In the United Kingdom there are no less freedom of action, freedom of speech and freedom of the individual than there are in America, and I include Canada in that word.  They are as free as we, but they make no talk about it.

The United Kingdom, with the rest of the empire, is fighting to retain her own democracy.  If Germany had won during the three years the Allies have held the safety of the world, then the world would have been under the heel of autocracy.

When I enlisted, and before I went over to England, I had no use for the Englishman myself; that was, the Englishman as we knew him in Western Canada.  We had had specimens of “Algy boys,” of “de Veres” and “Montmorency lads.”  These, we soon found out, were not the English true to type.  They were ne’er-do-wells, remittance men, sent out of the way to the farthest point of the map.

In England we were treated with wonderful hospitality.  I began to change my opinion, but not wholly until I reached France.  There I met Tommy Atkins—­the soldier and the gentleman.  There is no cleaner, cooler, better sport on the fighting line than Mr. Atkins.  Occasionally when the Irish are in a brilliant charge, when the Scotch punish the enemy with a bit of dogged fighting, it is reported.  When the Canadians do a forward sprint the world rings with it.  When the English advance and advance again and hold position and hold yet more positions, there is not a whisper of it—­not a word.

I have no English blood in my veins, but I believe in fairness, I believe firmly that all the other nations of the empire put together have not done so much as have the English Tommies by themselves.

There has come about a complete change in the Canadian mind in its attitude to the English.  If, before this war, there was ever a possibility of our breaking away from the empire, that possibility is now dead—­dead and buried beyond recall.

This statement is not made at random.  It is a considered sentence.  At the Convention of the Great War Veterans’ Association of Canada, the organization of the men returned from the world war, I was a delegate from my home town of Edmonton, Alberta.  The first resolution at our first session was in effect—­To propagate the good feeling between the dominions of the empire and between them and the Motherland; to continue the loyalty and devotion which have prompted us to fight for the old Union Jack.

After all, the voice of the men who have fought and bled for their country is the voice of the people.

Every criticism leveled at England or any other Ally from this side of the Atlantic is to throw a German stink-bomb for the Kaiser.

Feuds remembered are thoughts which are futile.  The England of to-day is not the England of 1812.  It is not possible to blame the man of to-day for the work of his great-grandfather.  Read history and find out the nationality of the George who ruled in England in those far distant days.  He was a German, spoke German, and could not read a word of the language of the country on whose throne he sat.