Our two nations divide almost equally this continent between the Arctic and the Gulf; but in numbers and developed resources and war equipment there is no equality. On one side are nearly 100,000,000 of people; on the other side less than 8,000,000. One maintains a seasoned standing army; the other until the present war in Europe had only the beginning of a militia. One boasts a navy third, if not second, on the high seas; the other has not even a naval programme accepted by parliament. To all the boasted defence policies of the war nations of Europe, North America offers straight contradiction, and through a hundred years of peace these two civilised nations have given to Europe's war lords the unflinching and triumphant lie.

Why, then, this achievement of North America in international civilisation, while on other continents the nations crouched under the burden of their wars and lingered in the half-barbarism of their armed peace until they broke into hideous war. Why? For one thing these two Englishspeaking nations of America have each developed into a national unity of its own, self-contained, purposeful, free. The Great Lakes are not barbarised by the black menace of forts and battleships, because the two nations they divide desire supremely to be free, are fit for freedom, and have each united all their peoples in unchallenged devotion to freedom's great experiment. Through this one great lesson in North America the American Republic and the British Empire are working into the public opinion of the world this maxim of international politics: Any nation that desires to be free and is fit to be free, and stands for national freedom, must be given freedom's unfettered chance.

A civilised international boundary and a century of peace. That is America's greatest achievement. That thing, unique, original, North America alone has done. And because of that achievement these two nations have earned the right, when this wicked war is over, to stand up in the councils of the nations and teach the homelands of American colonists the more excellent way. What the sons in America have done on the Great Lakes, on the St. Lawrence, on the Niagara, and across the sweeping plains,

the fathers in Britain, in France, and in Germany might do, ought to do, on the North Sea and in the Channel. It can be done on all the continents. The jungle can be made a neighbourhood. The remainders of barbarism can be swept away on every boundary line. If America takes her stand and leads the way all the continents will do it. Here we stand, we of America, facing the colossal failure of Europe. The boundary lines between European countries are yawning with forts, bristling with bayonets, and most of them bedabbled with blood. For forty years those defences have been a growing menace to all the world. Europe has been an armed camp. The nations lived in the Fool's Paradise of Armed Peace until they found it the Fool's Hell of Bloody War. They all said: "In Peace prepare for War." Here in North America our two nations for a hundred years have been saying: “In Peace prepare for More Peace." In Europe they got, as they were bound to get, the thing they prepared for-War. In America we got, as we deserved to get, the thing we prepared for a hundred years of More Peace.

But this hundred years of peace has not saved America from the colossal failure of Europe's half-century of preparation for war. North America has become a neighbourhood; but Europe remained a jungle. The world is too small for any continent to live to itself, or for any country to stand alone The United States in this war is neutral, and neutral, I hope and pray, it may remain. But neutrality has not saved the people and the interests of this Republic from its share of the world's sorrows, or of the incalculable suffering and loss which this war entails. Canada was worlds away from the mad vortex of European militarism, but the widening circle of that awful maelstrom has swept Canada into its deathful whirl. There is not a shore in the Southern Seas, there is not an island in the lone Pacific, there is not a whaling vessel in the frozen North, that has not felt the dread undertow of Europe's upheaval.

The

America had indeed dreamed of unbroken Peace. Forefathers dreamed it for New England. The Fathers of Independence planned it for the United States. To Canada war is a new and surprising experience. We had all

thought a war in Europe never could come nigh our dwelling. But it has come. And it shall come nearer still, into our homes, into the bleeding places of our hearts. We have been parties to the world's uncured and unchristian folly. The Republic and the Empire both have said: "In Peace prepare for War." With half the homes of Europe bleeding at every pore, we cannot expect and we cannot ask that our homes and our counting-houses and our nations and our continent, alone in all the world, shall be spared the world's awful baptism of blood.

But a new day shall dawn. Out of this weirdness and welter a new world shall rise. Up from this horror and death America must come with its schools and colleges and universities and churches; America, having seen enough of blood and carnage in the Old World to take a fresh stand for the New: America, with its eye undimmed, its faith unbroken, and its hope triumphant in a new life, a larger life, a life not of militarism and world-mastership, but of love and justice and the brotherhood of man!

