of the racial community of French Canadians with the French people, and a warning to M. Bourassa of the effect of his anti-war policy upon the future of his kinsmen.

Unfortunately, despite the heroic and able manner in which French-Canadian battalions have distinguished themselves here, and despite the wholehearted support which so many leaders of French-Canadian thought have given to the cause, yet the fact remains that the French in Canada have not responded in the same proportion as have other Canadian citizens, and the uphappy impression has been created that French Canadians are not bearing their full share in this great Canadian enterprise. For this fact and this impression you will be held largely responsible. * Already you have made the fine term of Nationalist to stink in the nostrils of our English fellow-citizens. After this war what influence will you enjoy? What good to your country will you be able to accomplish? Wherever you go you will stir up strife and enmity. You will bring disfavor and dishonor upon our race, so that whoever bears a French name in Canada will be an object of suspicion and possibly of hatred.

Can you make me believe that there must not always be a bond of blood relationship between the Old France and the New? And France, more glorious than in all her history, is now in agony. * For Old France and French civilization I would have had your support.

And, lastly, a word of warning from those Canadians who "have faced the grimmest and sincerest issues of life and death":

I say to you that from those who, while we fought and suffered here, remained in safety and comfort in Canada, and failed to give us encouragement and support, as well as from those who grew fat with the wealth dishonorably gained by political graft and by dishonest business methods at our expense, we shall demand a heavy day of reckoning. We shall inflict upon them the punishment they deserve-not by physical violence, for we shall have had enough of that-nor by unconstitutional or illegal means, for we are fighting to protect, not to destroy, justice and freedom-but by the invincible power of our moral influence. Can you ask us then for sympathy or concession? Will any listen when you speak of pride and patriotism? I think not.