war; regardless of the certainty that if Germany is to be beaten this will shorten the war.

Germany pleads for neutralisation of the narrow waters, ignoring the fact that the only narrow waters which require neutralisation are those of her ally, Turkey. She wants freedom of the sea, which has always been free to her till she wanted to dominate it.

With principles like these it was absolutely certain that Germany would at some time, no matter how or where war started, be guilty of acts as infamous as the invasion of Belgium, and thereby consolidate British public opinion, and make it practically unanimous as it is now.

It was therefore, to my mind, providential that she showed her hand so soon.

Britain is our motherland, and we are apt to look upon her with a partial eye; but no one will say that she is not a sincere and convinced lover of human freedom. She is therefore and equally a lover of democracy. She recognises that man is man and not merely a cog in the wheel of state, that the state exists for the individual, and fulfils its functions best when the happiness of the individual is best secured; the greatest good of the greatest number is her end and aim.

Having no undue illusion as to the source of power, the state is but a means to an end; it is bound by the same rules as the individual. The pledged word must be kept. Magna Charta was but a scrap of paper, so was the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus Act, and no Briton despises the scrap of paper. The epithet " Perfidious Albion was invented by or for an emperor who aimed at the mastery of the world: long a cant phrase in France, France has learned its falsity. Never again will that Albion be called perfidious, which stood by harassed and threatened France at Agadir, which stood by France bewildered and wellnigh destroyed at the Marne.

The eternal laws of God are binding on the nations; the laws of morality do not lose their validity at the border.

Two nations with such antagonistic principles may live in peace, but only if each keeps itself within its own sphere. Germany could never allow Britain to preach her anarchistic and blasphemous doctrines in Germany's land, and when

Germany set about it to attain world-power, Britain must say nay; and if Germany attempts it by arms, by arms must Britain withstand her.

This is no war for a strip of territory, for the safety of a dynasty; this is a war of ideals: autocracy and democracy, divine right and the people's voice, the forced remaining content in that sphere of life to which it has pleased the authorities to call him and the free development of the individual along the lines his nature and tastes dictate.

Our keen-eyed neighbours to the south early recognised the significance of the conflict. With the exception of those of German descent, for whom all allowances should be made, a few professional Irishmen whose occupation is just about gone, a few wrong-headed such as are to be found in any community, that free and independent people are with us. The American poet voices the sentiments of that people:

AMERICA TO ENGLAND

Oh, England, in the smoking trenches dying

For all the world,

We hold our breath, and watch your bright flag flying,
While ours is furled;

We who are neutral (yet each lip with fervour
The word abjures):

Oh, England, never name us the timeserver!
Our hearts are yours;

We that so glory in your high decision,

So trust your goal

All Europe in our blood, but yours our vision,
Our speech, our soul!

"

Contemporary opinion is said to indicate the decision of history. Not only the people of the United States, but those of all free countries are on our side. We need not fear the verdict.

In the broad realm of Britain, wherever the Union Jack flies, under its folds a British folk, there is only one voice: We are one. Writers like him whose play has been largely attended recently in our city may have thought to make their account by slighting references to our stand; but the assurance of even a Shaw had to lower its brazen front before the seriousness of a free people in deadly earnest.

And our own men. Our hearts swell with pride when we think of their valour. I may be allowed to copy a few words of mine written in view of the glorious struggle of that splendid day in April:

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!-Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland. Never were these words more splendidly justified, never more heroically exemplified than in the terrible conflict by the Yser, which has made the name of Canada illustrious throughout the world.

"We knew our men were brave. As they went out from us we knew that, as in another war, no commanding officer would be forced to begin his despatch with 'I regret to report.' But perhaps few appreciated the utter depth of gallantry, unquenchable valour, grand self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice which was in them all. They had an opportunity which comes to few, and seldom, to exhibit their all of bravery, skill, endurance; and magnificently did they seize it. The oaken-hearted warriors of Marathon and Thermopyla, the heroes of Crecy and Poictiers, of Bannockburn and Stirling, of Ramilies and Malplaquet, of the Peninsula and Waterloo, of Lundy's Lane and Chateauguay, of Ladysmith and Paardeberg, acclaim them as very brethren. When shall their glory fade? Every soldiery in the world may make it their boast: 'We fought like Canadians.'