Please God, this will be the end of autocracies, the end of despotisms, the end of war lords, the end of secret diplomacies of deceit, the end of menacing alliances and threatening ententes, the ultimate and everlasting end of the Religion of Valour, of the Cult of Violence, and of the barbaric appeals to brute Force.

And please God, too, this will be the end of all ambitious and arrogant Imperialism, the end of that ignorant and vulgar jingo lust for colonies and for mastership and for the domination of the world. A new-born world already begins to heave above the horizon line. It will be a world of free nationalities: a world of righteous democracies, in which there must be no supremacy and no servitude: a world where no master will be allowed on land and no mistress needed on the sea. Over free peoples there can be no dictator, no autocracy, no mastership. Every nation, great or small, must be master in its own houselittle Belgium as truly as great Germany, the year-old China as truly as the ages-old Britain. The Might of all must defend the Right of each. The glory of the Strong must be in the help of the Weak. The Ten Commandments must be written on the heart of the world's democracy; and

into the Congresses, the Parliaments and the Chancelleries of the nations He must come whose Truth and Justice give the Right to Reign.

Many people are now asking if this hideous conflict in Europe is indeed the Armageddon of the Nations. It may be so. Certainly from the ends of all the earth the nations are coming to its awful slaughter. Gog and Magog are coming.

But Armageddon, when it comes, will be something more than the crash of mighty navies and of armies rolled in blood. It will be the conflict not only of brute force against brute force, but of ideals against ideals, of character against character, of life against life, of civilisation against civilisation. It will be, as it ever has been, Cæsar against Christ, Corsica against Galilee, Will-to-Power against Willto-Serve. Armageddon is the conflict of Ideas.

And because it means Ideas it means also America. Here on this continent the new Idea was released to all the world-the idea of Freedom, of Justice, of Peace. That Idea was set free on Plymouth Rock by the Pilgrim Fathers three hundred years ago. By the two nations of this continent, the heritors together of the freedom of Englishspeaking civilisation, that Idea shall be vindicated against all world-despotisms everywhere and for ever. That is America's Mission. It may seem Canada's Martyrdom. But for world-freedom, for world-justice, for world-peace, these two nations of America shall stand. And we stand with the Motherland that gave us birth, and with the Sister democracies on all the seven seas, to make America's international civilisation the triumphant experience of all the continents. Whether neutral or combatant, the nations of our English-speaking fraternity shall stand shoulder to shoulder for the good of all our peoples and the freedom of the world.

"In the day of Armageddon,

In the last great day of all,
Our house shall stand together,
And its pillars shall not fall.""

CERTAIN PHASES OF THE WAR PROBLEM

AN ADDRESS BY HENRY MARSHALL TORY,
M.A., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.C.

President of the University of Alberta, to the Empire Club
of Canada at Exhibition Park, Toronto, Wednesday,
February 3. A thousand men in training for the
Canadian Contingent were also present.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,-I consider it a very special honour to be permitted to speak to you to-night. Yesterday, I was to have addressed the Empire Club at luncheon, but was prevented by a storm from reaching the city. I can assure you, gentlemen, I appreciate much more the honour of being permitted, under the auspices of the Empire Club, to speak to you, soldiers of Canada preparing to defend the Empire.

Gentlemen, we are living in very special times, so special that it is difficult for us to realise the significance of what is happening. In the long history of the development of human liberty we find only three or four similar periods. These periods are unique because the future, not of individual nations but of civilisation, depended upon the turn of events. This was due to the fact that the very foundations were being tested upon which the superstructure of civilisation was being built. The records show that whether men knew it or not the conflict in these periods centred around ideas rather than persons and that in the long run ideas, rightly founded, are more potent than persons.

In the very dawn of European civilisation a series of events occurred during which the light of liberty was threatened with extinction before it was fairly lighted. I refer to the effort to establish the tyranny of Persia upon the free soil of Greece. On that occasion the future of Europe, unfolding in the life of the people of Greece, was threatened by the tyranny of Asia expressing itself in the