Empire and Nations: Essays in Honour of Frederic H. Soward 9781442654075

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EMPIRE AND NATIONS

Empire and Nations was written in tribute to the accomplishments of Frederic Hubert Soward - teacher, scholar, and administrator - who for fortytwo years served in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. Throughout his career he has made significant contributions to international understanding and the study of international relations through his writings, public lectures, and participation in international organizations and conferences. The volume consists of essays by fourteen outstanding contributors, all of whom are former students or associates of Professor Soward. The essays have as their common subject the nations that evolved within the British Empire and found, or are finding, their place in the world. Papers written by John Conway, Harvey L. Dyck, G. P. de T. Glazebrook, Edward D. Greathed, John W. Holmes, R. A. MacKay, Norman A. M. MacKenzie, Kenneth A. MacKirdy, H. Blair Neatby, and Peter B. Waite develop the subject from the perspectives of nation-building in Canada and Canada's developing role in world affairs. Peter Harnetty, Jane Banfield Haynes, and J. Bertin Webster contribute studies of nationalism and empire in Asia and Africa. Also included in the volume are a biographical introduction by Margaret A. Ormsby, a list of the writings of F. H. Soward compiled by Eleanor Mercer, and a tribute to Professor Soward by Lester B. Pearson. HARVEY L. DYCK is an associate professor in the Department of History, University of Toronto. H. PETER KROSBY is professor of history and chairman of the department at the State —University of New York in Albany.

Empire and Nations Essays in Honour of FREDERIC H. SOWARD

Edited by Harvey L. Dyck and H. Peter Krosby

Published in association with The University of British Columbia by University of Toronto Press

Copyright Canada 1969 by University of Toronto Press Printed in Canada SBN 8020 1652 9

CANADA

P R I M E

M I N I S T E R

• P R E M I E R

M I N I S T R E

I am delighted to hear that a Festschrift is being prepared to honour Professor Soward. Professor Soward is an old friend and colleague of mine and one whose work, scholarship and character I have always greatly admired. I have known Professor Soward since we were fellow-students at Oxford University and, subsequently, I had the privilege of working with him when I was a member of the Department of External Affairs. I was always very much impressed by the keenness of his mind and the depth of his scholarship. He seemed to me to be able to combine, in an exceptional way, the characteristics of the scholar and the public servant. His service to Canada has been very great indeed.

L. B. Pearson, Prime Minister. Ottawa, 1967

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Contents

Frontispiece Foreword LESTER

B.

PEARSON

V

Contributors

IX

Introduction MARGARET

A.

ORMSSBY

XI

Frederic H . Soward and the Development of International Studies in Canada NORMAN A M.

MACKENZIE

XVii

NATION-BUILDING IN C A N A D A Politics, Culture, and the Writing of Constitutions JOHN

CONWAY

3

Some Thoughts on Canadian Nationalism G.

P.

DE

T.

Sir John A . Macdonald: The Man P Mackenzie King and National Unity

H.

GLAZEBROOK .B.

BLAIR

18

WAITE

36

NEATBY

54

CANADA AND THE WORLD Canada and the Pax Americana JHON

W.

HOLMES

73

Antecedents and Origins of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs EDWARD D.

GREATHED

91

viii

CONTENTS

Canadian and Australian Self-interest, the American Fact, and the Development of the Commonwealth Idea K.

A.

MAC]KIRDY

116

The Canadian Doctrine of the Middle Powers R.

A.

MACKAY

133

Collectivization, Depression, and Immigration, 1929-1930: A Chance Interplay HARVEY L.DYCK

144

N A T I O N A L I S M A N D EMPIRE IN ASIA A N D A F R I C A Imperialism and Free Trade: Lancashire and India in the 1860s PETER

HARNETTY

163

The British East Africa High Commission: A n Imperial Experiment ANE

BANFIELD

HAYNES

180

Tribalism, Nationalism, and Patriotism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Africa J.

BERTIN

WEBSTER

195

BIBLIOGRAPHY The Writings of Frederic H . Soward ELEANOR

MERCER

219

Contributors

JOHN CONWAY

is professor of humanities and master of Founders College at York University HARVEY

L.

DYCK

is associate professor of history at the University of Toronto G.P.DET.GLAZEBROOKiss is special lecturer in history at tha University of Toronto EDWARD

D.

GREAHTED

is director of the Federal-Provincial Affairs Secretariat, Department of Treasury and Economics, Government of Ontari PETER HARNETTY

is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia J

ANE BANFIELD HAYNES

is assistant professor in the social science division of York University JHON W. HOLMES

is director general of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs H.

PETER

KROSBY

is professor of history and chairman of the department at the State University of New York in Albany R.

A. MACKAY

is professor of political science at Carleton University NORMAN

A.

M.

MACKENZIE

formerly president of the University of British Columbia, is a member of the Senate of Canada KENNETH

A.

MACKIRDY

was professor of history at the University of Waterloo until his untimely death in May 1968 in Australia while on a tour of Commonwealth countries

X

CONTRIBUTORS

ELEANOR MERCER

is a librarian at the University of British Columbia MARGARET A. ORMSBY

is professor of history and head of the department at the University of British Columbia H . BLAIR NEATBY

is professor of history at Carleton University PETER B . W A I T E

is professor of history and head of the department at Dalhousie University J . B E R T I N WEBSTER

is professor of history and chairman of the department at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda

T

MARGARET A. ORMSBY

Empire and Nations is a volume of essays written in tribute to the accom­ plishments of Frederic Hubert Soward - teacher, scholar, and adminis­ trator - who for forty-two years served in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. Appointed head of the department in 1953, and holding that position for ten years, Professor Soward acted con­ currently as director of international studies (1946-64), director of Asian studies (1956-61), and dean of graduate studies (1961-4). His career was intimately bound up with the development of the University of British Columbia, and in more ways than one he contributed to its transformation from a small provincial institution into a large university recognized for its scholarly reputation and for its cosmopolitan interests and connections. The University of British Columbia was not only poorly supported by public funds but also miserably housed in the "Fairview Shacks" located on the grounds of the Vancouver General Hospital, when in 1922 Fred Soward joined Mack Eastman and Walter Noble Sage as the third man in the History Department. Yet, though the university had got off to a slow start, he arrived in Vancouver at a time when a buoyant spirit pervaded the student body and the faculty. Young British Columbians are naturally exuberant, and this characteristic, combined with the esprit de corps which prevailed among the older student-veterans and the spirit of adventure which had caused a number of talented young professors to take up ap­ pointments on the west coast, developed for the institution a sense of destiny. Into this setting and into this atmosphere, Fred Soward, aged twenty-three, his studies completed and his teaching career about to begin, fitted perfectly. Born at Minden, Ontario, on 10 April 1899, Fred Soward entered the University of Toronto in 1915. Two years later he enlisted in the Canadian Army. Going overseas as a private soldier in the regiment of the 48th Highlanders of Toronto, he experienced the trench warfare of the final bitter years of the First World War and participated in the Occupation Army's march into Germany. Before going overseas, his interest in history had been whetted by Professor George M. Wrong. Wartime experiences and studies as a Canadian student-veteran turned what might have been

MARGARET A. ORMSBY xii an avocation into a vocation. After studying at Edinburgh in 1919, he returned to the University of Toronto to graduate with first class honours in modern history in 1921, and then proceeded to Oxford to obtain his B.LITT. degree in 1922. At the time of his appointment to the History Department at the Uni­ versity of British Columbia, Fred Soward was singularly young both in appearance and manner. Even so, his reputation as a teacher soon became the envy of his colleagues and the admiration of his students. From his first days in the "Fairview Shacks," his intellectual vigour was apparent to everyone: he was known to be a voracious reader, to have an encyclo­ paedic knowledge and a photographic memory, and to have interests so broad that they encompassed all the arts. In the lecture rooms of the "Old Arts" building on the Point Grey campus, his popularity with the students was at its height. Though his lecture "load" was unbearably heavy by present standards, he added to it by introducing new courses. He planned and offered for the freshmen a course in contemporary world history, and at the senior level he introduced the study of United States history and European cultural history. For the history honours programme he instituted a seminar in historical method, and after his return to the university in 1946 from leave on government service, he introduced his seminar on Canadian external policy. Concerning this seminar, it was to be his proud boast that of the two hundred students who were in attendance over the nineteen years in which it was offered, thirty-three became professors, and twelve foreign service officers. All the while that he was innovating courses of study, Fred Soward, like many of his colleagues, was engaged in securing public support for the university. Throughout the twenties and the thirties when the university was struggling for its existence - and how severe that struggle was is re­ flected in the fact that he spent twenty-five years as a faculty member be­ fore his salary reached the figure of $5,000 - he conceived it his duty to bring the university to the community. Making use of the public platform, he shared his knowledge of contemporary affairs with colleague and stu­ dent, journalist and Rotarian, and, on his frequent lecture tours into the Interior valleys, with fruit-farmer and small-town business man. Pre­ ceding and long after the Second World War, beams of light on Saturday night pierced the forest darkness of West Point Grey as automobiles car­ ried the citizens of Vancouver to the university to hear his famous annual survey of international affairs. With all this activity, his scholarship was not neglected. Like so many of the army veterans who were on the campuses of Canadian universities

INTRODUCTION

xiii

during the first years of peace, Fred Soward was at that time a Canadian nationalist. His early writings reflect admiration for Sir Robert Borden's work in advancing Canadian claims for recognition of status and absorp­ tion in the matter of Canadian autonomy. Yet his interest was not confined to Canadian strivings. For his imagination had been caught at the close of the war by the moral idealism underlying Woodrow Wilson's hopes for a new international order. To the theme of the advance of Canada to nation­ hood, he added new themes: the changing character of the British Empire, the making and implementation of foreign policy, and the need for a collective system capable of restraining law-breaking states. Still an en­ thusiastic Canadian nationalist at the time when the first shock to the international order came in the early thirties, his fear that nationalism was a force that could be exploited by perverts to serve selfish ambition and create havoc caused him to turn more and more in his writing to the sub­ ject of international order and security. His first book, Moulders of National Destinies, published in 1938, went into three editions. Its nucleus was the series of broadcasts which he had prepared for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It was typical of Fred Soward that he should be one of the first academic historians in Canada to explore the educational opportunities afforded by a relatively new medium. And it was equally characteristic of this author of bio­ graphical sketches that he should disclaim any belief in the "Great Man" theory of history. Without withholding judgment - Wilson he praised for his "moral idealism" and Hitler he denounced as "the most consummate propagandist of our time" - he put the emphasis on the fact that for a quarter of a century opportunities had existed for "strong-willed men de­ voted to a cause or a country to affect the lives and fortunes of millions." A further book, Twenty-five Troubled Years, which appeared in 1943, traced the events which led to the outbreak of war in 1939. Though the tone of this book was moderate and judicious, the author could not conceal his disappointment with world leaders for failing to permit the League of Nations to be an effective instrument for achieving world order. Still an­ other book on the prewar years, prepared with N. A. M. MacKenzie and K. F. Parkinson in 1941 for the important series, Canada in World Affairs, traced the interaction between the internal strains and the external ten­ sions affecting the formulation of foreign policy by Canada as a sovereign nation. In 1943 Professor Soward's specialized knowledge was put to the service of the nation when the Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs called him to Ottawa as special assistant. There he remained for three years, and there he subsequently returned for three summers to complete

MARGARET A. ORMSBY

xiv a special task. This experience developed in him a sincere appreciation for the excellence of the Canadian diplomatic service. After his return to the university in 1946, Professor Soward produced a long list of articles, pamphlets, and chapters for compendia relating to international affairs and Canadian foreign policy. These were good years for him: he was busy organizing the field of international relations as a course of study, and once more he was teaching mature students, this time veterans of another war. He was confident of the future of his country: to him it seemed evident that Canada was undergoing the transition from what he called "a vigorous young manhood" to an equally vigorous middle age. Above all, in the planning done in San Francisco, he saw hope for a new and more effective world organization. For him, the last years of the decade of the forties seemed a period of great expectations. As further books were written - The Adaptable Commonwealth, pub­ lished in 1950; Canada in World Affairs, 1944-46, published in 1950; and, in co-operation with Edgar Mclnnis, Canada and the United Nations, 1944-46, published in 1956 - his stature as a scholar and historian was recognized beyond the limits of his university and the confines of his province. Honours were accorded him: he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and later served as president of Section n; the Canadian Historical Association chose him as its president in 1947; and the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association elected him as its president in 1961. He served on the Canadian Social Science Research Council, on the National Executive Committee of the United Nations Association in Canada, and on the National Advisory Committee of UNESCO's East-West project. During these busy years the Canadian In­ stitute of International Affairs made use of his prestige. Similarly, the National Defence College, like the Royal Military College and Air Force College, called upon his services. In the summer of 1956 he was asked to be co-director of the World University Service seminar in Japan. Later that year he went to Germany to participate in a study tour as guest of the Federal Republic. During the following summer, 1957, he was guest lecturer at Duke University Com­ monwealth Studies Centre in the series on Evolving Canadian Federalism, and some months later he went to New York to be rapporteur of the Fourth Committee (Trusteeship), Eleventh Assembly of the United Na­ tions. By 1959 his reputation had become established throughout the Commonwealth, and that year he was invited to be visiting professor of Commonwealth history at the Indian School of International Studies at New Delhi. As his days became more crowded, his travels more extensive, and his

INTRODUCTION

XV

invitations to be guest lecturer more numerous, the boundless energy with which Professor Soward had been endowed and the habits of a lifetime stood him in good stead. The mounting burden of administrative minutiae, which he faced when the University of British Columbia entered a phase of great expansion during the presidency of Dr Norman A. MacKenzie, he handled with meticulous attention. To the duties of department head were added those of director of Asian studies and associate dean of graduate studies. He still carried a heavy burden of teaching and he still saw to it that his students benefitted from the rigid standard of scholarship which he used for his own measure. In his lectures he used the past to illuminate the present. Thus although his attention was caught more and more by the complexities of modern issues and the policies of modern statesmen, he continued to read widely in the fields of European, American, and Asian history. It was therefore possible for undergraduates who admired the precision of his thought and the breadth of his knowledge to catch from him an interest in a field of history outside that of contemporary affairs. How diverse the interests he cultivated among his students were can be observed in the titles of the essays contained in this volume. As historian, F. H. Soward revealed himself as the product of his environment and his age. A member of a family which had contributed at least one clergyman to the Anglican Church, he had absorbed in his boy­ hood the Protestant ethic of the small Ontario town at the turn of the century. He grew up believing in the virtue of work, in civic duty, in honest craftsmanship, and in the necessity for complete objectivity in assessing human worth. All these values are reflected in his writing. His training as historian was obtained at a time when the emphasis in the history schools was on history as a science and on the Whig interpre­ tation of history. This influence he never discarded. In his research, he amassed all the evidence available in parliamentary papers, specialized studies and biographies, journals and newspapers. Since nothing that ap­ peared in print seemed to escape 'his notice, he seldom had to revise his statements when he prepared one of his books for a new edition. The emphasis on constitutional evolution, which was in vogue at the University of Toronto and at Oxford University during his student days, remained with him: though often in his writing he emphasized the role of the individual as a moulder of events, it was the complexities of issues issues which appeared to him to be fundamentally constitutional and political in nature - which aroused his greatest interest. The wars in which his country was involved during his lifetime, as well as his residence in Vancouver during the period when the whole Pacific

xvi

MARGARET A . ORMSBY

region was coming into a new focus, contributed their influence in making him a student of power politics. Similarly, his experience in the Depart­ ment of External Affairs and his friendship with members of the Canadian diplomatic corps and civil service intensified his essentially Canadian ap­ proach to this subject. Whatever catastrophic event occurred he never lost his faith that administrative machinery could be devised to improve a situation or that a solution to a complex problem could be found through compromise and conciliation. In his later writing he expressed disappointment that the international role that he had foreseen for Canada in the first years after the Second World War had not materialized. Exciting prospects had preceded Can­ ada's entry into NATO; now Canada's capacities as a middle power had proved to be restrictive. In the tone of the essential Canadian nationalist turned internationalist he wrote, "There is still room 'in our small corner,' as the hymn puts it, for a country such as ours to play a constructive part in world politics." Such was Soward the historian - a scientific researcher, an objective assessor of issues and men, and a logical expositor of events and develop­ ments. Soward the professor was the man of the right season for the University of British Columbia. He came to it when its tradition was still unformed; during his long service he helped its character to find its mould. Over the years he enlarged the vision of administrators and expanded the horizon of colleagues and students. As a scholar, he won for himself and his university the respect of specialists at home and abroad. He was dean of graduate studies and senior member of the faculty at the time of his retirement in 1964. The University of British Columbia, as Carleton University had already done, honoured him by conferring on him an honorary doctorate. The virgin forest surrounding the Point Grey campus was fast dis­ appearing by that time. The student body had grown to sixteen thousand, the faculties had multiplied, and hundreds of young professors had been added to the staff. Still, among new and old associates as among recent and former students, there were many who would continue to seek the com­ panionship of the fine scholar whose everyday conversation was sprinkled as much with epigrams and finely honed phrases as with allusions to music, painting, and poetry.

