but a few years,—­converts these into Canadian voters.  The troubled English brother should remember that when “American” farmers in Canada pronounce on Canadian matters they do so constitutionally at the polls and as Canadian citizens.  As Canadians we believe that our national institutions, though far from perfect, are in some respects superior to those of the United States.  We believe they are at once more elastic, more responsive to the popular will, and more stable because more elastic.  The west is gaining in political power as it gains in population and prosperity, and fortunately our government machinery has been well tested before it is called upon to feel the strain of our rapidly-increasing population.  Canada may construct where older nations must reconstruct, and if we borrow an American institution or two, provided it be a good one, let no man hold up hands in holy horror.  Japan has borrowed nationally whenever she saw, lying around loose, something she could use, and Japan is as Japanese at heart as she was in the days of the Tycoon and the two-sworded Samurai.  Belgium to-day, after centuries of contiguity and intercourse, is not exactly France; and little Switzerland, surrounded by the Powers, will be Switzerland till the last curtain-fall.

“Is Canada loyal to England?” is a question that sometimes meets us.  No, Canada is loyal to the British Empire of which she forms a part.  Let England see to it that she, too, is loyal.

Canada has two hundred millions of arable acres south of the Saskatchewan.  North of this river, in the pleasant valleys of the Peace, are one hundred million acres more.  If Canada were as thickly populated as the British Isles it would have a billion people.  The mind reels and the imagination staggers in thinking of the future of this rich land.  God has intended this to be the cradle of a new race, a race born of the diverse entities now fusing in its crucible.  Most of these people in time will intermarry,—­Germans and Latins, Celts and Slavs, and with these the Semitic peoples, in varying proportions and combinations.  Physically, what will be the result?  Mentally and morally, what type will prevail?  Drawn by the lure of the wheat, all pour themselves into the melting-pot.  What of the new Canadian who will step out?

In the point of population, Canada begins the twentieth century where the United States began the nineteenth.  The race is ours to run.  Wise the nation, as is the individual, who can learn his lesson from a page torn out of his neighbour’s book, learn what to follow and what to avoid.  Our fore-elders who laid the foundations for us laid them four-square.  As Canadians, we owe a debt to the Fathers of Confederation and their successors.  In the West, our particular thanks are due to the Hudson’s Bay Company, the R.N.W.M.P., and all those factors which established British law “in the beginning.”  Canada has never seen a lynching; we have had no Indian war; with but one weak-kneed exception there has been no attempt to hold up a train within our Western borders.  This is the inheritance of the people of this generation, and on this foundation we must build.  Our hope is in the children.