What is the tie that binds?  Is it the hope of an Imperial Federation, which shall bind the whole British Empire into such a world federation as now holds the provinces of the Dominion?  Twenty years ago, if you had asked that, the answer might have been “Yes.”  Canada was in the dark financially and did not see her way out.  If only the Chamberlain scheme of a tariff against the world, free trade within the empire, could have evolved into practical politics, Canada for purely practical reasons would have welcomed Imperial Federation.  It would have given her exports a wonderful outlet.  But to-day Imperial Federation is a deader issue in Canada than reciprocity with the United States.  No more books are written about it.  No one speaks of it.  No one wants it.  No one has time for it.  The changed attitude of mind is well illustrated by an incident on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, one day.

A Cabinet Minister was walking along the terrace above the river talking to a prominent public man of England.

“How about Imperial Federation?” asked the Englishman.  “Do you want it?”

The Canadian statesman did not answer at once.  He pointed across the Ottawa, where the blue shimmering Laurentians seem to recede and melt into a domain of infinitude.  “Why should we want Imperial Federation?” he answered.  “We have an empire the size of Europe, whose problems we must work out.  Why should Canadians go to Westminster to legislate on a deceased wife’s sister’s bills and Welsh disestablishment and silly socialistic panaceas for the unfit to plunder the fit?”

It will be noticed that his answer had none of that flunkeyism to which Goldwin Smith used to ascribe much of Canadian pro-loyalty.  Rather was there a grave recognition of the colossal burden of helping a nation the area of Europe to work out her destiny in wisdom and in integrity and in the certainty that is built up only from rock bottom basis of fact.

Has flunkeyism any part in the pro-loyalty of Canada?  Goldwin Smith thought it had, and we all know Canadians whose swelling lip-loyalty is a sort of Gargantuan thunder.  It may be observed, parenthetically, those Canadians are not the personages who receive recognition from England.

“Sorry, Your Royal Highness, sorry; but Canada is becoming horribly contaminated by Americanizing influences,” apologized a pro-loyalist of the lip-flunkey variety to the Duke of Connaught shortly after that scion of royalty came to Canada as Governor.

The Duke of Connaught turned and looked the fussy lip-loyalist over.  “What’s good enough for Americans is good enough for me,” he said.

An instance of the absence of flunkeyism from the Dominion’s loyalty to the Mother Country occurred during the visit of the present King as Prince of Wales to the Canadian Northwest a few years ago.  The royal train had arrived at some little western place, where a contingent of the Mounted Police was to act as escort for the Prince’s entourage.  The train had barely pulled in when a fussy little long-coat-tailed secretary flew John-Gilpin fashion across the station platform to a khaki trooper of the Mounted Police.