Frederic H. Soward and the Development of International Studies in Canada NORMAN A. M. MacKENZIE

of essays has been prepared to honour Pro­ fessor Soward, and because he has made such an outstanding contribution in the field of international studies, both within the university and in gov­ ernment service as well as in other capacities in connection with other organizations, I felt it would be in order to describe briefly the develop­ ment of international studies in Canada and to indicate in a general way the contributions Professor Soward has made. In doing this, reference should be made to three studies or statements. The first and most important is the report of Mr Hamlin and Professor Gilles Lalande, entitled International Studies in Canadian Universities, which was prepared under the auspices of the Canadian Universities Foundation* and printed in 1964. This study gives a detailed statement, description, and report on all of the universities and colleges in Canada in respect of international studies and international affairs generally. The other two studies were my own article, "The Teaching of In­ ternational Law and International Relations" in Canadian universities (Canadian Bar Review, October 1932, pp. 519-23), and Professor W. B . C. Harrison's article, "The University Teaching of International Relations in Canada" (in A. E. Zimmern, The University Teaching of International Relations, Paris, 1939, pp. 98 ff.). The latter article was part of a survey sponsored by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs in 1937 at the request of the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, an agency of the League of Nations. I was chairman of the committee of the institute responsible for this report, and Professor Harrison was in charge of the survey of work being done by universities in Canada. These three reports are fairly complete surveys of the university's role in international studies and in international affairs generally and should BECAUSE THIS COLLECTION

*I was chairman of the university committee responsible for this study and super­ vised the work of the two authors.

xviii

N O R M A N A. M . M A C K E N Z I E

certainly be read and kept in mind in considering the development of international studies in Canada. Incidentally, one of the problems in re­ spect of this whole matter or field is the different senses in which terms are used and the wide area covered in meanings given to these terms. Attempts have been made to restrict and define international relations so that it covers only university courses or disciplines. On the other hand, inter­ national affairs, like national affairs, is broad enough to cover practically every aspect of the relations of states in all of the various areas of human activities. In this broad sense it is much too general and much too large to form an easily organized or readily acceptable university course or dis­ cipline. One of the results of these difficulties, probably a natural one, was that until the 1920s, following the First World War, the work that was done in the univerities in this whole area was very limited and was done mainly in the departments of history, political science, and philosophy of the faculty of arts, and in the department of public international law of the faculty of law. Most of these last were abbreviated courses given, usually, by part-time lecturers in law. This was true of both the English-language and French-language universities. However, in the early 1920s, Professor Henry F. Munro, who had been a member of the teaching staff at Colum­ bia University and a graduate of Dalhousie and Harvard, came back to Dalhousie as the first "Eric Dennis Professor of Political Science." He had recently published, in collaboration with Professor Ellery C. Stowell of Columbia, a two-volume collection of cases on public international law (International Cases, Cambridge, 1916) and was well equipped to give to students both in arts and in law a course in public international law, which I had the privilege of taking from him at that time. Not long after this, Professor Percy Corbett, who had been a legal adviser to the International Labour Office in Geneva, Switzerland, came back to McGill as dean of law and introduced a full course in public inter­ national law in the Faculty of Law there. Some three years later, I, having succeeded him as one of the legal advisers to the International Labour Office, returned to the University of Toronto and was asked to give a full university course in public interna­ tional law in the honours programme in law at Toronto. While there, I attempted to have the field of international affairs or international studies expanded and a regular honours course given in it. With this in mind I drafted a memorandum for the dean, the heads of the various departments, and the president of the university in which I suggested that a combination of courses in history and political science, economics, and geography, as well as in public international law, together with a new course entitled

T H E D E V E L O P M E N T OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

xix

international relations, should be organized and made available to students interested in taking this kind of work. However, as so frequently happens, the implementation of this proposal appeared to cut across so many de­ partmental lines and to raise so many incidental problems of organization and administration that nothing effective was done about it. Each existing department continued with its own work in its own field, and international law remained, to all intents and purposes, the only subject which could properly claim to be within the strict sense of the term "International Studies." It was during this period that I first came to know Professor Soward, a graduate of the University of Toronto and of Oxford, who had come soon after the First World War, in which he served, to the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. I met him at conferences of the League of Nations Society, of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, and of the Institute of Pacific Relations, as well as at meetings of the National Conference of Canadian Universities, and I formed a friend­ ship for him and a high regard for his work which has continued ever since. My most intimate association with him was when we shared a cabin on board the R.M.S. Aorangi from Vancouver via Fiji and Auckland to Sydney, Australia, to attend a conference under the auspices of the various British Commonwealth Institutes of International Affairs on the subject of the British Commonwealth, described as the Conference on British Com­ monwealth Affairs. That was in 1938. The Second World War broke out in 1939, and Professor Soward, like many others in the academic world, offered his services to his country. This time he was asked to take an important posi­ tion in the Department of External Affairs, and he remained there until the end of the war. Despite the government's desire to retain him in govern­ ment service, and despite their most attractive offers of high diplomatic positions, Professor Soward decided to return to the University of British Columbia as professor of history. When I discussed with Fred Soward the possibilities of his coming back to the University of British Columbia, of which I had then become president, I told him that if he did come back, I would like him to be director of international studies and develop in the university an ambitious programme in a number of appropriate fields. I had in mind that he should discuss with the heads of departments and the members of the teaching staff the expansion of work not only in history, but in economics, political science, law, languages and literature, in geography, when that department was established, in agriculture and forestry, and in medicine, if and when this faculty was organized. Then, too, the prospects of work

XX

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in oceanography and fisheries and in business and commerce, as well as in other fields of the sciences and the liberal arts and the professions, presented many opportunities and challenges for working in or contribut­ ing to the general field of international relations. It was also my hope, shared by others connected with the university as well as by Professor Soward, that we could build up at the University of British Columbia major departments in Slavonic studies and Asian studies as well as inter­ national relations. In brief, I had in mind an individual, in this case Professor Soward, who would accept some responsibility for stimulating interest in and promoting and organizing work in all of the appropriate faculties and departments of the university that might assist the university in making a contribution to an understanding of international relations and to the problems that exist or grow out of the relations among nations. This, obviously, was a very ambitious as well as a very general assignment, but Professor Soward accepted the challenge. In due course, the proposals were in the main realized. I am happy that over the years the University of British Columbia has made significant contributions to international relations and to assisting in solving the problems of the nations in nearly all of these fields. A good share of the credit for what has been done and accomplished must go to Professor Soward who, throughout, has done a great deal, not only at the University of British Columbia but throughout Canada, to help in the development of inter­ national studies. Professor Soward's personal contribution to an understanding of international affairs in his own community, Vancouver, and in the province of British Columbia has been unique and outstanding. Not only did he give a number of addresses each year and review books in his field for the local newspapers and publications, but his "annual review," which he gave at the university and to one of the service clubs in the city, was an outstanding event to which large numbers of citizens came. On these occasions, Professor Soward gave a complete general review of the im­ portant international events and developments that had taken place the preceding twelve months and commented upon them. Although Professor Soward kept an eye on the general development of international studies at the university, he was by temperament a teacher and a scholar rather than an "empire builder." His most important con­ tributions to the university have been to the Department of History, of which he was head, and to the rather more orthodox areas of inter­ national relations in which he was so much interested. In due course, he became dean of graduate studies. In this position, too, he was able to

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xxi

encourage and assist graduate work in the various areas related to inter­ national relations. He continued his work and interest in the Canadian Institute of Inter­ national Affairs and in the United Nations Association, which took the place of the former League of Nations Society. He contributed articles in the field of international affairs to appropriate publications in Canada and abroad. And he has written books, or contributed to the books of others, on the same subject. My memories of Professor Soward are as a warm friend and a dedi­ cated colleague who read omnivorously, not only in history and inter­ national relations, but in many other fields. Incidentally, he has one of the best collections of mystery stories and novels of that kind that I have come across. Here I speak with knowledge for he very kindly rented us his furnished home when we first came to Vancouver. He and his wife, Kay, were happy and generous hosts to friends, to colleagues, and to students. The occasions I remember most and best were his annual parties of an evening at Christmas or New Year's when he provided for a select group some of the best smoked beef and other delicacies that one could wish for, or even dream about. Professor Soward's contributions to meetings and conferences dealing with international relations - local, national, and international - were most important. These, together with his public addresses, his reviews of literature, his articles and his occasional book, his teaching, and his administration, made him one of the most constructive factors in the whole field of international studies during his long career as a teacher, scholar, and citizen. Our universities and the Canadian public owe Professor Soward a singular debt, and I am delighted that his friends and former students are bringing out this collection of "Essays" in the fields in which he was active and to which he contributed so much.

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N A T I O N - B U I L D I N G IN C A N A D A

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Politics, Culture, and the Writing of Constitutions JOHN CONWAY

C A N A D A IS EXPERIENCING the great constitutional crisis of her history, which she may well not survive as a united independent state. This crisis is twofold. English and French Canadians have failed to build a united Canadian state resting upon a clearly articulated and accepted political rationale. The ambiguity of English Canada's relations with Great Britain has bred doubt in French Canada whether such a state was in fact desired. It has strengthened a French-Canadian view that Quebec can in important respects be defined as a nation. Moreover, Canada, after a century of existence as a dependency of Great Britain, seems about to become a dependency of the United States of America. This circumstance, when not welcomed for material reasons or regarded simply with apathy, causes anxiety, anger, and a general malaise in all groups in the country. This clearly is no condition for a people who have fought with courage and hardihood in two world wars, who have built a modern economy out of wilderness, and who have experimented for a century with pluralistic democracy. What should be done to realize the vision expressed by Edward Blake in 1892? "I cling to the hope of a higher though more arduous destiny for the great Dominion. I look for the regeneration of my own country. I cling to the hope that - sooner or later, and rather soon than late - there may be born into the world an independent Canadian Com­ monwealth; nerving itself to solve, after its own fashion, the many racial and religious, moral and political, economic and material problems which confront us; united by enduring links of kinship and sympathy, hope and admiration, with three of the leading nations of the w o r l d . . . . A first step is to recognize that Canada has outgrown the forms of government which the Fathers of Confederation and the Colonial Office devised for her. We must acknowledge that the instrument of government drawn up in 1867 rests upon assumptions of immaturity and colonialism. In the Confederation debates England was perceived as "home," an assumption that continues to burden us psychologically and sociologically. ,n

1

Cited in Frank H. Underhill, "Laurier and Blake, 1891-2 Review, xxiv (1943), 149.

Canadian

Historical

J O H N CONWAY

4

"With us, as at home," said Christopher Dunkin, "the Constitution makes the whole Ministry collectively responsible for all the acts it performs ... " And John A. Macdonald declared: "Well, it is now of the greatest impor­ tance that some members of the Government should go home immediately, in order that England may know what the opinion of Canada is upon this question of Confederation, as well as upon the question of defence." The colonial status was taken for granted. "Every writer and speaker of note in the United Kingdom," said Macdonald, "who has treated of the subject says a new era of colonial existence has been inaugurated, and that if these colonies, feeble while disunited were a source of weakness, they will by forming this friendly alliance, become a strong support to Eng­ land. ... " Macdonald never even considered the possibility of independence; in 1870 he "pooh-poohed the spectacle of Canada acting independently in this matter" (that is, the extension of Canadian markets): " 'Who are you?' people would say. 'We are a province of England.' 'Well then, send England to us.' But suppose we sign an agreement to which the English people and Parliament refuse sanction, then there will be a nice state of things, then there will be the entering of the wedge that separates us from Great Britain. There will be a nice quarrel." As late as 1904 Laurier, who saw independence as a desirable ultimate goal, could declare: "We are only a small colony, a growing colony, but still a colony... " The British North America Act itself assumes colonialism and depen­ dency. The sovereignty of the Crown, the absence of provision for the conduct of foreign affairs, the acceptance of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the final court of appeal, and the absence of provision for constitutional amendment by the Canadian Parliament make this clear enough. Nevertheless, the inability of Parliament at Ottawa to amend the constitution did not mean that the constitution was not modified. It was changed, but by a series of Privy Council decisions which reflected the prevailing legal philosophy of that body rather than Canadian needs. As a result our constitution, consisting of the British North America Act and other relevant statutes together with legal decisions on constitu­ tional issues, has at best an imprecise relationship with the realities of the present-day Canadian situation. The concepts embodied in the British 2

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Parliamentary Debates on the Subject of Confederation of the British North American Provinces, 3rd Session, 8th Provincial Parliament of Canada (Quebec, 1865),498. » Ibid., 730. * Ibid., 649. Cited in T. W. L. MacDermot, "The Political Ideas of John A. Macdonald," Canadian Historical Review, xiv (1933), 252. Cited in Joseph Schull, Laurier: The First Canadian (Toronto, 1965), 432. 2

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North America Act were perhaps suited to a dependency afraid of being annexed to the United States, that found emotional security in identifying with Great Britain and the Empire because of the absence of other sources of reassurance, and that had little thirst for a cultural life of its own. But they are no longer adequate for a country whose population is larger than that of England and Wales in 1900, whose territory and resources exceed many times over those of Great Britain, and whose international responsi­ bilities accord with her size and the magnitude of her future development. It bears repeating that in 1867 the British Empire was reaching the summit of its power, wealth, and prestige, while the British North American colonies were relatively poor, undeveloped, underpopulated, and inexperi­ enced in the affairs of the external world. That the disparity between the present condition of Canada and her constitution has been imperfectly and not universally recognized is due to several specific circumstances. Most fundamentally, we have seriously overestimated the political achievements of the years 1864 to 1867, the documents embodying them, and the men responsible for both. To be sure the Fathers of Confederation had energy, patriotism, intelligence, and imagination. But they must be seen in perspective, against a background of the cultures of the British North American provinces in the middle of the Victorian era. Most Canadian universities, for example, are postConfederation foundations. The University of New Brunswick had, it is true, been founded in 1785, McGill in 1821, Dalhousie in 1818, the University of Toronto in 1827, Queen's and the University of Ottawa in 1841. But no Father of Confederation was an alumnus of these established universities. Indeed, of the thirty-seven Fathers of Confederation only four had a college education and of these only one - Charles Tupper - had a university education in the sense in which we would use the term today. Charles Fisher was a graduate of King's College, Fredericton, John Hamil­ ton Gray a graduate of King's College at Windsor, Nova Scotia, William McDougall was a graduate of Victoria College at Cobourg, and Charles Tupper studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While acknowl­ edging the farsightedness and business sagacity of men such as Macdonald, Cartier, Brown, Gait, McGee, Mowat, and the rest, we must admit that the intellectual and cultural horizons of their world were limited. In Great Britain and western Europe the decorum of the middle decades of the nineteenth century was singularly inhospitable to originality or innovation in art or political speculation. This situation at the centres of western civilization was compounded at the periphery. According to the 7

7

W. Stewart Wallace, (Toronto, 1963).

The

Macmillan

Dictionary

of

Canadian

Biography

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census of 1871 the total population of the combined provinces was some­ thing under three and a half million people. The marginal nature of the provincial economies was one of the main spurs to federation. The prov­ inces supplied neither the luxury nor the leisure for imported speculation while religious orthodoxy at home provided an uncongenial atmosphere for philosophical enquiry. For instance, James Beaven, a clergyman of the Church of England, and the first academic philosopher in central Canada (he was professor of metaphysics and ethics at the University of Toronto 1850-71), made these comments about the theory of democracy: " ... the conclusion I draw is ... that democratical theories are totally inapplicable to any state of great extent, and in an advanced condition of civilization; ... Independently of every other consideration, I must always think that form of civil, as well as of ecclesiastical polity, to be best, which most directly tends to train the mind to reverence and submit to the one uni­ versal monarchy of the Supreme Being, and the limited monarchy which he has ordained in every family." In Quebec the intellectual atmosphere was even more restrictive. An era of reaction in the Roman Catholic Church prompted Pope Pius ix to issue the Syllabus of Errors and the Encyclical Quanta Cura in 1864. These documents set the intellectual tone for the Quebec church which had, in any event, a long history of ultramontanism. Their teachings were embraced by Bishop Ignace Bourget of Montreal and strongly reflected in a work by Louis-Francois Lafleche, the grand vicar of Three Rivers, entitled Quelques Considerations sur les rapports de la societe civile avec la religion et la famille (1868): 8

i A nation is constituted by unity of speech, unity of faith, uniformity of morals, customs and institutions. The French Canadians possess all these and constitute a true nation. Each nation has received from Providence a mission to fulfil. The mission of the French-Canadian people is to constitute a centre of Catholicism in the New World. n Authority derives from God. The best form of government is a moderate monarchy (the Church and the family are examples of it); the most imperfect is democracy. Liberalism commits the fundamental error of seeking to build society on other than religious principles. Electors not only exercise a right; they fulfil a duty for which they are responsible before God. The priest thus has a right to guide them. It is an error condemned by reason, by history, and by Revelation to say that politics is a field in which religion has no right to enter, and in which the Church has no concern. 9

8

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Cited in John A. Irving, "The Development of Philosophy in Central Canada from 1850 to 1900," Canadian Historical Review, xxxi (1950) 258-9. Cited in Mason Wade, The French Canadians, 1760-1945 (New York, 1955), 346.

