‘All of which,’ men and women answered, ’we admit.  But what can we do?  We want people.’  And they showed vast and well-equipped schools, where the children of Slav immigrants are taught English and the songs of Canada.  ‘When they grow up,’ people said, ’you can’t tell them from Canadians.’  It was a wonderful work.  The teacher holds up pens, reels, and so forth, giving the name in English; the children repeating Chinese fashion.  Presently when they have enough words they can bridge back to the knowledge they learned in their own country, so that a boy of twelve, at, say, the end of a year, will produce a well-written English account of his journey from Russia, how much his mother paid for food by the way, and where his father got his first job.  He will also lay his hand on his heart, and say, ‘I—­am—­a—­Canadian.’  This gratifies the Canadian, who naturally purrs over an emigrant owing everything to the land which adopted him and set him on his feet.  The Lady Bountiful of an English village takes the same interest in a child she has helped on in the world.  And the child repays by his gratitude and good behaviour?

Personally, one cannot care much for those who have renounced their own country.  They may have had good reason, but they have broken the rules of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score.  Nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion.  A thousand years cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the races across the Border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, and morale the South and South-east profoundly and fatally affects the North and North-west.  That was why the sight of the beady-eyed, muddy-skinned, aproned women, with handkerchiefs on their heads and Oriental bundles in their hands, always distressed one.

‘But why must you get this stuff?’ I asked.  ’You know it is not your equal, and it knows that it is not your equal; and that is bad for you both.  What is the matter with the English as immigrants?’

The answers were explicit:  ’Because the English do not work.  Because we are sick of Remittance-men and loafers sent out here.  Because the English are rotten with Socialism.  Because the English don’t fit with our life.  They kick at our way of doing things.  They are always telling us how things are done in England.  They carry frills!  Don’t you know the story of the Englishman who lost his way and was found half-dead of thirst beside a river?  When he was asked why he didn’t drink, he said, “How the deuce can I without a glass?"’