You never mention a Jim Hill, a Doctor Osler, a Schurman, a Graham Bell—­or a host of similar famous expatriates—­in a Canadian gathering but some one utters with a pride of gratulation that fairly beams from the face:  “They are Canadians.”  Canada is proud these famous men are Canadians.  It has always struck me as curious that she wasn’t ashamed—­ashamed that she lost their services from her own nation-building.  To my personal knowledge three of these men had to borrow the money to leave Canada.  Their services were worth untold wealth to other lands.  Their services did not give them a living in Canada.

At time of writing—­with only three exceptions—­Canada imports the presidents of her great universities; though she exports some of the greatest presidents and deans who have ever graced Princeton, Cornell, Oxford.  She thinks she can not afford to keep these men.  Is it a matter of money, at all; or of appreciative intelligence?  No matter what the cost, can Canada afford to lose them from her young nationals?

It is a truism that to my knowledge has not a single exception that Canada has never given the imprimatur of her approval to a writer, to an inventor, to a scholar, to an artist, till he has gone abroad and received the stamp of approval outside his own land.  By the time Paul Peel was acclaimed in Paris and Horatio Walker in New York each was lost to his own land.  It is an even wager nine Canadians out of ten do not know who these men were or for what they were acclaimed.  Try it as an experiment on your first train acquaintance.

You can not read early records of Congress without the most astounding realization that Washington, Monroe, Jefferson, Adams, big statesmen and little politicians, voicing solemn convictions or playing to the gallery—­all were deadly in earnest and serious about the business of building up a nation.  They never lost sight of the idea of conserving, up-building, protecting, extending their country.  The national idea is in Canada so recent that most men have not grasped it.  “Build a navy?” Canada hooted and made the vote a party football.  “Canada should have her own shipyards?” Men look at you!  What for?  “Panama will reverse the world conduits of trade.”  Bah!  Hot-air!  I have heard these and similar comments not once but a thousand times.

Americans say of opportunity—­“How much can we make of it?” Canadians say—­“How little can we pay for it?” And each takes out of opportunity exactly the amount of optimism put into it.

So one could go down the list enumerating symptoms, but beneath them all, it is plain, lies a cause psychological, not physical.  It may be a psychology of discouragement and disparagement from long years of hardship, but whatever it is, if Canada is to be as big nationally as she is latitudinally, as great in soul as in area, she must get rid of this negative thing in her attitude to herself and life.  It makes for solidity,