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It is a tribute to the force of character of the men who brought Con­ federation into being that they could do so in so restrictive an intellectual and cultural climate. But its constraints cannot be denied. The fundamental document of the Canadian constitution was written not at a point of Cana­ dian cultural efflorescence but before such creativity had even started; it was, moreover, a period in which both French and English thought, by decreeing submission to external authority positively inhibited cultural creativity. The foregoing is not an exercise in professorial condescension towards men without university degrees, for self-education has always been pos­ sible. Moreover, men are educated and achieve greatness through the challenge of great events. Abraham Lincoln was a fairly average back-room politician until confronted by the questions of slavery and the continued unity of the American republic. Had Winston Churchill died in the 1930s he would be remembered as an eccentric and marginally successful par­ liamentarian, not as the giant we know who was nurtured to greatness by the demands of the Nazi challenge. In Canada in the first half of the nine­ teenth century there were neither great educating issues nor great educating aspirations. The Fathers of Confederation were made parochial by circum­ stances, not by their minds. Few of them, in their formative years, had access to great centres of learning nor was their world suffused with intel­ lectual curiosity. Canada was a frontier society suffering from cultural privation in which only the rarest genius could have risen above the level of his culture. In those decades in the British North American provinces none did. The American experience had been fundamentally different. Harvard had been founded in 1636, William and Mary in 1694, Yale in 1702, Columbia (as King's College) and the College of Philadelphia in 1754. By the time the Americans were debating their constitution and drawing it up, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were cities where learning and culture throve as well as business and commerce. These urban centres in the colonies were by the 1770s the equivalent of most large European provincial cities. They had developed in years of untroubled commercial progress during which American society had possessed both the ease and prosperity to acquire a taste for the current fashions in European ideas as well as for the luxuries of a more highly developed economy. More 10

11

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For the political attitudes of the Quebec hierarchy in the 1860s see Walter Ullman, "The Quebec Bishops and Confederation," Canadian Historical Review, XLFV (1963), 213-34. See Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743-1776 (New York, 1955), and Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America (New York, 1960).

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important, the American revolutionary debates took place at the climax of the Age of Enlightenment, a brilliant era, absorbed and reflected in the debates and founding documents. By the time of the American Revolution the thirteen colonies had produced patrician cultures within a population of approximately two and a half million that rested on a solid base of accumulated and inherited wealth. Of the fifty-five delegates to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, twenty-five had taken degrees at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, King's College, William and Mary, or the College of Philadelphia. Six had read law at the Inns of Court. Daniel Carroll of the Roman Catholic Maryland family had been educated by the Jesuits in Europe. James McClurg had studied medi­ cine in Edinburgh, London, and Paris. Charles Pinckney received his education at Westminster School and at Christ Church. James Madison, a graduate of Princeton, had withdrawn from the practice of law to devote himself for two years to the study of political theory in preparation for the constitutional debates. Probably never before or since has there been assembled in North America for political discussion a group of men so intellectually distinguished. The result of their deliberations was the con­ stitution of the United States of which John A. Macdonald said: "I think and believe that it is one of the most skilful works which human intelligence ever created; it is one of the most perfect organizations that ever governed a free people." John A. Macdonald never offered a similar judgment of the British North America Act, skilfully constructed in practical terms though it was. According to Professor Edward McWhinney, the BNA Act of 1867 was "neither more nor less than what might be expected from the intellectual attitudes and preferences of its original sponsors - a bourgeois liberal document framed in an era of laissez-faire." It is devoid of any political theory, new or old, because it accepted as its foundation and as the source of its legitimacy the British constitution. Hence it also embodied the political and moral ideas which were fundamental to that constitution and the political experiences which its modifications in law and custom incor­ porated. Implicitly, the act said that all fundamental questions about man as a political animal and about society as a political organism had been answered; if new questions should arise, they would be resolved at the source and not in one of the tributaries. Perhaps Canadian intellectual 12

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Clinton Rossiter, 7757, The Grand Convention (New York, 1966), 79-156. Confederation Debates, 32. "The New Pluralistic Federalism in Canada." Revue Juridique Thimis, n, no. 2 (1967),139.

POLITICS, C U L T U R E , A N D CONSTITUTIONS

9

history has been so barren in the realm of political theory partly because our culture, as evidenced by the British North America Act, implies that in Canada there is no need for any. The goal in 1867 was clear. It was to create a united colony from the Atlantic to the Pacific that would be defensible against possible American aggression and would find its ultimate raison d'etre in being a part of a world-wide British Empire. "A British subject I was b o r n - a British subject I will die," proclaimed the greatest of the Fathers of Confederation. None of the men who gathered at Charlottetown thought that the empire might come to an end. For that reason, only Canada's place within that empire required discussion. There was an additional goal - to establish a dynamic economy through Macdonald's National Policy - and this became the main concern of the young country. The urgent tasks were to build a transcontinental railway, establish Canadian industry, open the prairies, and begin exploiting the mines and forests. Problems of theory and of international politics could safely be left to Whitehall. Perhaps a large part of Canada's problem stems from the fact that for the first century of her existence her leaders con­ cerned themselves, understandably enough, exclusively with economic problems. Questions of national identity and national purpose were sub­ sumed into and solved by Canada's participation in the empire. But now that the British Empire has vanished has Canada been left with only an economic goal? Is English-speaking Canada at the present time not in danger of becoming an economy, not a nation, and responding primarily to economic pressures that will propel the country towards some sort of union with the United States of America? In economic terms the fortyninth parallel of latitude is an impediment to orderly economic progress. Only to the extent that it demarcates and safeguards a distinctive set of social values and political ideas can it be justified. But are there such values and political ideas which can be abstracted from the Canadian experience over the past century? It might be argued that the dominant concept is that of a non-majoritarian democracy based less upon homogeneity than upon diversity and particular wills. In com­ paring the Canadian experience with that of the United States one key difference should be underlined: the British North America Act was, in important respects, the point of departure for an historical and intellectual experience; the American constitution and its associated documents, on the other hand, were the summation of one. The inescapable fact of inde­ pendence obliged the makers of the American constitution to derive a set of political principles from their history since the first landfalls in Virginia

J O H N CONWAY

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and at Plymouth brought settlers to the wilderness. Because Canadians in 1867 did not wish independence the British North America Act pro­ vided no such summation. It provided only a legal framework for a union within which a national experience could begin to take form. The act is therefore outdated partly because it could not anticipate an experience which none of the drafters imagined. Whatever the shortcomings of the British North America Act it had the virtue of achieving union without producing a democratic rationale for it. A Quebec historian has suggested that to understand French Canada one must remember that New France was bora in the age of counterreformation, not in that of either Rabelais or Voltaire. Equally impor­ tant, it must be stressed that Canada took shape after what R. R. Palmer has called the Age of the Democratic Revolution, at a time, to use a con­ venient shorthand, when the influence of Rousseauistic ideas had waned. Although Rousseau's thought had little direct influence on American political deliberations in the revolutionary era, most of his ideas are more fully embodied in the United States today than in most European states. In the Social Contract Rousseau developed a democratic doctrine with revolutionary implications, a classic and profound effort to reconcile freedom and authority. Its basis is the general will which, when ascertained, "is always right and tends to the public advantage." It can, therefore, extinguish minority dissent for "whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free." By the very concept of the general will Rousseau assumes cultural and ethnic homogeneity in the body politic. What Rousseau created was an abstraction, the general will, which he 15

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Independence forced the Americans to reflect on their historical experience in order to define what they had become. The Albany Plan of Union (1754), presented to a congress of delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, was as empty of political theory as the British North America Act. "On July 24th the congress voted unanimously that a union of all the colonies was 'at present absolutely necessary for their security and defence.' " Select Charters and Other Documents Illustrative of American History, 1606-1775, ed. William Macdonald (New York, 1910), 253-7. For a classic study of this point see W. L. Morton, 'The Extension of the Franchise in Canada: A Study in Democratic Nationalism," Canadian Historical Association, Report of the Annual Meeting, 1943, 72. Claude Galarneau, "Histoire de l'Europe et histoire du Canada," Canadian Historical Association, Report of the Annual Meeting, 1956, 27. R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 (Princeton, 1959), I , 126. Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole (London, 1947), 15. 20 ibid.

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endowed with infallibility and attached to the state. In this way he linked patriotic sentiment and religious faith to make them one. A vulgarization of his doctrine, freed from the qualifications with which Rousseau sur­ rounded it, provided the philosophical foundations for a state in which all citizens would be equal and free and yet restrained by an authority whose legitimacy rested on a consensus among the citizens about the good and the true. Although the Founding Fathers of the American republic had Elitist presuppositions, their recognition of the people as the constituent body in the ratification of the constitution paved the way for the Rousseauistic idea of the common man which was expressed in Jacksonian democracy. The emergence of a political order early in the nineteenth century for which Rousseau's ideas had provided the justification reinforced a second key theme of the early American historical experience, that of mission. The New England Puritans of the great migration of the 1630s came to America with a mission " to realize in America the due form of govern­ ment, both civil and ecclesiastical" and "to vindicate the most rigorous ideal of the Reformation, so that ultimately all Europe would imitate New England." However secularized this mission became towards the close of the seventeenth century and in the eighteenth, it remained as an integral part of the American view. The interplay between an amalgam of mission and Rousseauistic political philosophy on the one hand, and challenges of the physical environment on the other, has been largely responsible for the development of the characteristic American democratic faith of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To it can in large part be attributed the impressive dynamism and cultural creativity of the American republic, as well as the less appealing side of the American political vision, which has had mixed and largely unintended results. The phenomenon of McCarthy ism was bred of con­ frontation between absolute American political orthodoxy and a compet­ ing universalist doctrine of Marxist-Leninism. America's involvement in Southeast Asia stems in part from the belief that American political and social ideals are absolute and that the American people have a mission to realize them universally. The Rousseauistic ideal of a homogeneous ethnic and cultural community has given that community the cohesiveness and self-confidence that speeded the Americanization of the European immi­ grant as an act of free will. But by the same token it has rendered the race 21

22

21 Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), 12. By this I mean less the frontier experience, though it contributed to the making of the American national character, than the whole complex of factors that went into the making of America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: immigration, industrialization, and urbanization.

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problem insoluble so far by proclaiming white man as normative man. And if the expectation of a homogeneous culture has had creative and democratic results, except in the case of the Negro, it has also handicapped the American people in their relations with foreign nations that are in­ capable of following the American model by definition because they are foreign. In Canada, conversely, a notion of democracy has evolved that is relativistic and non-messianic. At the time the Dominion was formed the political system was not charged with defining the goals of society nor was its relationship to religious absolutes or absolutes of any kind explicitly worked out. For Quebec absolute values were to be found through the church and defined in Rome. For English Canadians they were to be dis­ covered through Christianity and, in political matters, in the British con­ stitution. The great Canadian achievement has been to maintain a union in which political democracy has developed based upon cultural diversity. It can be convincingly argued that the world of the closing decades of the twentieth century needs this lesson and example more than that provided by the United States in the nineteenth century. Canada's failure has been the reluctance and inability of her thinkers to recognize and formulate the principles of that achievement. There are at least two main reasons why we have not yet ventured upon this course. One is that Canadians, both French and English, still tend to think in terms of nationalism in what is or ought to be a post-nationalist era. Many English-speaking Canadians believed until recently, and perhaps still believe, that Canada should be a nineteenth-century nation-state; it was a flaw of history that saddled her with a second culture which prevented the attaining of this ideal. Not surprisingly many French Canadians during their intellectual revolution of the 1950s and 1960s came to apply the same thesis to themselves; they defined Quebec as a patrie (which in many ways it is) and moved toward separatism. Unfortunately, an un­ critical clinging to the postulates of nineteenth-century nationalism has obscured for both English and French the immensely creative possibilities inherent in Canada's situation. Unconsciously we are questing after a 23

2 3

Although Georges Etienne Cartier perceived this a century ago. The parlia­ mentary debates on the subject of Confederation on 7 February 1865 report: "He viewed the diversity of races in British North America in this way: we were of different races, not for the purpose of warring against each other, but in order to compete and emulate for the general welfare. We could not do away with the distinctions of race. We could not legislate for the disappearance of the French Canadians from American soil, but British and French Canadians alike could appreciate and understand their position relative to each other. They were placed like great families beside each other, and their contact produced a healthy spirit of emulation. It was a benefit rather than otherwise that we had a diversity of

13

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Rousseauistic general will, together or in fragments, when history offers us the chance of building a saner political order. Instead, with Lord Acton we should proclaim: The presence of different nations under the same sovereignty is similar in its effect to the independence of the Church in the State. It provides against the servility which flourishes under the shadow of a single authority, by balancing interests, multiplying associations, and giving to the subject the restraint and support of a combined opinion. In the same way it promotes independence by forming definite groups of public opinion, and by affording a great source and centre of political sentiments, and of notions of duty not derived from the sovereign will. Liberty provokes diversity and diversity preserves liberty by supplying the means of organization. ... The co-existence of several nations under the same State is a test, as well as the best security of its freedom; and, as such, it is in the natural and providential order, and indicates a state of greater advancement than the national unity which is the ideal of modern liberalism. The combination of different nations in one State is as necessary a condition of civilized life as the combination of men in society. 24

Secondly, we have been insensitive to the potential of our situation be­ cause we in English-speaking Canada distrust abstract ideas. We are told that already early in our history John A. Macdonald "seldom, if ever, worked from a theoretical basis (he constantly uttered his scorn of abstract ideas), he naturally took the material he found lying about him, the men, the parties, the names, the programmes, the ideas." Whatever the origin of such scorn it has been passed on to generations of politicians and scholars in the field of Canadian politics and institutions. Professor Glazebrook suggests, for example, that "There were no fine phrases in that constitution about the rights of man for the act was strongly in the British tradition and it was not British to generalize." This is hardly accurate for in England there was a rich tradition of political speculation beginning in the middle ages and continuing to our own time. The names of Bracton, Bishop Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, Harrington, Milton, Sidney, Filmer, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart 25

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races." W. P. M. Kennedy, Documents of the Canadian Constitution, 1759-1915 (Toronto, 1918), 626. For an excellent discussion of the problems of nationalism in Canada today see Kenneth McNaught, "The National Outlook of English-speaking Canadians," in Nationalism in Canada, ed. Peter Russell (Toronto, 1966). Lord Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays (New York, 1967), 289. For a stimulating discussion of this Canadian trait see David Corbett, *The Social Sciences in Canada," Queen's Quarterly, 66 ( 1 9 5 9 - 6 0 ) , 56. MacDermott, "The Political Ideas of John A. Macdonald," 257. G. P. de T. Glazebrook, A History of Canadian Political Thought (Toronto, 1966), 140.

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Mill, Walter Bagehot, and Herbert Spencer are written large in every synthetic work on political theory, and the tradition continues. But it is true that political theorizing was an uncommon intellectual exercise among the British commercial middle classes in the 1860s; and this is the parentage of the Canadian constitution. The distrust of theory persists and has had serious consequences. The most important is probably the habit of interpreting Canadian constitu­ tional development in purely legal terms without reference to psychological and sociological questions. Customarily we trace Canada's constitutional development from the British North America Act through the colonial and imperial conferences to the Balfour report and finally to the Statute of Westminster of 1931. This formal approach correctly concludes that Canada is legally as independent as any country can be in this interde­ pendent world, but it fails to touch the question of cultural autonomy. For while "independence" connotes freedom from external control, cultural autonomy suggests something more: interior release as a psychlogical phenomenon. In this sense Canada has not achieved autonomy nor the basis of cultural maturity because too many of her myths and symbols which should bring into creative action the powerful, non-rational impulses of Canadian society belong to a history and a culture not her own. And so in scrutinizing the problems of Canadian culture we must use the in­ sights of scholarly disciplines other than history and constitutional law. Until we begin doing so our discussion of the problems of bicultural society will remain largely fruitless. How do cultural and social phenomena relate? We do not know the precise answer to this question though theories have been advanced to suggest what the relationship might be. Karl Marx regarded cultural de­ velopment as a function of economic factors. Sigmund Freud equated cultural developments with achievement in sublimating instinctual drives. Cultural forms, in this view, permit the expression of man's irrational drives in a socially valuable fashion. Carl Jung was even more positive, indicating that cultural forms express the collective experience of the community; only through the creations of the artist, the poet, and the mythmaker could a community of shared experience develop. 28

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See Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York, 1963). C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, trans. W. S. Dell and Cary F. Baynes (London, 1933) is probably the best introduction to Jung's thought. A more elaborate analysis of myth, symbol, and the collective psyche will be found in his Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series xx (New York, 1966), especially in the first essay, "The Psychology of the Unconscious"; chap. 5, 'The Personal and Collective Un­ conscious"; and chap. 7, 'The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious."

