WILFRED LAURIER

[From a speech delivered in Chicago, October 9, 1899, at the laying of the corner stone of the new Federal Building.]

I.

UNWRITTEN ALLIANCE

It is with some degree of satisfaction that I approach the toast to which I have been called to respond. Because I feel that though the relations between Canada and the United States are good, though they are brotherly, though they are satisfactory, they are not as good, as brotherly, as satisfactory as they ought to be. We are of the same stock. We spring from the same races on one side of the line as on the other. We speak the same language. We have the same literature, and for more than a thousand years we have had a common history.

Let me recall to you the lines which, in the darkest days of the Civil War, the Puritan poet of America issued to England:

"Oh, Englishmen ! Oh, Englishmen !

In hope and creed,

In blood and tongue, are brothers,

We all are heirs of Runnymede.

Brothers we are, in the language of your own poet. May I not say that while our relations are not always as brotherly as they should be, may I not ask, Mr. President, on the part of Canada and on the part of the United States, whether we are not sometimes too prone

to stand by the full conceptions of our rights, and to exact to the last pound of flesh? May I not ask if there have not been too often between us petty quarrels, which happily do not wound the heart of the nation?

Sir, I am proud to say in the presence of the chief executive of the United States that it is the belief of the Canadian Government that we should make a supreme effort to better our relations and make this Government and the present government of Canada, with the assent of Great Britain, so to work together as to remove all causes of dissension between us. And whether the commission which sat first in the old City of Quebec and next in the City of Washingtonbut whether sitting in Quebec or in Washington, I am sorry to say the result has not been commensurate with our expectations.

We met a stumbling-block in the question of the Alaskan frontier. Well, let me say, here and now, the commission could not settle that question and referred it to their particular governments, and they are now dealing with it. May I be permitted to say, here and now, that we do not desire one inch of your land.

But if I state, however, that we want to hold our land, will that be an American sentiment? However, though that would not be an American sentiment, though it would not be a British or Canadian sentiment, I am here to say, above all, my fellow-countrymen, that we want not to stand upon the extreme limits of our rights. We are ready to give and to take. We can afford to be just; we can afford to be generous, because we are strong.

But though we have many little bickerings, after all, when we go down to the bottom of our hearts we find that there is between us a true, genuine affection. There are no two nations to-day on the face of the globe so united as Great Britain and the United States.

The Secretary of State told us some few months ago that there was no treaty of alliance between Great Britain and the United States of America. It is very true there is no treaty of alliance which the pen can write and which the pen can unmake, but there is between Great Britain and the United States a unity of blood, and I appeal to recent history when I say that whenever one nation has to face an emergency— a greater emergency than usual-forthwith the sympathies of the other nation go to her sister.

When last year you were suddenly engaged in war with Spain, though Spain was the weaker party and though it is natural that men should side with the weaker party, our sympathies went to you for no other reason than that of blood. And I am sure you will agree with me that, though our relations have not reached the degree of perfection to which I would aspire, from that day a new page has been turned in the history of our country. It was no unusual occurrence, before the month of May, 1898, to read in the British press of American arrogance; neither was it an unusual occurrence to read in the American press of British brutality. Since the month of May, 1898, these expressions have disappeared from the vocabulary. You do not hear to-day of American arrogance; neither do you hear of British brutality, but the only expressions which you find in the press of either country now are words of mutual respect and mutual affection.

II.

UNION OF HEARTS

SIR, an incident took place last summer which showed that there is between us a very deep and sincere affection. In the month of June I spoke on the

floor of the House of Commons of Canada on the question of Alaska, and I enunciated the very obvious truism that international problems can be settled in one or two ways only, either by arbitration or by war. And although I proceeded to say immediately that war between Great Britain and the United States would be criminal and would not be thought of for a moment, still the very word "war" created quite an excitement in this country. For that causeless excitement, though I was indirectly the cause of it, I do not at this moment find any fault, because it convinced me to an absolute certainty that between your country and my country the relations have reached that degree of dignity and respect and affection that even the word "war" is never to be mentioned in a British assembly or in an American assembly. The word is not to be pronounced, not even to be predicated. It is not to be pronounced at all. The very idea is abhorrent to us.

I repeat what I then stated, that war between Great Britain and the United States would be criminal-in my estimation and judgment, just as criminal as the Civil War, which desolated your country some thirty years ago. Whatever may have been the mistaken views of the civilized world at the time, the civilized world has come to the unanimous conclusion that the War of the Rebellion was a crime. The civilized world has come to the conclusion that it was a benefit to mankind that this rebellion did not succeed and that the government of the people, by the people and for the people did not perish from the earth.

Your country was desolated for four long years by the awful scourge of civil war. If there is anything of the many things which are to be admired in this great country of yours, the one thing for my part which I most admire is the absolute success with which you have re-established the Union and erased all traces of the Civil War. What is the reason?

You had it in the war with Spain, when the men of the blue and the men of the gray, the men who had fought for the Confederacy, and the men that fought for the Union, at the call of their country, came back to fight the battles of their own country under a united flag. That was the reason.

Senator Cullom, said a moment ago that he might believe me almost an American. I am a British subject, but I may say that, as a lover of liberty, a believer in democratic institutions, I rejoiced as you did at the spectacle which was presented at Santiago, El Caney, and elsewhere during that war.

Sirs, there was another civil war. There was a civil war in the last century. There was a civil war between England, then, and her colonies. The union which then existed between England and her colonies was severed. If it was severed, American citizens, as you know it was, through no fault of your fathers, the fault was altogether the fault of the British Government of that day. If the British Government had treated the American colonies as the British Government for the last twenty or fifty years has treated its colonies; if Great Britain had given you then the same degree of liberty which it gives to Canada, if it had given you, as it has given us, legislative independence, the result would have been different; the course of victory, the course of history, would have been different.

But what has been done cannot be undone. You cannot expect that the union which was then severed shall ever be restored; but may we not hope that, if the union cannot be restored under the law, at least there can be a union of hearts? May we not hope that the banners of England and the banners of the United States shall never again meet in conflict, except those conflicts provided by the arts of peace, such as we see to-day in the contest between the "Shamrock" and the