Each set perceives their notions liable to be profoundly affected by Canada’s fighting in Europe.  Each affects belief that their own political designs cannot but be thereby served; each is afflicted with qualms of doubt.  They alike appreciate the factors that make for their opponent’s cause.  Both know the strength of popular attachment to Great Britain; both know the traditional and inbred loathing of the industrious masses for the horrible bloodshed and insensate waste of treasure in war.  Both sets balance inwardly the chances that sentiments seemingly irreconcilable and about equally respectable may, after the war, urge Canadians either to draw politically closer to their world-scattered kin, or to cut ligaments that might pull them again and again, time without end, into the immemorial European shambles.

But is the Canadian public excitedly interested in the discussion?  Not at all.  Spokesmen and penmen of the two contentious factions are victimized by their own perfervid imaginations.  The electorate, the masses, are not so swayed.  The Canadian people, essentially British no matter what their origins, are mainly, like all English-speaking democracies, of straight, primitive, uncomplicated emotions, and of essentially conservative mind.  They “plug” along.  The hour and the day hold their attention.  It is given to the necessary private works of the moment, as to the necessary public conduct of the time.

They did not, as a public, spin themselves any reasons or excuses for their hearty approval of Canada’s engagement in the war.  Her or their contributions of men and money to its fields of slaughter and waste appeared and appear to them natural, proper, inevitable.  They applauded seriously the country’s being “put in for it” by agreement of the two sets of party politicians, and without any direct consultation of the electorate in this, the most important departure Canada ever made, because prompt action seemed the only way, and time was lacking for debate about what seemed the next thing that had to be done.  In fact, the Canadian people, regarded collectively, felt and acted in this case with as much ingenuousness as did those Tyrolese mountaineers, bred, according to Heine, to know nothing of politics save that they had an Emperor who wore a white coat and red breeches.

When the patriots climbed up to them, and told them with oratory that they now had a Prince who wore a blue coat and white breeches, they grasped their rifles, and kissed wife and children, and went down the mountain and offered their lives in defense of the white coat and the dear old red breeches.

But did they forsake their relish of and devotion to their customary, legendary Tyrolese liberties?  No more will the Canadian masses, by reason of their hearty participation in the war, incline to yield jot or tittle of their usual, long-struggled-for, gradually acquired, valuable and valued British self-governing