POLITICS, C U L T U R E , A N D CONSTITUTIONS

15

Canadians possess two cultures and should try to retain both. What does this involve? So far Canadians have tended to assume that consti­ tutional or economic arrangements alone would ensure the vitality of French and English culture within our union. Such arrangements are preconditions for the survival of both cultures but, Marx notwithstanding, they are only that. To talk about cultural problems, part of the answer must be found in cultural terms. We need to examine the symbols and myths which help to shape our collective life and ask whether they ade­ quately serve the needs of our bicultural society. This point may be illustrated by an example from the area of political symbolism. Although constitutional monarchy may be the form of govern­ ment best suited to Canada's needs, the present-day concept of the Crown as sovereign in Canada must be judged as dysfunctional both as a political and as a cultural symbol. To be sure, in Quebec the Crown evokes polite dissent or revolutionary anger without dampening creativity in music, art, or literature. But in English Canada the Crown has had a crippling effect, contributing to a state of psychic confusion that is termed an "identity crisis" in an individual. The excitement which the monarch evokes when in Canada is often no more than that of admiring onlookers of a superb pageantry that summons up the British past without establishing a linkage with Canada's history, both French and English. Yet to the extent that such visits engender genuine emotion they diminish rather than enhance our sense of self-identity; they accent the achievements of another society at the expense of our own. In this way heroic episodes in our history, by being absorbed into the British myth, provide no colour or vitalizing function for our own society. What other explanation can there be for Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge - feats of arms that rank with Thermopylae - playing so small a part in shaping our historical consciousness and self-awareness? Beyond being an inadequate political symbol, the Crown in Canada is still less capable of performing its designated political and constitutional role. The function of the monarchy in England is twofold: one, to provide the charismatic figure of the realm in the political, social, and cultural life of the people, which by linking past and present symbolizes all that Eng­ land has gained and suffered; and two, to be a major and indispensable part of the apparatus of government. This latter function - to consult with her ministers, encourage them, and warn them - when exercised by a monarch as conscientious as the present Queen has won for her a position of real influence in the political life of Great Britain; her role contributes to both the well-being of the realm and the effective working of its political and administrative machinery. The situation in Canada is so markedly different that it is erroneous

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even to describe Canada as a constitutional monarchy. The monarch can­ not perform a charismatic role for Canada because she does not embody our history and it would be graceless to expect this of her. She symbolizes not our national unity but that of Britain. We are of the new world, and before we can live fulfilled political lives in North America our theory of sovereignty and its symbols must correspond to that fact and to our one hundred years of experience as a democratic federation. Even less can the British monarch perform the political and constitutional role. She neither reads Canadian state papers nor meets regularly with Canadian ministers or public men. Even in the jet age it would be imposing an intolerable burden on her if the monarchy were "Canadianized" by requiring the Queen to live part of each year in Canada so that she could participate in Canadian life. Nor does the governor general provide a proper substitute because he is not a monarch and hence lacks the charisma attached to monarchy. The failure to be concerned with the symbolic in politics inhibits the evolution of our polity. In cultural matters our refusal to recognize the importance of abstract and symbolic thought is even more serious. Sym­ bols as the tools of culture are profoundly significant. They are the mater­ ials for abstract reasoning and for creative works of the imagination. Even as we have failed to abstract political ideas from the Canadian experience, because we rely on derivative political models, so Canadian thinkers have failed to abstract from our experience a universal view of man. In literature as in politics we rely on borrowed symbols and are hobbled by them. Professor Northrop Frye has written: " ... Canada has produced no author who is a classic in the sense of possessing a vision greater in kind than that of his best readers (Canadians themselves might argue about one or two, but in the perspective of the world at large the statement is true). There is no Canadian writer of whom we can say what we can say of the world's major writers, that their readers can grow up inside the work without ever being aware of a circumference." This is not surprising. Our writers lack a liberating symbolism which can release their genius. It is noteworthy that Canadian painters have achieved international renown only as the forms of painting have grown more abstract. The dic­ tates of modern style have required a degree of abstraction which our artists might not have otherwise achieved. In literature, however, the inhibition remains. No Canadian writer has yet achieved universality with his theme. The theme of Hugh MacLennan's distinguished and intellectual Two Solitudes is worthy of a Proust or a Balzac but no critic has yet 29

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Carl F. Klinck, ed., Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature (Toronto, 1966), 821.

in English

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accorded this novel the status of a classic. Stephen Leacock's comic vision of the Montreal plutocracy and of the small Ontario town of his day moves us to laughter but it does not achieve the universality of Huckleberry Finn. There is a further consequence of our derivative symbolism. For the great majority of English Canadians, unable or unwilling to respond to the symbols of a borrowed British culture, there remains only a view of life refracted through the alien symbols of American culture. This process of refraction has become increasingly negative and distorting as Canadians have grown more critical of American society and its aspirations. Briefly, problems of Canadian culture and Canadian politics are in­ timately related. Confederation came at a time when the provinces assumed that their proper status was as a unit of the British Empire. Their secondary goal, to create an integrated economy, looked to the model of nineteenthcentury nation-states. Little sophistication in politics or culture was needed to establish such a union whose raison d'etre was basically an external one. But now that the British Empire has ended and Canada is left with little more than an economic purpose, a cultural and political impasse has been reached. The Marxist view of culture is unquestionably limited. Yet Cana­ dians by failing to speculate about their past seem, absent-mindedly, to have adopted a public philosophy that can be described not unfairly as Marxism without metaphysics. This economic determinist view of culture relies on a dated nineteenth-century variant of rationalism and is blind to the irrational in man. An updating of Confederation must await Canada's arrival intellectu­ ally in the twentieth century. Proper symbols for such a renewed polity will emerge only when Canadians see their pragmatism as stemming from historical accident; they will have to admit further that pragmatism is viable intellectually for solving problems only after goals are set and values defined. It is suited to derivative polities. This was the Dominion status in the heyday of the British Empire and habits of thought are hard to break. The danger today is that we are tempted to use our legacy of pragmatism simply to assist in achieving goals defined in Washington. This development, difficult to avoid under even favourable circumstances, is likely to provoke only strident and ineffectual criticism unless Canadians come to understand the configurations of unconscious thought which are part of their cultural heritage.

Some Thoughts on Canadian Nationalism G. P. de T. GLAZEBROOK

B E T W E E N T H E M A N Y STUDIES of nationalism in general and those of Canadian nationalism in particular there is in common a recognition of the virtual impossibility of arriving at any simple definition of nationalism, far less any agreed list of the forces affecting it. On the other hand there seems to be a general difference between the Canadian and the non-Canadian cases in that the analysts of the latter are often struck by their strength while those writing on Canada are usually puzzled by the lack of evidence of nationalist force. The students of the Canadian scene are further handi­ capped by the different meanings attributed not only to "nationalism" but also to several other words which constantly arise in connection with it. Appealing to the dictionary does not help and one must turn to what has been the usage. Retroactive education is not practical. The most common use in Canada of nation, national, or nationalism has been in connection with the country as a whole, the nation-state. There are listed in the current Canada Year Book fifteen departments or agencies of government in the title of which the word national appears. In the Toronto telephone directory there are 246 listings in which nation, national, or nationwide is the first word and many others in which one of these words comes later, such as the Canadian National Exhibition. The second use of the related words is important historically but now spent. It was intended to convey a view of the proper position of Canada within the British Empire - that priority should be given to the interests and constitutional powers of Canada rather than to those of the empire. From that position it was an easy jump to a distinction between "nationalist" and "imperialist." In this case both words were given arbitrary meanings. The third meaning was of a different kind and one which came closer to the dictionary, that is French-Canadian nationalism based on "race" in the sense of common origin. This paper will bow to Canadian usage so that "nation" (national, nationalism) will refer to the country as a whole unless otherwise ex­ plained; "imperialist" will stand for one advocating a close integration of the parts of the empire (rather than the correct meaning of a supporter of

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empire); while "race" will be taken to mean French, English, or other origin. In the hope that this note of explanation will at least reduce the degree of confusion one can turn to the substance of the subject. It is obvious that in a short essay no attempt can be made to examine all aspects of Canadian nationalism or to trace its ups and downs chrono­ logically. It is possible only to dwell on a few points in a selection that may appear arbitrary. The union of the provinces a century ago was in the Canadian language nation-building, but it was singularly lacking in the emotional content of nationalism in the traditional sense. Two objectives, however, fitted more into the tradition. One was the common problem of defence against the same potential enemy, and the other was the acquisition of territory. On the first the advocates of union never made a detailed case, contenting themselves with vague formulas on the theme that in union there is strength. Nevertheless, the failure of the American authorities to prevent the Fenian raids, together with some wild talk of annexing British North America to the United States, did create some belief in the military advantages of union. The acquisition of the west was of some interest to central Canada and of marginal interest to the maritime provinces. There had developed one striking community of interest. The Hudson's Bay Company was taken over by the International Financial Society which itself was influenced by the Grand Trunk Railway and was looking to the future of the prairies in terms of settlement and development rather than in continued isolation for the fur trade. Specifically, the society was think­ ing in terms of a (Grand Trunk) railway to the Pacific coast. In Upper Canada good agricultural land for settlers had run short, and George Brown led the cry that it could be found in the northwest. He also thought of the west in terms of the restoration of the fur trade and as holding prospects of mineral wealth. With a company ready to sell this imperial realm and flanked by both a great railway and leading banking houses, given the current belief that parts of it were threatened by American expansionism, and at a time when the old ambition of uniting British North America was at the stage of negotiation, it would have seemed that to secure the whole territory to the Pacific Ocean would be a general national theme in the union move­ ment. It never, however, became such. In the long gap since 1821 the memory of the fur trade had faded in Lower Canada. In Upper Canada there were a limited number of people who shared Brown's enthusiasm, and in the maritime provinces the purchase and development of the west were more often regarded as liabilities than assets. A touch of historical

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imagination could have turned the whole project of the union of the provinces into a restoration of the great New France of the eighteenth century. There were modifications imposed by time: the southwest had fallen into the hands of the United States but, on the other hand, the far west could be added. The appeal of such an idea, however, again could only be in the province of Canada, for the Atlantic colonies of France had had only a nominal connection with the St Lawrence Valley and transfer of sovereignty had done little to alter that. Little was to be drawn from that argument from history - the concept of reuniting peoples who had been forced apart. Nor was there cement to be found in common descent, language, or religion. Thus when the supporters of union talked of building a new nation they spoke of the advantages that would accrue from the creation of a political and economic entity. In themselves the anticipated political gains were somewhat curious. Apart from defence the only tangible argument was the desirability of separating Upper and Lower Canada, a local interest which could make no appeal in the other colonies; indeed, spokesmen in the Atlantic provinces did not hesitate to say that they suspected a device designed to pull Canadian chestnuts out of the fire. There were not entirely lacking orators who painted pictures of a great new nation. G. E. Cartier, J. A. Macdonald, Charles Tupper, and George Brown, for example, tried their hands; while the most effective speaker on that theme was the Irishman, D'Arcy McGee. Perhaps such efforts smoothed the way a little, but the main problem was to prove a negative: that the union movement was not Upper Canadian imperialism, that the smaller units would not be submerged by the greater population and wealth of the Canadas. In the debates in the assemblies of the maritime provinces the question was raised over and over again. The critics - and there were many - examined the means by which it was said that smaller provinces would be protected. They were not impressed. Representation in the House of Commons would be small and would decrease proportionately since it was anticipated that, through immigra­ tion, the population of Upper Canada would grow faster. The powers assigned to the provinces were dismissed as covering only minor matters. "I maintain," said one member of the Nova Scotia House, "if we go into the union with Canada, we will be treated, as all small provinces have ever been treated - which have been annexed to large countries." "By adopting the Scheme," said a New Brunswick member, "we surrender our independence, and become dependent upon Canada." No doubt such objections were inevitable in discussing a union of provinces each of which had its own history and culture; but they are mentioned here because they were far from isolated - were for a time overruling - and because they

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represented continuing opinions which were not easily overcome by nationalism. In Lower Canada an important body of opinion was as critical of the "scheme" as any in the maritime provinces, although it was never over­ whelming as in Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and for a time in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. One reason for this is that the people of Lower Canada - Canada East, to give it its official but little-used name were faced with a different choice. The maritimers could join with each other (a course for which there was little enthusiasm), enter a general union, or stay as they were. Lower Canada had not the first alternative, while the third meant not a separate provincial status but to continue as part of the province of Canada. From this came the paradox that to secure any degree of provincial autonomy Lower Canada would have to give up the greater degree of political authority which it possessed in the combined Canadas, not to move off on its own but into a wider union in which it would be in a distinct minority. Furthermore, a minority existed within that minority, for at that time there were substantial numbers of people of British origin in the cities of Montreal and Quebec and in the Eastern Townships. They faced a dilemma too. Some of them favoured union for commercial reasons, while others were concerned about their positions as a minority within a largely French province. The decision, however, as far as Lower Canada was concerned, was one that had to be made by French Canadians. In any study of Canadian nationalism careful attention has to be paid to the problem of race (using the word in the sense already accepted). It did not begin - and certainly did not end - with the discussions of union in the 1860s, but it did have an important bearing on them. When the vote was taken in the Assembly of the province of Canada the majority of Lower Canadian members in favour of union was narrow, indicative on the one hand of serious doubts of the desirability of the plan and on the other of the influence of Cartier, without whom Confederation could probably never have been achieved. Several French-Canadian speakers expressed fear that union would destroy the culture of Quebec (what Laurier later called "our peculiar institutions"), and that the century-long struggle for la survivance would end in defeat. To this Cartier replied that he "viewed the diversity of races in British North America in this way: we were of different races, not for the purpose of warring against each other, but in order to compete and emulate for the general welfare. We could not do away with the distinctions of race. We would not legislate for the disappear­ ance of the French Canadians from American soil, but British and French Canadians alike could appreciate and understand their position relative to

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each other.... It was a benefit rather than otherwise that we had a diversity of races." The success of what at that time was called a "new nationality" de­ pended in large part on who was right in this argument. Sometimes one wonders if Canadians are unduly self-conscious of not being of one race, as if that situation were peculiar. Moreover - except in Canadian usage - the people of French and British descent were not of two races, but from two European countries equally advanced and with much in common. Or is it the case that similarity breeds dissent? The racial pattern was to change greatly in later years but at the time of the union of the provinces most of the population was of French or English origin. Such a statement, however, calls for a good deal of explanation. It has become fashionable to speak of the "founding races," and it is true that people of French or British background predominated. It is, however, not true if used in the sense that there were two blocs setting out as such to design a new structure on terms agreed between them. The French of Lower Canada did not join hands with the French of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; and certainly the British of the maritime provinces had no thought of combining forces with the British of Upper Canada whose plans so many of them regarded with the utmost suspicion. To speak of the "French" or "English" peoples of Canada can be misleading. At no point in history, before or after 1763, were the French of the new world to be equated to those of the old. In the old regime feudal­ ism never crossed the Atlantic, although a method of land tenure to which were attached similar words and forms did. Protestants were excluded so effectively that French Canadian became synonymous with Roman Catho­ lic. Nor, indeed, has there ever been a continuous flow of immigrants to keep fresh and up to date the influence of mother country on colony. The intellectual ferment of the eighteenth century had little reflection in Canada because it was directed at political and social conditions for which there was no parallel there. The revolution of 1789, transforming France and leaving major differences to disturb the nineteenth century, was again primarily concerned with issues that were remote from Quebec. Rational­ ism, gallicanism, anti-clericalism, socialism, the struggle to maintain the character of the Third Republic - these and other pressing issues of nineteenth-century France did not mould the character of French Canada. In some respects the French tradition has been strong, but the differences are as striking. The French people of Quebec were distinctly French Canadian, with their social characteristics enhanced by the absence of any political connection with the land of origin. Neither is it meaningful to speak of the "English" of Canada without

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some explanation. The early immigrants to Nova Scotia and Upper Canada came not directly from the British Isles but from the thirteen colonies. Some of them were United Empire Loyalists, and among the others were a number who were passively or actively disloyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Even the Loyalists were far from being politically or socially uniform as later tradition would suggest. They were followed by immigrants from overseas, principally from the British Isles, and many of these were southern Irish who were certainly not English and had little reason to love England. By the later nineteenth and particularly the twentieth century the sources of immigrants became increasingly diversified. People continued to come from all parts of the British Isles, but also from the United States, almost every country of Europe, and in small numbers from the East. "English Canadian" came to mean anyone who was not of Frenoh origin. "English-speaking" was nearer to reality, but numerous newspapers in various other languages showed how other languages were used to some extent. There was no uniformity in religion among "English" Canadians in spite of some noisy Protestant elements. Two characteristics apply to English- as contrasted with French-speaking Canada. One was continued migration from Britain, whereas the people of France showed no disposition to move to Canada. The other was the attitude towards continued political connection. At the time of Confederation some individuals looked forward to Canadian independence in the future, but it was not an issue. The general assumption was that Canada would be within the British Empire, although having, in no specified way, a greater degree of autonomy than had been held by the old provinces. No objection was raised to the imperial connec­ tion as an obstacle to Canadian nationalism. Another assumption was that the form of government would be British. This was familiar and acceptable; and whatever veneration French Canadians might have for other French institutions it did not extend to the type of government, whether under the Bourbons or after them. There was, however, one important exception to the general rule that the British parliamentary system should be continued in the new nation: that the union should be federal rather than legislative. Although some politicians professed a preference for the latter they were all perfectly aware that there was no choice. British North America was too large and spread out to allow for unitary government, but the governing factor was the attitude of Lower Canada. It is improbable, in spite of statements to the contrary, that the maritime provinces would have agreed to a legis­ lative union. Upper Canada could have done so because its large and growing population would always weight its representation in a legislature,