"To those who are left behind, the great heart of the nation-aye of the Empire-goes out in sympathy; the anguished widow and weeping orphans must be our care. What Canada can do to make less felt the loss of those who gave their lives for her—and oh! how little that is-must be Canada's first thought.

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To these glory is as naught, but as time goes by they too will say, My husband, my father, died as a man should, thinking only of duty and giving himself for his people.' They will join with us in honouring the dead. Wet-eyed widow, broken old mother, will at length recognise, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

Our boast has ever been Civis Britannicus sum, now we add with even greater pride, et Canadensis.

THE GOSPEL OF PEACE

AN ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. HARPER
At the Annual Meeting of the Empire Club of Canada,
Toronto, May 6, 1915

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,-Since I came in touch with the details of the programme for the evening, I have had to reconsider the scope of my subject, which is set down as "The Gospel of Peace and the Economies of War."

My purpose, therefore, is to take up the time allotted to me with only the first part of my topic, leaving the consideration of the latter part of it for a more convenient season, in order that the speakers to come after me may have an opportunity of expressing themselves on the topics they have chosen to speak on. I am very much pleased to be with you again, even though I cannot be given the time to say all I have to say to you, on one of the most momentous questions of the day. The present meeting puts me in mind of another delightful time I had about a fortnight ago among my brother Canadians down in New York City, where I had the pleasure of attending a meeting of the Canadian Society. It is not necessary to say that the members of the said society were all glad to meet one of their own Canadian kind, just as I was glad to see them, hailing as they did from all parts of our fair Dominion from Cape Breton to Vancouver. Nor could I keep from saying to myself: Can it be possible that such a society may be of the character of "the little leaven that is eventually to leaven the whole lump" of fraternal continentalism? And a like idea I have in my mind, as I stand before you this evening. I do not as yet know you all personally, as you have been called upon to know me by previous announcement; but I hope that before the evening is over, we will all know one another in common, as we call to mind that our Empire Club may safely be taken as a little bit of leaven that is to leaven the whole lump of our broad

Canadianism with the notion of a British Empire one and indivisible for all of us.

In the world at large in all of our national systems, there is an over-civilisation and an under-civilisation; and it sometimes seems stranger than fiction how the latter every now and again tries to teach the former a little bit of a lesson in ethics. Such a phenomenon is to be seen in the lesson which Russia and France has lately been giving to the British Empire and the American Republic as well, in the suppression of the manufacture and sale of certain intoxicating beverages, in order to remove a stumblingblock in the way of their ethical advancement. And I have no doubt you are all aware by this time, that, in a more humble way, the Chinese residents of some of our Canadian cities have done away with the celestial pig-tail. Perhaps that olden-time prejudice has disappeared from the streets of Toronto. And though we may laugh at the suppression of such a national prejudice as a very minor matter, it brings us in presence of the fact that the suppression of any kind of a prejudice, great or small, cannot be indulged in without being found fault with. Even the Chinaman has not been able to escape being blamed for dispensing with his pig-tail by our Anglo-Saxon civilisation. At least, the other evening, when I told a lady at a social gathering that the Chinamen of Quebec had lately cut off their pig-tails, she said to me, "Oh, I am so sorry." when I asked her why she regretted the disappearance of such a conventional prejudice, she made the remark: 'Well, you know, the Chinaman's long and carefully plaited queue was so picturesque and nationally romantic. And surely the remark proves to you and to me how hard it is for any civilisation-an over-one or an under-one-to get rid of such a momentous prejudice as the one which claims that, when the logic in an international prejudice fails, there is nothing for it but to have a recourse to the shedding of blood on the battlefield, no matter what Madame Grundy has to say for or against it, as a means to an end. And I beg of you not to classify me as a mere mollycoddle because I venture to talk to you of peace, after my friend, the preceding speaker, has so eloquently been referring to the patriotism of the battlefield. When I wrote my

And