DISTURBED POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 97, 21 October 1926, Page 16

DISTURBED POLITICS

CANADIAN NATIONALISM

FEAR OF "IMPERIALISTIC" WARS.

That the solution of the problems involved in the relation of the Dominions to one another can profitably be postponed no longer is the contention of Mr. J. A. Stevenson, who writes on Canadian.Nationalism in the current number of the "Edinburßh Review.'" "In Canada, the largest and most influential of the Dominions," he says, "this Empire* problem is a constant factor of disturbance in politics, and the impression grows that nothing but harm to Canada's future can result from any further postponement of the attempt to tackle some of the outstanding difficulties which to-day reduce the, internal relations of the Empire to a state of dangerous confusion, and are productive of intermittent misunderstanding and friction." Mr. Stevenson traces the stages in the development of one section of Canadian opinion since the war. When peace ca; c, he says,, many people were .confident that the spiritual unity of the Empire would be consolidated politically and economically. But instead of that the | development has been.in the direction of "friendly disintegration." The war ended the period in which Great Britain could be left to act as trustee for.the Dominions in foreign affairs. Since then "a project of Imperial co-operation" has been tried. Systematic information on foreign affnivs has been given to the Dominions, but tho contact so established has not been sufficiently close to produce a public opinion in the Dominions able to understand the Chanak crisis of 1922, or the Locarno Treaties. The policy agreed upon in 1921, whereby Great Britain was to avoid as far as possible European entanglements and a mutual effort to develop the economic resources of the Dominions was agreed upon, has been imperfectly carried out. The Liberal Ministry in Canada, under Mr. Mackenzie King, says Mr. Stevenson, was dominated by the French-Canadians, always suspicious of the Imperial tie and its obligations, and Mr. King himself, smarting under campaign charges of indifference to the war, was ready to find excuses for a policy of isolation. He refused to submit the Treaty of Lausanne for Canadian ratification, and he demanded one of the three seats on the British, Commission established by the Dawes Report as a condition of Canadian partici-

patiAh. Only the announcement of the Imperial Conference for October prevented New Zealand from ratifying the Locarno Treaty by legislation on the one hand, and the Canadian Government from introducing; legislation to repudiate any guarantees additional to those in the Covenant' of the League, on the other. In the Canadian election last October a "singularly inept and discredited Ministry," to use Mr. Stephenson's phrase, barely escaped defeat because the French Canadians refused to give play;to their natural conservative instincts and vote for the Conservative Party, because they regarded Mr. Meighen, its leader, as a dangerous Imperialist ready to plunge Canada into "Imperialistic" wars. The Mosul crisis emerged a week before polling day. "The result was that to the 65 seats of- Quebec," says Mr. Stevenson, "which in the days of Sir John Macdonald furnished almost half the-'strength of Conservatism in Canada, only four Conservatives were returned." The Conservative Party tried to temporise with this, feeling by pledging itself to- hold a General Election before troops -n-ere pver sent overseas. This pledge shocked many Conservative sunporters, and failed in' its object. Conscription , bitterness is' still very strong in Quebec, and the policies of Great Britain' in Europe and Asia are not understood in Canada, and .therefore arouse no such enthusiasm as -was stirred in the Dominion by the aims of the last war. Canada, says Mr. Stevenson, shares something of the feeling of the United States against European commitments. The French-Canadians express a passive loyalty, even a passive pride, in the Imperial connection, but they are anxious to evade its obligations. Other matters of controversy have assisted in stirring Nationalist feeling. The Privy Council has declared unconstitutional legislation restraining appeals to it from Canadian Courts. Moreover, the highly controversial question of separate Roman Catholic schools for the province of Alberta is working' towards throwing the whole of this vote throughout the Dominions on to the Nationalist side.