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and its objection to the union with Lower Canada was that this advantage was ruled out. Lower Canada was unalterably opposed to representation by population in the old province and in a single legislature of a larger union would have been in even more of a minority. The scheme, then, had to be federal, but it by no means followed that that endangered nationalism or that legislative union would have more readily promoted nationalism and national unity. The experience of the province of Canada, which had in practice the defects of both systems, was sufficient warning that constitutional forms were no guarantee against the play of regionalism and particularism. Federalism was adopted because there were racial and other divergences: they were not created by it. On the other hand, once a division of powers is attempted it is notorious that there can be endless dispute over the proper interpretation of the constitu­ tion; and at no time was this more conspicuous than in the days of the American Civil War. The spokesmen for the Quebec resolutions in the various provincial parliaments were almost apologetic for their choice of federalism, laboriously explaining that the plan they had drafted was not only free from the defects of the American constitution but had all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of both legislative and federal constitutions. All "local" questions were to be assigned to the provinces and other subjects to the dominion. If only it had been as simple as that! For those who favoured the Quebec scheme (and there were many critics of it) the existence of local affairs had to be recognized, but their main interest was in the national objectives that were laid out as the advan­ tages that would accrue from union. They seem to have been satisfied that they had avoided the traps into which the Americans had fallen (certainly they kept on saying so) and that the strongly centralized system they had designed would give ample scope for facing the problems of nationbuilding without harassment from the provinces. Indeed, no one seems to have given a great deal of thought to the future character of the provinces. They were often compared with municipalities with minor responsibilities and thus small financial requirements. The main revenue and the main tasks would go to the central government. A few people - Joseph Howe was one of them - forecast jurisdictional disputes. If one turns from the supporters of the Quebec resolutions to the critics and opponents the pic­ ture looks different, but, unfortunately, as it proved, their comments were submerged in the heady atmosphere of success in the achievement of Con­ federation. There were many complaints that the provinces were being unnecessarily scaled down, that they would have neither necessary powers nor adequate income. If, as has been suggested, it is true that a federal system is not necessarily a cause of centrifugal tendencies it may still be the vehicle for them.

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This, in fact, was what happened. The division of powers between the central and provincial authorities was heavily in favour of the former, not only by the allocation of subjects but because the Dominion government was given a veto over provincial legislation. The provinces had no final authority, no sovereignty. In the first two decades or so of the history of the Dominion, resistance to centralized power developed, and it is interesting that it should have been Ontario - the only province that had been general­ ly in favour of union and the one that had the largest representation in the federal Parliament - that took the lead. In 1887 five of the premiers met at Quebec in the first interprovincial conference to express their various discontents. In a long list of resolutions were two principal ones. They objected to federal disallowance of provincial bills (and it had been freely exercised), demanding "free exercise of their exclusive right of legislation on the subjects assigned to them subject only to disallowance by Her Majesty in Council as before Confederation." The other demand was for larger subsidies, that is, a larger share of the public income. These were the two themes that were to be repeated over and over in succeeding decades: greater authority in what were (or were claimed to be) provincial affairs, and income corresponding to necessary expenditure. Particular aspects of provincial pressures lay behind the views expressed in 1887. Ontario and Manitoba, for example, had battled with Ottawa over disallowance; Mercier was the voice of Quebec nationalisme; Nova Scotia had just voted to leave the federation on the ground that she gained nothing from it. In these and in later manifestations of so-called provincial rights it can readily be shown that some of the provinces were pushing their cases too far, and in doing so threatened to weaken the ability of the central government to carry out the tasks for which it had been established. The answer, however, did not he solely in attempts to defend the status quo of 1867. It soon became obvious that the responsibilities of the provinces were becoming far greater than the draftsmen of the Quebec resolutions had anticipated; that there had, in fact, been a serious mis­ calculation. It was one which the early Conservative governments were reluctant to recognize, and they attempted to deal with the situation by a mixture of general resistance and individual concessions. Sir John Macdonald was understandably anxious to retain sufficient powers for national purposes, but his determination to cling to all aspects of the framework he had helped to design was unrealistic. In writing to the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia in 1886 he made two points. One was that a lieutenant governor was a "dominion officer": in other words, that responsible government, supposedly a cherished Canadian doctrine, did not apply to provinces. This was a type of control by the federal gov­ ernment that could never be accepted and should never have been

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attempted. A decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1892 laid it down that a lieutenant governor, once appointed, represented the Crown in a province as did the governor general in the Dominion. The other point in Macdonald's letter was this: "The representative of Nova Scotia as to all questions respecting the relations between the Dominion and the Province sit in the Dominion Parlt. and are the constitutional exponents of the wishes of the people with regard to such relations." This extraordinary doctrine he explained on the principle of residual powers a considerable stretch of the imagination - and it was one, at least in the way in which it was phrased, which meant either that there could be no relations between a province and the Dominion or else, if there were, the provincial ministers would have to keep their own legislatures in the dark. It was a further limitation of responsible government. It can be argued that there were great advantages in the original con­ ception of Canadian federalism for, if it could have been carried into full effect, most of the stress and strains that so often intrude on federal systems would have been avoided. It soon became evident, however, that the provinces would not accept the role for which they had been cast; which meant in some cases that the same men who had been parties to the Quebec resolutions criticized them from the provincial arena. Whether they were right or wrong is irrelevant: the only thing that mattered was whether or not they had the support of their own electors. Given the swing away from central authority it became urgently necessary to find some modus vivendi if the energies of the people of Canada were not to be wasted in endless disputes, if nationalism was not to be enfeebled by regionalism. From even a cursory reading of the debates on the proposed union of the provinces it becomes evident that the supporters of that step felt much more confident, much more at home, in discussing economic rather than political objectives. It is in the projects described in the debates and pro­ vided for in the Quebec resolutions that one finds the origins of the "national policy," the only context in which the phrase makes sense, for one would assume that any major policies of an established government were national, that is, for the benefit of the country as a whole. By the time that Macdonald used the phrase as an election slogan in 1878 all the lines of economic policy had been set. In connection with the union of the provinces three courses of action had been determined as means of creating a viable national entity: to connect the provinces by railways, to encourage internal and external trade, and to maintain a tariff for both revenue and protection. By these related means, it was argued, a small population spotted at intervals across the map could have economic as well as political

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integration, with a level of prosperity higher than in the pre-Confederation provinces. The rail link between the maritime provinces and central Canada, the Intercolonial Railway, was (apart from small existing mileage) built by the federal government, under both Conservative and Liberal administra­ tions, and completed in 1876. Across central Canada the Grand Trunk was already in operation. It was always intended that the western link to the Pacific coast should be built and operated by a private company, though one heavily subsidized. The first attempt by the Conservative gov­ ernment to achieve the goal broke down in the Pacific scandal; and however else that episode may be judged there is no doubt that it badly muddied the financial waters and delayed the operation. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company of 1873 found the English money market closed and the Liberal administration which came into office later in the same year inherited the same situation. It then, in a period of depression, turned to the less ambitious policy of beginning by the portage system, that is, filling in the links which could not be covered by water transport. Surveys were continued and construction under government auspices began, a plan followed for two years by the Conservatives when they came back into office. By 1880 some hundreds of miles of rail had been laid, trains were running, and other sections were under contract. It was at this point that the government was able to revert to the original plan of a private company by coming to terms with a new syndicate, also named the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The conditions were in all respects more favourable to the company than those which the Liberal government had in vain dangled in 1873 and included the 722 miles completed or being completed by the government. For its part the company showed both skill and energy and the whole line was in operation by the end of 1885. The policy of railway transportation across the continent was an important aspect of the nationalism inherent in Confederation. It involved heavy drains on the public purse which could not be replaced directly but which were considered to be justified by the anticipated social and economic advantages. The Canadian Pacific and the later transcontinental railways, Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific, were the visible foundations of an east-west economy. The government had refused the Grand Trunk's proposal that access to the west should first be through Chicago and the Red River Valley, and indeed inserted in the CPR contract a "monopoly clause" in effect preventing any inroads by American lines on that company's traffic. External and internal trade, second in the tripartite economic policy, were considered to be in part dependent on railways that would carry goods

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to ocean ports and between provinces. All the original provinces were accustomed to external trade as a necessary part of their well-being but were not all convinced that it would be helped by union. In Newfoundland the merchants were bluntly "aware of no advantage likely to result from the proposed Confederation that will at all compensate" for the disadvantages. In particular they anticipated "the imposition of a very high tariff of Import duties which would press with peculiar and unequal severity on this Colony which possesses but few manufactures or products of its own beyond those of its fisheries." They apprehended that they would be forced to buy within the Confederation rather than in the cheapest market. Prince Edward Island could see no good in Confederation until it ran into hopeless debt. In New Brunswick and Nova Scotia an expectation that a railway would bring business to their ports was in part offset by a conviction that, because of higher costs of manufacturing, they would not be able to sell their products in central Canada. To evaluate the arguments pro and con by examining the results would be to write a large part of the history of Canada since that time. A few main points, however, are evident. Until recent years the maritime prov­ inces did not develop industrially nor did they derive much benefit from the coal mines, while the obsolescence of wooden ships hit them hard. They seemed, therefore, to have lost by Confederation and continued to say so for many years. As the prairie provinces developed at the end of the century into a major wheat-growing area, and as mining and pulp assumed large volume in Quebec and Ontario, exports increased. Looking at the whole field it seemed to the people of the east and west that economic growth was grossly uneven, that the advantages of Confederation were accruing in the main to the centre. Tariff policy had an important place in economic nationalism. Alexan­ der Gait described his tariff of 1859 as primarily for revenue, and certainly the province was desperately in need of money. The tariff, however, also was in conformity with the views of manufacturers who were seeking protection for what in such circumstances are always known as "infant industries." At the time of Confederation the tariff was lowered on the insistence of the maritime provinces, raised somewhat by Mackenzie's government in 1874, and higher by the succeeding Macdonald government, which, as has been mentioned, gave it colour by calling it the national policy. Now it was frankly protectionist, and was a part of a national policy in so far as it was designed to encourage a mixed economy, to make Canada something more than an exporter of raw staple products and an importer of processed goods. It still, however, was criticized as more advantageous to central Canada than other portions; and by the early

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twentieth century when the west was at last growing fast vigorous objec­ tions were raised to what was claimed to be a discriminatory policy. Western farmers, it was said, were forced to pay high prices for imported goods and machinery, all for the benefit of the manufacturers of Quebec and Ontario. Protests of this kind continued into the 1920s and 1930s and raised the question as to whether such a policy could properly be con­ sidered national. One of the most persistent antitheses relating to nationalism has been between the kind of economic nationalism just described and "continentalism," otherwise described as the east-west versus the north-south econo­ mies. Before the war of 1914 this difference of opinion was focused on proposals for reciprocity in tariffs with the United States. Behind the dispute was the curiosity that both the political parties continued to express confidence in reciprocity - one even succeeded in doing so while it was opposing a plan to carry it out. The elections of 1891 and 1911 were both fought on this issue and in each case the party supporting reciprocity (the Liberal party) was defeated. The plans of the two years differed greatly but the arguments for and against reciprocity were similar. The supporters claimed that it would increase trade and improve the standard of living, while the opponents protested that it would upset the whole national economy so laboriously established and lead to economic and eventually to political domination by the United States. This contest with a nationalist flavour was succeeded by one over American investment in Canada, be­ coming more active in recent years. There was alarm over the extent to which Canadian companies and resources fell under American ownership, and all the stops of nationalism were pulled out. The difficulty, however, in making a substantial nationalist cause out of this was that no one was prepared to argue that imported capital was undesirable or that the eastwest economy would flourish without it. It is in this field of external relations that the negativity which has some­ times seemed more obvious than positive nationalism has been particularly conspicuous; although in other contexts too a good deal of energy has been devoted to what Canada should not be rather than to what it should be. Confederation left Canada as a part of the British Empire - one colony instead of several as some critics remarked - and there seems to have been no desire that it should be otherwise. No advantages that could come from independence were adduced and there were obvious assets in remaining within the empire: defence, trade, loans, and imported capital. There was, however, one anomaly which grew more serious with time - the absence of any established method by which Canada could influence the policy of

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an empire in which she was included. This too tended to be seen in the negative: that the British government might take action in imperial or foreign affairs which would involve or affect Canada - not that Canada should have opportunities for proposing what seemed to her wise policies. Hidden in the distance was the decision that the empire had become an anachronism and that it should be replaced by a kind of entente known as a commonwealth, with each member state conducting its own foreign policy. There were a few thinkers like J. W. Dafoe and perhaps J. S. Ewart who were looking forward to something of this kind, but for many decades there was more evidence of the negative than the positive side, to avoid entanglement in imperial policy rather than to create and implement a Canadian one. Meanwhile those who grasped the nettle boldly were seeking by quite other means to assert the Canadian nationalism that they felt, convinced that Canada should have a voice in imperial affairs. Both the Imperial Federationists and the Round Table group were satisfied that this end must be secured and that it could be by some form of imperial integra­ tion. Neither had a cut-and-dried programme but both were thinking in terms of federalism of some kind. Sir Robert Borden, who was not associated with either of these groups but not hostile to them, was in­ creasingly impressed by the irrationality of dissociating imperial defence from foreign policy. His general concern found particular application in the First World War, in the latter part of which the Imperial War Cabinet, which brought together the representatives of the United Kingdom and the Dominions, was pragmatically converted into an organ for the direction of imperial foreign policy. For a time, and under particular circumstances, this worked well; but was not, and was not intended to be, a permanent solution. Those who were seeking to end Canada's colonial status through in­ tegrating in some way the governments of the empire became known as "imperialists," which did not mean, as might be expected, that they were believers in empire - almost all Canadians were - but that they had par­ ticular views on its reorganization. They met little popular response. A valid argument against imperial federation could have been that the parties to it would have been too unevenly matched in population and wealth to produce co-ordination rather than domination: the kind of objection that many maritimers had had to union with the much larger province of Canada. Objections, however, were seldom put on that ground. The most conspicuous lack of support was in Quebec, and the reasons for that are basic and readily understandable. Canadians of French origin were in general ready to accept the authority of the British Crown but it could hardly have been expected that they would have toward the empire an

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31

attitude similar to that of those who were derived from it. One opinion widely held in the province of Quebec was that Canada should not be involved in British political or military commitments, thus denying one assumption on which imperial integration was based. Nor was another assumption acceptable, one held in some degree by all "imperialists," that Canada was British in character as well as in political attachment. This was the very opposite of the principle of survivance to which French Canadians had clung since the morrow of the conquest. Outside Quebec both the Imperial Federationists and the Round Table group attracted the interest of able men, and the latter organization par­ ticularly encouraged serious study of Canada's place in the world scene; but both movements had their main effect in Ontario and even there had no wide or representative following. Like Macdonald before him, Laurier had nothing to contribute to the solution of Canada's international status. In his long years of office he took part in colonial conferences at which he variously hinted that things were changing and that they should be left as they were, probably not an unfair reflection of majority Canadian opinion. One unfortunate twist in Canadian thinking was that somehow it was wrong for Joseph Chamberlain, or any other Englishman, to have ideas; that ideas were plots designed to entangle the innocent Canadian. The self-portrait of a Canadian as a simple frontier type whose bovine milieu rendered him an easy target if he ill-advisedly visited London is neither flattering nor accurate, but it was cherished by those who ought to have known better. A kind of morbid contemplation of the artful dodger of Downing Street took the place of a study of specific Canadian interests and the means by which they could be pursued in the world, either through the imperial structure or in some other way. By the twentieth century, and particularly after the important part played by the country in the First World War, it might have been that nationalism had reached a point at which it could be expressed in international terms; but the miasma of status hung, like some primitive religion, over the scene - even after the Statute of Westminster - until it was blown away by the realities of the Second World War. This complex concerning relations with Britain would have been in the tradition of nationalism if the new political entity of Canada was escaping from oppressive rule of the past or threatened by control in the future. Since neither was the case (for the British had no means of im­ posing their will even if they had wished) there was a certain unreality about the whole state of mind. Hardly had Canadians - those who thought that way - escaped from the clutches of London before they wrote a similar scenario, with Washington and New York playing the part of the wicked

