And it is on the plea of making better Canadians that the promoters of “national schools” are drifting from the very basic principle of our educational system, from the law and spirit of our Constitution.  Our form of Government, as we all know, is dual.  Matters of education are relevant to the Province.  The more the Province will abdicate its claims, and submit to the growing influence of the Federal powers, the greater will be the danger of losing the political equilibrium of Confederation.  Unstable equilibrium, once disturbed, is hardly ever re-established.  The centrifugal forces of the Province protect our liberties against the possible excesses of the centripetal forces of the Federal Government.  Any movement that tends to break the harmony of these forces is, we claim, anti-Canadian.  The Premier of Quebec speaking to the Deputy Ministers of Education and Superintendents of Public Instruction, at an inter-provincial Conference sounded this note of warning:  “The absolute control by each Province of its educational system is the keystone of our Confederation; and the whole structure of Canada would crumble away if any attempt were made at suppressing that which holds its several parts together.” (Nov. 4, 1921.) Quebec is blamed for being the great obstacle to the realization of the dreams of our nationalizers.  Quebec, we maintain, is the most sane Province of the Dominion, and the greatest help to the maintenance of Confederation.  This is now an admitted fact by every serious and broad minded Canadian.  Its conservatism acts, we would say, as the governor on the complicated machine of Canadian political life.  It regulates its speed and keeps it within the limits of safety.  Moreover, we ask, how could a system which would deny the principles and rights of over forty per cent. of the population be rightly and justly named “national”?  No one has the right to assume the monopoly of “nationalism.”

“The self-appointed or State-appointed nationalizer, we would say with Father Millar, S.J., ignorant of our real history or its true meaning, is fast becoming a menace to the sanity of our laws and to the supreme wisdom of a traditional national policy.” [2]

And what will be the consequences of this levelling uniformity that crushes parental right and fuses the powers of Provinces into a Federal unit?  The Prussian ideal is the answer.  We all know what that means and where it leads.  Its principles are the solvents of what remains of Christianity—­unconscious to many, it is true—­in the political life of our country.  The armies that our boys fought on the fields of Flanders were formed and trained in the national schools of Germany.

V.—­A British Reason