32

G. P. DE T . GLAZEBROOK

uncle. It was too late now to set one against the other for imperialism was dead and buried. Undoubtedly problems, real or imagined, can arise when a great power and a lesser one share most of a continent. Some of these have been tangible and have had to be dealt with while others seem to have been in the realm of suspicion, of undue sensitivity. At one time some Canadians had waved the Union Jack while others pulled the lion's tail. In the case of the United States the former was not applicable but antiAmericanism - that is, criticism for its own sake - was a phenomenon which used up energies that would have been better enmployed in solving problems of Canadian nationalism at home. Such reaction to outside forces is not the stuff of which nationalism is made but is something that, however unattractive, cannot be ignored, for it twisted and distorted thinking. It has to be taken into account as a factor but one can turn from it with relief to examine others. Not long after the formation of the Dominion, in the early 1870s, a small group of enthusiasts started what they called the Canada First movement, a protest against what they believed to be a lack of national unity and spirit. Their ideas on how to remedy this situation had as many defects as merits. They did see the importance of tradition and past achievements, and if their history was somewhat lacking in accuracy it helped to supply a theme in nationalism. They stressed the need for immigration and themselves helped to advance it. They called for a tariff which would afford both revenue and protection - one of the many predecessors of Macdonald's national policy - and for an improved militia under Canadian officers. Their list of reforms had nothing novel in it, and they resurrected the standard objection to existing political parties as pursuing narrow interests. Their primary weakness, however, was similar to that of the Imperial Federationists with whom they had something in common. Like them they were intelligent men, devoted to their country and to a cause which they sincerely thought would help it; but - and this was fatal to the advancement of nationalism - they did not see the country as a whole with its variety and its contradictions. In some senses it was indeed British, but it could not be made British in the style that they intended; for a third of the population was of French origin and was determined to retain certain cherished ways of life. The Canada First movement was short-lived, left no heritage, and had no successors; but it did not follow that there were not many Cana­ dians, in public life or not, who devoted major attention to the problems of unity and nationalism. Some of the most famous prime ministers - men like Macdonald, Laurier, and Mackenzie King - were fully aware of the centrifugal forces that existed and were anxious to combat them. To say

SOME THOUGHTS ON CANADIAN N A T I O N A L I S M

33

that they were forced to does not imply any reproach: but the fact was that to secure and retain office they were obliged to find means of reconciling divergent interests. So, correspondingly, were the political parties of which they were the heads. It was an undramatic, utilitarian approach, perhaps, but as likely to produce results as one whioh could claim to be less self-regarding. However you looked at the Canadian scene it was evident that there were pulls in different directions by races, regions, and minorities. Into the middle of the twentieth century maritime premiers continued to say that their provinces had gained nothing by Confederation. In the west farmers' parties were denouncing the "big interests" of the east (by which they meant the centre: maritimers would have been fasci­ nated to learn that they harboured the big interests). Farmers' movements turned into political parties designed to protect their affairs, which, it was charged, were not adequately recognized by the old political parties. In the interwar period the unevenness first of prosperity and then of the effects of the depression were conspicuous. The central provinces had continued to possess a large share of population and income. In 1937, for example, Ontario had a third of the population of Canada with more than 40 per cent of the national income. In the maritime provinces the average income was considerably below that in the others. The prairies were still chiefly wheat-growing areas and suffered in consequence when the inter­ national market collapsed in the depression years. None of the provinces, least of all the poorer ones, were able to meet the overwhelming problem of unemployment when it was suddenly thrust upon them from 1929 on. In the mid-nineteenth century social welfare had not been regarded as one of the major responsibilities of government. By 1937 the total expenditure of all governments on welfare was approximately thirty-five times that of the original three provinces on the eve of Confederation. It was a larger area, of course, but the main change was the approach of the welfare state. That was only one of the ways in which the responsibilities, and therefore the budgets, of the provinces had increased in a way that could not have been foreseen. The largest items were education, which sky-rocketed in the 1950s and 1960s, and roads adequate to carry the tremendous volume of motor traffic. Seen regionally the pattern in Canada has changed in such a way as to modify the economic disparities between areas. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick undertook programmes of industrialization. Manitoba and British Columbia have more mixed economies. Alberta has flourished on a greatly expanded oil industry. Newfoundland, a late entry into Con­ federation, ceased to be wholly dependent on the sale of fish. How far developments of this kind will continue cannot be estimated, but at least

34

G. P. DE T . GLAZEBROOK

they reduce in degree the distinction between "rich" and "poor" provinces. That should help, but it will not cancel out the need for the policy of "equalization" which has for some years been accepted in principle though not always readily put into practice. The idea that people of all areas should benefit from the general wealth of the country, can, perhaps, never be worked out in terms of a single standard of living; but to move toward it - to accept it as an ideal - is to take a long stride toward the goal of nationalism. Physical well-being is not to be scorned. It had been the chief prize offered by the Fathers of Confederation, and when it came unevenly those who did less well looked coldly on a union which did not produce the promised results. But there are other issues in the life of a nation, and not the least are endeavours in a common cause. To make a new nation at all, and that in the face of conflicting opinions and deep doubt, was no mean accomplishment. To extend its boundaries to cover the whole of British North America, to link one end with another, to people the un­ touched prairies, to broaden the original thin line of settlement, and to master the problems of life in the far north - all this is nation-building, and if it is not at once thought of as nationalism perhaps there is room for another look at the word. The great national efforts in the wars of 1914 and 1939, at home and in the theatres of war, leave no doubt that there existed a country which could make a united effort, and the perfor­ mance of the armed forces created a proud tradition that was of the very essence of nationalism. As in some other things Canadian, however, there were cross-currents. When in both wars conscription was considered to be necessary a powerful opinion in the province of Quebec was opposed, while in the other provinces the majorities were prepared to accept it as a necessity. In poli­ tical terms the result in the first war was a House of Commons in which only two members from Quebec were on the government side, the coali­ tion. The moral seemed obvious: that a province, and in this case a race, could be helpless in the face of a majority. It was not a new thought but it was given added conviction, and was one of the factors that led to the emphasis on the province of Quebec as the stronghold of French-Canadian culture and entity. Professor Michel Brunet has put the point concisely: "La majorite des citoyens de Quebec se considerent comme une collectivity distincte et le Quebec est la seule entite politique dans laquelle ce sens d'identite peut-etre exprime. Par consequent, la realisation de leurs ambi­ tions collectives repose, dans une grande mesure, sur la puissance et la competence de la gouvernement de Quebec." An outstanding contemporary problem is how to reconcile nationalism in the French-Canadian sense with nationalism in the Canadian sense.

SOME THOUGHTS O N CANADIAN N A T I O N A L I S M

35

There are those in Quebec who believe that it cannot be done, that the only solution is for the province to become independent. Others discard this extreme but argue in favour of greater governmental authority for the province. Still others put forward an ill-defined project for "associated" or "allied" states, the parties to which would be Quebec on the one hand and the remaining nine provinces on the other. There are several difficulties about this last proposal. One is that it would apparently leave to whatever central government remained powers so narrow as to destroy the Canadian state. Another is that the nine provinces might be reluctant to be forced into artificial equality with the tenth, just as first Lower and then Upper Canada objected to equal representation in the old province of Canada. Furthermore, such plans appear to be based on the theory that there are French and English Canadas. About one-quarter of Canadians of French origin live outside Quebec, though that province itself is now predomi­ nantly French. The rest of Canada, however, is neither "English" nor has it ever had any consciousness of being a unit. Indeed one of the most inter­ esting developments has been the ethnic variety that has developed as a result of immigration. At the time of the census of 1961, 43.8 per cent of the population of all Canada had a British background, 30.4 per cent French, 22.6 per cent other European. Three footnotes should be added. One is that persons of American background are not shown separately. The second is that the "English" provinces have received large numbers of European (non-French) immigrants, some of whom have settled in groups. The third point is that there has been very little immigration from France to any province. If Canada was ever bicultural (and to call it such is to ignore the original inhabitants, the Indians) it has long since ceased to be so. There is on the one hand a compact group with a strong sense of cultural entity and on the other a mosaic which seems likely to become more diversified. Furthermore, the variety in the latter is not just in culture or ethnic origin but also in economic interests and in views on what the character of the federation should be. Perhaps the task of making adjustments acceptable to Quebec would be less formidable if there existed a consensus amongst the remaining provinces on the proper division of powers between central and provincial authorities. As it is there is a series of interlaced points of view which are only less hard to disentangle than those arising out of Quebec discontents. The nationalism that one hopes most Canadians seek to save and refresh need not be based on any exact formula of the past; but just as the Canadian federation was born a century ago to meet the needs and to reconcile the views of that day, so the task of present statesmanship is to find again a formula broadly agreeable to the diversity of peoples in this country.

Sir John A. Macdonald: The Man* p . B. WAITE

TUESDAY, 13 J U L Y 1886. The scene, the CPR station at Winnipeg with a lusty crowd: many Tories, some Liberals, and not a few curious by­ standers. Tumults of cheering as a man of seventy, still tall, began to address them. During the lull in the enthusiasm a young man near the front audibly observed to a friend beside him, "Seedy-looking old beggar, isn't he?" The seedy-looking old beggar was Sir John A. Macdonald. He was Premier of the province of Canada only from 1857 to 1858 - despite what might appear to the contrary - but he played a considerable role in Cana­ dian politics before Confederation, and afterwards he was Prime Minister from 1867 until 1891 except for the five years between 1873 and 1878. John A. Macdonald was born in 1815 - the year of Waterloo - and was brought up in and around Kingston from about 1820 on. He had his share of hard knocks, and this was no bad introduction to the world of politics then as now. A lawyer by the time he was twenty-one, he was elected to the Assembly of the province of Canada at twenty-nine, was a minister of the Crown at thirty-two. He had talent, persuasiveness, and what, for want of a better term, one might call address. He was tall - rangy one could call him - with an easy, negligent air, and no particular penchant for beard or whiskers. One suspects either that he might not have looked so well - he was certainly no beauty anyway - or that he could not grow them satisfactorily. In any case he always eschewed them. He had a prominent nose, which seemed to become more so as he got older and as it acquired ripeness from years of whisky. Charles Langelier, who sat across the House from him, 1886-90, described him: " . . . une voix qui plaisait, l'oeil vif et le regard agreable, un sourire charmante, une enorme masse de cheveux boucles, une taille elancee, la de­ marche d'une elegante nonchalance et un nez qui faisait toute sa gloire. Le nez de Sir John donnait a ses traits un air moqueur et naYf. ... " In 1

2

* An earlier version of this essay was read at the National Museum, 1967. Public Archives of Canada (PAC) , Pope Papers, Diary, 18. Charles Langelier, Souvenirs politiques (Quebec, 1909), I , 111. 1

2

37

SIR J O H N A. M A C D O N A L D : T H E M A N

short he was an unusual, droll, agreeable man, who seemed to have a certain innate sure-footedness amid the vicissitudes of the world around him, and who seemed to possess a strong unwillingness to be more, or other, than he appeared to be. He had one trait familiar enough to those with experience of Celts - a temper, which when loosed could be damaging to all concerned, including himself. But as the years went on he became better and better at keeping it in hand, or perhaps at disciplining it to be used in short flashes as needed. Basically he was a patient man; only when the nerve of his Celtic pride was touched did he flare up, and time sometimes desensitizes that nerve. In 1881, Alexander Campbell, who had by then known him for forty years, told him, "You have a patience which I never saw equalled." This was not new: on the contrary, it was old and familiar. Patience. The world was not made in a day, or in two days. And the world is not changed overnight. Macdonald could never have been a true Reformer: he felt that changes do not really change things as they really are. One may reform this, or reform that, but human nature will always find holes in a system: work around it, through it, under it, somehow. No human device could block the basic iniquities of human nature. Not that human nature was good or bad. You had to take men as they were. Don't expect anything from them; don't count on love, or loyalty, or honesty. Be grateful when you encounter love, loyalty, or honesty, but don't be surprised or mortified if you don't find them. This was no cynicism, although some alleged it to be; it was a strong-grained realism. "There is no gratitude to be expected from the public," Macdonald wrote Stephen in 1888, "I have found that out years ago." And there was no reason to be bitter about it. It was the way the world was. "A good carpenter," he told T. C. Patteson in 1874, "can work with indifferent tools." So, he went on, stop attacking Cumberland (the managing director of the Northern Railway); at least don't attack him more than you can help. "We may want to use him hereafter." That sounds unscrupulous. Perhaps it was. But it is part of something else about Macdonald: he was always willing to forgive and forget. Unlike some of his celebrated Highland forebears, he did not nurse grudges. Life was too short. No doubt it was hard to work with Brown in June 1864 in the Great Coalition after all the bitternesses that had passed between them in the 1850s: but work Macdonald did. "A public man," he told Chapleau 3

4

5

3 4 5

PAC, Macdonald Papers, vol. 195, Campbell to Macdonald, 19 October 1881. Ibid., vol. 528, Macdonald to Stephen, 7 August 1888 (private and confidential). Public Archives of Ontario (PAO), Patteson Papers, Macdonald to Patteson, 25 February 1874.

P. B . W A I T E

38

in 1885, "can have no resentments." Chapleau would have been a better man if he had listened; but then, no doubt, he would not have been Chapleau. One of Macdonald's favourite sayings, when something unfor­ tunate but irreparable had happened, was: "It's done. There's no use crying over spilt milk." Forget, and go on. So he had little stomach for recriminations. The Conservatives who left the fold on the Equal Rights issue after the Jesuits' Estates crisis of 1888 were to be cheerfully accepted back if they would come back or if he could get them back. "Leave the whole question of Equal Rights alone," he wrote W. B. Scarth in 1890. "There were a great many good Con­ servatives entrapped by that cry who will be all right at election time. There is no use reminding them of their mistake. It might, such is the perversity of human nature, have the effect of making them stick to their cry." Don't be hard on people. Macdonald would have agreed with Lincoln's advice to his generals on the treatment of the local population upon the surrender of Richmond in 1865: "I'd let 'em down easy. Let 'em down easy." John Thompson sailed into McCarthy in a speech in the Commons in 1889 over the Equal Rights agitation that McCarthy was spreading, and attacked him all the more bitterly since McCarthy had been a favourite political son of the old man's, and had turned renegade. Thompson made a brilliant, savage speech. Macdonald wrote to a friend, Thompson was too good, and walked into McCarthy too hard. 'Ginger', as Queen Elizabeth said to Raleigh, 'makes men witty but it keeps them poor.' " Macdonald had an increasing dislike of bad tempers and petu­ lance. About Van Home, who was full of snap and ginger, Macdonald said, "The world will continue to go round notwithstanding these little tempers." The world went on. And it would continue to do so after the Van Homes, the George Browns, and the John A. Macdonalds, and all the rest, had gone from the stage. And doubtless the world would be none the worse for it. Macdonald's own feelings on the death of a colleague were not the loss to the country, or the things that might have been done had the colleague lived. It was all less public and more personal than that. He liked Norquay of Manitoba despite the trouble Norquay had got him into, and despite his frank recognition that any Norquay government was a bad government; he loved J. H. Pope, whose rough exterior concealed so warm and vital a human being; he would miss Thomas White, whom 6

7

8

9

6 7 8 9

Macdonald Papers, 526, Macdonald to Chapleau, 3 April 1885. PAO, Scarth Papers, Macdonald to Scarth, 8 September 1890 (private). Macdonald Papers, 529, Macdonald to McLelan, 4 July 1889. Ibid., 529, Macdonald to Hickson, 7 December 1889.

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SIR J O H N A. M A C D O N A L D : T H E M A N

he loved like a son: death was sad not only because it changed one's world and the world of one's friends, but because it took away something glowing from one's own life. Friends were cultivated by Macdonald because he liked them, not because he used them or needed them. Of course, he did use them, and use friendship, and use his popularity; he never forgot that popularity was power: but his liking for human beings was genuine. And it is not too much to say that he often liked men as much for their bad qualities as for their good. He had respect for, and the respect of, some of the governors general he worked with, none more than for Lord Lansdowne (1883-8), whom he used to regale with amusing accounts of Canadian politics long after Lansdowne had gone to India. From Simla, 23 June 1889, Lansdowne wrote in frank appreciation, " [Reading your letter] I fancied myself back in my study at Ottawa, listening to your confidences as to House of Com­ mons prospects and difficulties, unsuspected by the outside world, within the Cabinet." As to cabinets, Macdonald was famous, or notorious. Surely few Canadian politicians could have kept such a congeries of personalities and powers together, and it was widely recognized in the later years of Mac­ donald's life that when he went the Conservative party would not be long in following. Arthur Lower described it once as "Driving a sixhorse team." There were more horses than that, but the difficulties are obvious. How Macdonald actually managed his cabinet meetings must now be nearly a closed book, but there are hints here and there. One suspects that he listened much, perhaps not giving the impression that he was, and that he stepped in either to sum up, or to make plain what was the sense of the meeting, or occasionally, as in the case of Charles Tupper, or his son Charles Hibbert Tupper, to make quite clear where final responsibilities and power lay. "Dear Charlie," one importunate note from Charles Hib­ bert is endorsed, "skin your own skunks." Macdonald's general role is well put by a bluff old Nova Scotian, A. W. McLelan, who wrote him: "Often when Council was perplexed ... you had made things smooth and plain. I thought of the expression of an old farmer about my father, "There are wheels in that man that have never been moved yet.' " This was certainly a feeling that John A. Macdonald gave to many people: the immense richness and variety of his inner resources. Perhaps an epigram 10

11

1 2

1 0 1 1 1 2

Ibid., 88, Lansdowne to Macdonald, 23 June 1889. Ibid. Ibid., 232, McLelan to Macdonald, 29 June 1889, from Government House, Halifax.

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of Talleyrand's is apposite here: "The stability of complicated natures comes from their infinite flexibility." There is a wonderful little note in the Patteson Papers about this. T. C. Patteson, former editor of the Toronto Mail and at the time postmaster of Toronto, had got into a literary squabble with some friends and promptly scribbled a note to the Prime Minister of Canada: "What is the next line to, 'Ye gentlemen of England who sit at home at ease'? Please endorse answer." And on the back of this note is written, in Macdonald's clear flowing hand, "Ah, little do you think upon the dangers of the seas." This in January 1890. There the letter lies, in the Patteson Papers in the Archives of Ontario, a curious reflection of Macdonald's eclectic knowledge of literature and history. He would lay himself up for days with sherry and Dickens, in the days when he was living a quasi-bachelor life. And he remembered what he read, as he re­ membered names and faces. He always seemed to have a story from Sheridan, or Trollope, or Dickens at hand, to say nothing of innumerable stories from scabrous sources. Both Macdonald and Howe drew widely from literature but in other respects Macdonald's mind differed from Howe's. Howe may have been no administrator, but he had an unusually fecund and even prescient mind. It was typical of Macdonald that he recognized Howe's qualities, whatever he may have felt about Howe the Nova Scotian, or Howe the adminis­ trator. Macdonald remarked to George Johnson years after Howe's death that Howe had "the most seminal mind of any man I have ever met." The tragedy of Howe is pardy subsumed within this comment. It also says something of Macdonald, and of Macdonald's way of thinking. Macdonald was not a visionary like Howe, nor a poet like McGee, nor a man to sup­ port hard causes like Blake, nor a doctrinaire like Dalton McCarthy; Macdonald was always an empiricist, that is, he always preferred to work in and through experience. He was unmoved by ideas, and the newer they were the cooler he was. He distrusted gusts of popular enthusiasm; for him vox populi was a fickle jade. Popular agitations had come and gone before, and would again. If they did not vanish, then was the time to weigh and consider them. He was wary of nationalism, as he was wary of doctrines of any kind. His loyalty to the British connection was real enough; the whole ambience of his political life came from British parliamentary tradition; it is what he had grown up with. But of even that he was not uncritical; he was not prepared 13

1 8

P A C , George Johnson Papers, Reminiscences, dated 1 August 1900, and written for G. M. Grant, principal of Queen's University. This conversation with Macdonald apparently took place on the cow-catcher of the train that took Macdonald to the Pacific in 1 8 8 6 .

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41

to accept British infringement of what he felt were the prerogatives of Canada. What those prerogatives were grew slowly with the years. He had had no particular sympathies for responsible government, but when it became inevitable he accepted it, and even supported extension of its sphere of operation. He had had no interest in Confederation; when it acquired enough momentum he took hold of it and made it his own. He was unsympathetic to the creation of the Supreme Court of Canada, but he opposed its abolition when he came to power in 1878. When at the end of his life he said, "a British subject I was born and a British subject I will die," he meant Canada, his home for half a century, as much as, probably more than, he meant Great Britain. The ambiguity here suggests his point of view. Canada had to stand against the United States, and she could not do so alone. The imperial connection was the best guarantee of Canadian independence. Character­ istically, he fought shy of imperial federation. At first it appealed to him as evidence that Britain's long anti-colonial state of mind was passing away; but other than that it moved him not at all. It was only that it was new: its implications were unrealizable. Lord Lansdowne himself, the governor general for whom Macdonald had the greatest respect, admitted that. Britain wanted mutual defence arrangements; Canada wanted a prefer­ ential tariff. There could be no real joining of such disparate aims. The whole thing was impractical. Macdonald never strayed very far away from the practical world of men and affairs he had grown up in. He himself made out of this a virtue; but he would have been blind not to recognize the weaknesses that are implicit in it: a tendency to prefer the immediate to the long-term solution, the concrete to the abstract rule of thumb, ad hoc decisions to those re­ quiring long and careful analysis. Macdonald defended this attitude in a characteristically teasing reply to Luther Holton in the Confederation debates of 1865. It is also a good example of Macdonald's debating style: The thing which so utterly destroys the hon. gentleman's utility is his extreme modesty. (Laughter.) Why, when he had to rush to the rescue of the dis­ ordered finances of this country, at great personal sacrifice, for the sake of saving the country from the ruin that hung over it through the lavish extra­ vagance of my hon. friend the present Hon. Finance Minister, he looked, with the exercise of his great financial ability, down into the recesses of the public chest and speedily discovered the source of all the evils that had fallen upon the country, and yet the modesty of the hon. gentleman prevented him from making known the remedy. (Laughter.) ... The hon. gentleman has somehow or other become the guardian of my political reputation. He has, on two or three occasions, warned me that al-

P. B . W A I T E

42

though the course I took was, perhaps, that of a practical man - that of one who desired merely to keep office and become famous for political acuteness yet it would never secure for me the fame of being a great statesman. Well, Sir, I am satisfied to confine myself to practical things - to the securing of such practical measures as the country really wants. I am satisfied not to have a reputation for indulging in imaginary schemes and harboring visionary ideas that may end sometimes in an annexation movement, sometimes in Federation and sometimes in a legislative union, but always Utopian and never practical. I am satisfied to leave the imaginary, the poetic and the impossible to the hon. member for Chateauguay. 14

Confederation is, in fact, a case in point. Macdonald took up Con­ federation when the real prophets had been talking about it for ten years, and when he finally felt it to be a working possibility, that is, immediately necessary for the well-being of the country and of the Conservative party. And if George Brown was willing, as apparently he was, to risk coalition on it, why not? Though Macdonald was good at banter - indeed he could positively infuriate Brown - he did not scruple to praise a member of government or opposition when he felt there was reason for it. Praise and flattery he served up with a good deal of abandon, partly because he liked pleasing people, and partly because he believed you always got further with sugar than with vinegar. Sugar was marvellous for smoothing balky and recalcitrant natures. Even governors general needed sweetening, especially Irish ones, like Lord Dufferin, who could dish out the blarney himself. Dufferin de­ livered an address in Greek before the Convocation of McGill in 1873, and Macdonald and Langevin were present. One of the reporters wrote in his report, "His Lordship spoke the purest ancient Greek without mispro­ nouncing a word or making the slightest grammatical solecism." "Great Heavens," said Langevin to Sir John in the train, "How did the re­ porter know that?" "I told him," replied Sir John. "But you don't know Greek." "True," answered Sir John, "but I know a little about politics." 15

Some natures, Macdonald recognized, need treatment of a different kind. Among these were the Tuppers, both father and son. Macdonald needed Tupper, but Tupper, like many maritime politicians of the time, had a rather more blatantly parochial view of politics, and did not hesitate to insist on things for himself (or his family) that others would have been 1 4

Province of Canada, Legislature, Debates on Confederation

1 5

... , 1865, p. 1001-2.

E. B. Biggar, The Anecdotal Life of Sir John Macdonald (Montreal, 1891), 223.

43

SIR J O H N A. M A C D O N A L D : T H E M A N

less obvious about. Sometime in 1879 Tupper insisted that the Winnipeg law firm of Tupper and Macdonald (the sons of the two men) should be given substantial government business to handle in Winnipeg. Macdonald thought such a proceeding would be improper; Tupper insisted and talked about resigning; Macdonald said sharply that he would not have a pistol pointed at him by Tupper or anyone else. The result of this was that for two years Macdonald and Tupper did not speak to each other privately, and in public only on official business. With Charles Hibbert Tupper, who was a chip off the same Cumberland County block, Macdonald had to be just plain heavyhanded, though never entirely losing his jocular touch. This he had, and used, to soften up the rigours of personalities. One day, after the business of the cabinet was over, he looked long and seriously at John Carling, his postmaster general, from London, Ontario. At last he asked, "Carling, I wonder if God Almighty ever created a man as honest as you look?" As with Carling, so with Chapleau. Chapleau in 1889 wanted J. H. Pope's former post as minister of railways, and aroused strong pressure from Quebec province, and the Montreal district in particular, to get the job. Macdonald said no - in a variety of ways, but still no - since it would have given Chapleau, as Macdonald well knew, unlimited opportunities to make jobs for his friends, as in fact Hector Langevin, partly unknown to Macdonald, was already doing. Despite Macdonald's easy-going nature he was not to be pushed, and he had a dignity that was dangerous to cross. He was conservative in the old-fashioned sense of believing that society had evolved certain ways of doing things that ought to be observed; he believed in the forms and pre­ scriptions of society. There was a proper way. Edgar Dewdney, the Indian commissioner of the Northwest Territories, was told by Sir John that on any official matter he should address himself through the deputy minister concerned. "Forms," said Macdonald firmly, "are things." Forms were real, and probably indispensable in a society that still retained something of the stamp of an aristocracy. Yet, if Macdonald had to choose, he invariably went for the man, and not the manners. "External polish," he once wrote to Patteson at the Toronto Mail (it was to be a text for an anti-Goldwin Smith editorial), "not infrequently conceals littleness of mind and vul­ garity of thought." John Henry Pope had no manners and was as roughtextured as they come, but he had tremendous capacity, a strong shrewd 16

17

18

1 6 1 7

1 8

Ibid., 230. It was a general expression of Macdonald's. See M. Pope, ed., Public Servant: The Memoirs of Sir Joseph Pope (Toronto, 1960), 42. Patteson Papers, Macdonald to Patteson, 5 February 1876.

44

P. B . W A I T E

mind, and a great fund of common sense, and Macdonald loved him. Macdonald retained to the end of his days this happy and easy command of the way things were done, yet without ever losing his grip on, and his recognition of, the essentials of people themselves. For example, Macdonald's secretary, Joseph Pope, once remarked of J. J. C. Abbott that he had an agreeable nature and a sweet smile. "Yes, a sweet smile," replied Macdonald, "from the teeth outwards." Lady Macdonald remained firmly at home, and was rarely allowed in­ fluence in political decisions. Macdonald on his own hearth was extremely gracious and kind to his wife; but let Lady Macdonald tell: "My lord and master who in his private capacity simply lives to please and gratify me ... is absolutely tyrannical in his public life so far as I am concerned. When I pressed him on an apppointment Sir John looked very benign, very gracious, very pleasant - but - answered not one word! He never does!! Perhaps one reason was that Macdonald seems never to have been es­ pecially attracted to, or influenced by, women. His first marriage was a long and harrowing experience, for Isabella was never really well and died in 1858, leaving him a son to look after - Hugh John. His second marriage, in 1867 when he was fifty-two, was certainly not a triumph of heart over head. Macdonald was a man's man. He enjoyed a lusty sense of humour, and he was invariably amused at others who could not leave women alone, Charles Tupper being the most notorious example. What amused him still more was George Foster, a bachelor and former classics professor from King's College, Fredericton, who at forty-two decided to marry a woman who, by Canadian law, was still married. It was all the more surprising since Foster, Macdonald's minister of finance, was a stern teetotaller, and had hitherto lived a life of probity. Ottawa society was shocked by this escapade. Macdonald was not shocked, but he felt that society's retribution would be swift. He wrote to Landsdowne in India: 19

20

She [Mrs Foster] is ignored by society here and will not be received at Government House - He [Foster] has returned to this office, attends Cabinet meetings, and things go on as if he were a bachelor. But I don't think he can go on - he will be stung to death next session by the opposition who are accustomed you may remember, to call a spade a spade. He will be forced to leave public life. I am sorry for Foster who has ruined a prosperous career But as Sir Matthew Hale long ago said, "There is no wisdom below the belt." 21

A sage and cynical remark. But it is a comment perhaps on both sagacity 1 9 2 0 2 1

Pope, Public Servant, 43. Patteson Papers, Lady Macdonald to Patteson, n.d. P A C , Landsdowne Papers, Macdonald to Landsdowne, 28 September 1889.

SIR J O H N A. M A C D O N A L D : T H E M A N

45

and cynicism that Foster faced down his difficulties and outlived both them and his new wife. In 1920 he married again at the age of seventy-three! Macdonald would never have allowed himself to be in Foster's position, for he had far too much respect for the forms of social observance. At times, and in other shapes, this attitude became a kind of political timidity. Macdonald was as susceptible in this respect as other Canadian prime ministers, Mackenzie King being the most obvious example. In Macdonald's later years political timidity - that is, political timidity where there was no immediate party advantage involved - became a positive weakness. It was owing in part to the difficulty of recruiting and keeping able new men, which was itself partly due to Macdonald's instinct for tried and true friends; it was also owing in part to the sheer difficulty of govern­ ing Canada. As every Canadian prime minister has had to learn, Canada is a hard country to govern. In 1885 the cabinet was a mess; Macdonald admitted that himself. He got his old friend Alexander Campbell to stay on, but in agreeing to do so, Campbell wrote: " ... let me say how much I hope we may get on without this eternal yielding to everyone, who has, or thinks he has, control of a few votes. ... The constant giving way to trucu­ lent demands and our delays and the irritation and mischief which they produce are in everybody's mouth. ... " Of course this was easy counsel from a senator. Still, it was a real and palpable problem, and Campbell said a lot more in a letter written about the same time to T. C. Patteson: 22

Things have been going badly in the Ministry for a year or more. Macdonald has lost his grasp and does nothing he can help. Putting off, his old sin, has increased upon him until it has become an irritation to have relations with him ... he retains his old power of dealing with his followers and his keen insight into motives of action - but for the work of government and of legis­ lation he is gone I think ... he wasted months before bringing it [the Fran­ chise bill] in at all; simply, I believe, from feeling that he only had a very hazy view of the subject, and a desire for more time, with his usual reliance o n the hurry of the H o u s e at last ... tell m e what you think and tear up this letter. 23

Patteson agreed. "He was always timid and yielding," he said, "and if he has ever taken a bold stand I think it was because he had a bold man at his elbow at the time." Undoubtedly, part of the trouble lay in the fact that Macdonald, like most men, became less willing and less able to change as he grew older. 24

2 2 2 3

2 4

Macdonald Papers, 197, Campbell to Macdonald, 9 September 1885. Patteson Papers, Campbell to Patteson, 8 August 1885 (private and confidential), from Newport, R.I. PAO, Campbell Papers, Patteson to Campbell, 11 August 1885 (private).

46

P. B . W A I T E

And while timid in the face of real votes and real pressures, he had come by the mid-1880s to dominate and sometimes to tyrannize the cabinet. John S. Thompson, the newly arrived justice minister from Nova Scotia, was not one to accept the old man's views without question. "I showed fight," he wrote to his wife in 1887, "and treated him to considerable impudence. I ignored his opinion on a legal question.... Of course the poor old fellow is worried to death but I do not care for him and I am so determined to let him see it that I could insult him at every turn while he keeps it [his gruffness and bad temper] up. This is unheard of heresy here because the practice is to worship him from afar even when he is ugly." Troubles, troubles. Macdonald had by this time gone through many, and if he tried to avoid them it was not because he did not expect them. On the contrary, Macdonald was realist enough rarely to expect things to run smoothly. No government this side of heaven would run smoothly. Trouble was as natural as joy. Patteson once was complaining of debts and manifold difficulties. "Why, man," replied Macdonald, "do you expect to go thro' this world without trials and worries? You have been deceived it seems.... And as for present debts, treat them as Fakredden in Tancred treated his. He played with his debts, caressed them ... What would I be without these darling debts said he - " "As to debts and troubles these come to us 'as the sparks fly upward.' Vide Job passim - but they disappear like summer flies and new ones come. Take things pleasantly & when fortune empties her chamberpot on your head - smile & say 'We are going to have a summer shower.' " Macdonald's whole administration from about 1882 onward reflects increasingly his willingness to believe that all troubles are temporary and that, in a little while, like sparks, they will pass. "Time and I are a match for any two men," he used to say. A good example of this technique is the story about a man whose name is unknown but whom we can call Dobson. It dates from 1879: 25

2 6

2 7

... one fine morning Dobson appeared at the office of Sir John in Ottawa. "Why, I know your face," began Sir John. "Stop now, don't tell me, you are Dobson, and I stopped all night at your house in the campaign of 1878, and I told you on leaving, if ever you wanted anything, to come right to me. Take a seat. I'm glad to see you. How's your wife? Good. And what can I do for you?" Feeling at home and flattered at his reception, Dobson opened out in a confidential drawl: "Well, yes, Sir John, that's the p'int. You see I kind o' 2 5

2 6 2 7

St. Francis Xavier University, Thompson Papers, Thompson to his wife 23 Janu­ ary 1887. This is a typed copy of a letter not apparently in existence in the Thomp­ son Papers in the Public Archives at Ottawa. Patteson Papers, Macdonald to Patteson, 16 February 1876 (confidential). Ibid., Macdonald to Patteson, 18 January 1878.

SIR J O H N A. M A C D O N A L D : T H E M A N

47

failed in business here a month or two ago, and my friends thought as there was no Ass-ign-ee ap'inted for our country, I ought to git the place: so I tuck a notion I'd come down and see you about it." "What!" replied Sir John, perking himself up and looking at the top of his interviewer's head, "a man with a head like yours, and with ability such as you have, to take the paltry position of assignee! Why your talents would be simply thrown away in a place like that. No, no! You just wait a while, and we'll give you something better than that." Carried away with this high estimate of his abilities by the Premier of Canada, Dobson agreed that it would be better to wait until a more suitable vacancy occurred, and departed a proud and self-satisfied man, content to wait for the high honor of the future. Meantime the office was given to a presumably better man, and the day never came when a sufficiently digni­ fied position was open for Dobson. 28

It is true that many difficulties like this will pass, and in such a way. But the impression remains that as time went on Macdonald became less and less willing (or less able) to distinguish those troubles that would pass from those that would not. He was probably right in his view that in administration 90 per cent of the things that come on one's desk could be postponed or put in the wastebasket. Not that he always did this; it is sur­ prising sometimes how conscientiously he did deal with little things. Just seven weeks before his death Macdonald received a letter from George Foster on the momentous question of the pay of the baggage master at the station at Hampton, New Brunswick. Should it be increased from $1.20 to $1.50 a day? Would Sir John kindly look into the matter? Macdonald did. (The answer was no.) But notwithstanding minor solutions of minor problems, there remained a limbo of real, large, and unanswered problems. The most notorious example of Macdonald's putting-off habits was the Saskatchewan rebellion of 1885, which, it would appear, ought never to have occurred at all but for Macdonald's inveterate habit of putting off, putting off in the hope that if a thing were put off long enough it would go away. So often they did, but sometimes they did not. In 1868, it was Tilley who had to warn him that Nova Scotia could not be allowed to drift on as she was; as Tilley fairly put it, "there is no use in crying peace, when there is no peace." It is a pity that there was not a Tilley in Saskatchewan in 1884. Langevin had been there, but Langevin was not Tilley. By 1885, it was too late. "Old Tomorrow," in short, did not get his nickname for nothing. The truth is that it is a serious and difficult matter to decide when, or how, or 29

2 8 2 9

Biggar, Macdonald, 200-1. Tilley to Macdonald, 17 July 1868, in Joseph Pope, Memoirs of Sir John A. Mac­ donald, rev. ed. (Toronto, Oxford, 1930), 381.

48

P. B . W A I T E

still more important - if, a particular problem is to be redressed. There is no use mounting a charger and hitting issues head on; usually you do not need to. You can often work your way around issues and outflank them. Macdonald on the Jesuit Estates is a good example. The Jesuits' Estates Act was an act of the Quebec Legislature, perfectly within its competence and broadly agreed to in advance by both Protestants and Catholics within the province of Quebec. But the language of the preamble to the act was admittedly provocative, and in any case it took very little to provoke Ontario Protestants, at least those of that day, into demanding disallowance of the act. A mighty tempest arose, with the "drum ecclesiastic," as Macdonald put it, beating across Ontario. The government at Ottawa held its peace. Mercier, the premier of Quebec, in Ottawa on other business, had an opportunity in the intervals of a formal occasion to whisper to Macdonald, "Are you really going to disallow our Estates Bill?" Macdonald whispered back, "Do you take me for a damn fool?" And the Jesuits' Estates Act never was disallowed. That was sensible, and it serves to introduce a note on Macdonald's relations with French Canadians. "The French will always be French," Macdonald used to say. He had few prejudices. He genuinely liked the French Canadians, and his long political success was based heavily on their support. Not even Laurier could dent that - not until after 1885 and really not until after Macdonald's death in 1891. Macdonald's realism comes through very well in a letter he wrote to the editor of the Montreal Gazette in 1856: 30

31

The truth is that you British Lower Canadians never can forget that you were once supreme - that Jean Baptiste was your hewer of wood and drawer of water. You struggle, like the Protestant Irish in Ireland, like the Norman in­ vaders in England, not for equality, but ascendancy - the difference between you and those interesting and amiable people being that you have not the honesty to admit it. You can't and won't admit the principle that the majority must govern. The Gallicans may fairly be reckoned as two thirds against one third of all the other races who are lumped together as Anglo-Saxons - Heaven save the mark!... The only remedies are immigration and copulation and these will work wonders. ... No man in his senses can suppose that this country can for a century to come be governed by a totally unfrenchified government. If a lower Canada British desires to conquer he must "stoop to conquer." He must make friends with the French, without sacrificing the status of his race or language, he must respect their nationality. Treat them as a nation and they will act as a free people generally do - generously. Call them a faction and 3 0

3 1

Joseph Pope, The Day of Sir John Macdonald

(Toronto, 1920), 164.

Macdonald Papers, 83, Lord Lome to Macdonald, 10 April 1884, from Kensing­ ton Palace: " The French will always be French,' as I have often heard you say."

49

SIR J O H N A. M A C D O N A L D : T H E M A N

they became factious. ... I doubt very much if the French will lose their numerical majority in L.C. in a hurry ... and I am inclined to think they will hold their own for many a day yet. 32

Macdonald never really deviated from this. His notes for a speech against Dalton McCarthy show the same policy at work thirty-three years later. Dalton McCarthy had been trying to get the French language abolished in the Northwest Territories. Now, said Macdonald, what is the point in doing that? There's not much expense in the arrangement as it stands. In any case you can only irritate, since you can't eradicate French that way. Or for that matter, any other way. You might as well say "pills are good for earthquakes." Leave the French alone; remember a rule of human nature that if you antagonize people you will only make them more refractory. It was this kind of philosophy, too, that made Macdonald a good party man. He believed that a political party was worked by loyalty and love and money and jobs, all mixed up together. To him it was a kind of treason not to stick to the party. Take the problem of the lieutenant governor of Ontario in 1887. John Beverly Robinson had been lieutenant governor of Ontario since 1879 and was very anxious to stay on, but was already two years and eight months over his five-year term. There was to be an election in 1887, in June, and it was certain that if the Liberals (Macdonald called them Grits) won, they would immediately install one of their friends as lieutenant governor of Ontario. It was too big a plum to lose this way. Macdonald wrote that, much as he would like to leave Robinson in his office, he could not; there was that election, and if the Conservative party were to lose it, "it would have been treason to my party if I had left your important office to the chance of being filled by the Grits." Equally, he expected his appointees to behave as Conservatives. George Kirkpatrick in 1888 wanted a cabinet post. Macdonald said no: "you are not strong enough in the House.... as Speaker [of the Commons] you were afraid of Blake, and generally decided against your Conservative friends." That would not do. It was the same with the CPR. N O doubt there were Grits employed on the CPR, but the government did not expect them to have important jobs, or to last long if they did. This was made so completely clear to Stephen and Van Home that by 1884 Macdonald was 33

34

35

3 2

3 3 3 4 3 5

P A C , Chamberlin Papers, Macdonald to Chamberlin, 21 January 1856, quoted in D. G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician (Toronto, 1952), 226-7. Macdonald Papers, 148, 60388-9. Ibid., 527, Macdonald to Robinson, 28 February 1887 (private). Ibid., Macdonald to Kirkpatrick, 21 June 1888 (private and confidential).

50

P. B. WAITE

able to assert that the CPR had no one working on the line who was not he used Van Home's phrase - a "fully circumcized Conservative." The gerrymander of 1882, "hiving the Grits," was only a more notori­ ous example of the same thing. It was unscrupulous; it was politics at its worst: Macdonald thoroughly enjoyed it. It was within the power of the government, but it was certainly unethical by modern assessments, and to some degree it had come so to be regarded by the 1880s. Certainly the Liberal party thought it was unethical, the logical result, they said, of the Canadian electorate being so wilfully wrong-headed as to return Mac­ donald and the Conservatives in the election of 1878. Macdonald was never very scrupulous when it came to making the most of party advantage; and far from weakening him with his own followers, this made him the more admired and liked. It is a pity that Macdonald was often admired and liked for the wrong reasons. Macdonald was quite cheerfully hypocritical about making sure that a suitable front was always preserved. H. H. Smith, the Conservative orga­ nizer for Ontario, wrote him in 1882 that a prominent man was willing to make a substantial contribution to party funds in return for a fat timber licence. No doubt this might be done quietly for well-established Conser­ vatives, but the decent appearances had to be preserved. Besides, it might be a Liberal trick. Macdonald wrote back: "It won't do that the slightest suspicion get abroad that timber licenses on Government lands could be got in return for political support of election subscriptions. The offer to subscribe for the next elections if a timber limit were granted should be pooh-poohed by you as impossible." A concomitant of his party feeling was loyalty, even blindness, toward old friends, some of whom ought to have been chastised instead. Langevin is one example. And Macdonald had a strong vein of sympathy for those of them who had fallen on bad times. There is a letter from Tilley a month before Macdonald's death, in April 1891, saying how hard up he is, and that after he steps down as lieutenant governor of New Brunswick he will have to live on his capital, not having sufficient income. And this, though Tilley did not say so, after twenty-four years of service to the country, and another earlier dozen to his native New Brunswick. Macdonald sent the letter on to Foster, writing on the back: "My dear Foster, This is a sad letter. ... We must leave him in Govt House as long as possible." He had the magic of the common touch. Witness his letter to little 36

37

38

3 6 3 7 3 8

P A C , H. H. Smith Papers, Macdonald to Smith, 3 March 1884 (private). Ibid., Macdonald to Smith, 29 September 1882 (private). Macdonald Papers, 272, Tilley to Macdonald, 20 April 1891, from Saint John.

51

SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD: THE MAN

Lottie Prentiss, on the occasion of their two birthdays, her ninth and his seventy-sixth, on 11 January 1891. My dear little Friend, I am glad to get your letter to know that next Sunday you and I will be of the same age. I hope and believe however that you will see many more birth­ days than I shall. ... I think it was mean of that young fellow not to answe your letter. You see I have been longer in the world than he, and know more than he does of what is due to young ladies. I send you a dollar note which pray buy some small keepsake to remember me by and, Believe me, Yours sincerely, John A. Macdonald. 39

Perhaps best of all about Macdonald was his bonhomie and good humour. He used to enjoy teasing Blake and Cartwright about their perennial predictions of doom and gloom. Replying to Blake's speech on the address in 1883, he remarked: "My hon. friend puts me in mind of the captain of an old Newcastle collier who had been boxing the compass for many years, and ... had been in almost every foreign country. After seven years in the West Indies he came back to England, and when his ship was approaching land and he felt the familiar sleet and storm, and saw the familiar clouds, he put on his sou-wester and peajacket, and said, 'This is something like weather! None of your infernal blue skies for me!' " Or his bonhomie. When David Thompson was sitting for Haldimand, in the days when the record of the riding was an unbroken string of Liberal victories, Thompson was laid off for nearly a whole session of Parliament through illness. He got down to Parliament at last, and told the story of his reception as follows: 4 0

The first man I met on coming back was Blake. He passed me with a simple nod. The next man I met was Cartwright, and his greeting was about as cold as that of Blake. Hardly had I passed these men when I met Sir John. He didn't pass me by, but grasped me by the hand, gave me a slap on the shoulder, and said, "Davy, old man, I'm glad to see you back. I hope you'll soon be yourself again and live many a day to vote against me - as you have always done!" Now I never gave the old man a vote in my life, but hang me if it doesn't go against my grain to follow the men who haven't a word of greeting for me, and oppose a man with a heart like Sir John's. 41

3 9 4 0

4 1

Macdonald Papers, 530, 6 January 1891. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1883, p. 23; quoted by D . G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald: The Old Chieftain (Toronto, 1955), 346. Biggar, Macdonald, 190-1.

52

P. B. WAITE

One last view of Macdonald comes to mind from the pen of a man who was no Conservative either, the editor of the Toronto Globe and once the Globe's parliamentary correspondent. There is no better first-hand descrip­ tion of Macdonald; and it is by a man who had no reason to love him or admire him, John S. Willison, and from, of all places, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party: It was his habit to sit with his legs crossed and his head thrown back, with a jaunty air and an alert look, except now and then when some keen debater across the floor was pressing him hard, dealing square, strong blows at "the old man and the old policy," with perhaps a touch of bitterness in the words, and a keen knowledge of the old man's ways revealed in the method of attack. At such times he would move uneasily as the enemy pressed him close, toss his head, bite his lips, glance angrily back upon his followers, throw some taunt to his opponents, and at last come to his feet and retort upon the ad­ versary. In later years he rarely lost his complete self-control. In his angriest mood he was deliberate, and seemed as he faced his opponents to be coolly and craftily seeking for the weak spots in the indictment. He did not always meet argument with argument. He had little eloquence. He had no loftiness of speech. He never sought to cover the whole ground of an opponent's attack. That elaboration of argument and exhaustive mastery of detail which distin­ guished the speeches of Mr. Blake is generally lacking in the speeches of Sir John Macdonald. In Parliament he rarely spoke to convince or win the Op­ position. His aim there was to touch the party loyalty and rouse the party enthusiasm of his supporters. He would often turn his back upon the Liberals and address himself directly to the Ministerialists. He would strike some happy thought, some sentence full of keen sarcasm or genial ridicule, and with a shrewd look and smiling face and jaunty air, would drop the sentence with a shrug of the shoulders and a half-contemptuous gesture that always tickled his followers, and often exasperated his opponents. There he would stand with his back to the Speaker, while the Opposition chafed at the cool but skilful exaggeration of their position, and the Conservatives cheered with delight, and wagged their heads and shrugged their shoulders in sympathy with the old man's bantering humour. He would pass one of Mr. Blake's most powerful arraignments of his policy with a shrug and a story that perhaps had grown old in his service. He would meet one of Sir Richard Cartwright's most scathing exposures of the tendencies and results of his rule and methods with a smile for his followers and a jocular reminder for his opponents that the country had heard these argu­ ments, and he was still in office.... Sir John Macdonald knew, as few men have known, how to use the social influence to political advantage. The man who came to Parliament with un­ settled opinions, who wanted social notice, who wanted something for his constituency, was likely soon to find himself at the wheels of the old man's

SIR J O H N A. M A C D O N A L D : T H E M A N

53

chariot. T h e young member was always noticed. T h e waverer was strength­ ened, and the wounded were healed. H i s appeals to party loyalty were always effective. His followers never failed to laugh when he joked. They always cheered his appeals. They always warmed into enthusiasm w h e n he pointed to his majority in the H o u s e and in the country, and to the record of his achievements. The Conservatives in Parliament and in the constituencies loved Sir John Macdonald, and few m e n w h o had ever followed him could withstand his personal appeal. H e had w o n great victories for his party, he had led them to triumph again and again, and they were grateful and loyal to the end, and mourned for him as for one taken out from their very households. 42

Macdonald we can leave at the point where we began: that first trip to the west by a Canadian prime minister, in 1886. It is in 1886, if at any time, that we can date the real beginning of the Canadian union in the practical and concrete meaning of the word, with the first operation of the transcontinental CPR passenger service. Until 1886 Canada was a political expression, little more. Joseph Pope recalled in his diary how he watched Macdonald addressing the huge crowd at the CPR station at Port Moody, BC, that fine Saturday, 24 July 1886. "I couldn't help thinking," Pope wrote, "as I stood by that old man standing on the shores of the Pacific, with his grey hair blowing over his forehead, what a triumphal moment it must have been for him." 43

4 2

4 3

Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party, H (Toronto, 1903), 20-4. Pope Papers, Diary, 85.

Mackenzie King and National Unity H. BLAIR NEATBY

M A C K E N Z I E K I N G talked a great deal about Canadian autonomy and national unity between the two world wars. His critics were not impressed. They argued that behind the platitudes there lurked an unprincipled poli­ tician for whom the only consistent national policy was the desire to win the next election. Even sympathetic observers who were not blindly par­ tisan were sometimes uneasy because King's references to autonomy or unity seemed designed more to justify inaction than to defend a positive decision. Canadian autonomy, he had said, did not define Canada's Com­ monwealth commitments but left them to be determined "in the light of circumstances as they may arise at the time," and his appeals to national unity frequently seemed to be a technique to leave controversial issues undisturbed and unresolved. Even historians writing after the Second World War have reacted to Mackenzie King's career in much the same way. They are more ready to concede that King was an adept politician, but they are still inclined to deplore his obfuscations and his indecision. King seemed to avoid confronting issues in an era which demanded courage and forthright leadership. The 1920s and 1930s were not an heroic age, and there is no angle from which Mackenzie King can be pictured as a hero. It is none the less surprising that Canadian scholars still react with such intensity to his career. They show little evidence of historical detachment; the more sym­ pathetic historians are qualified in their praise, the critics are almost venomous. The emotional overtones suggest that the shadow of King still hovers over the land and that the issues which are linked with his name are still contemporary issues. Canadian history is national history by definition, and most Canadian historians have strong national feelings. Inevitably they judge King in the light of their own view of what Canada is or ought to be. Historians who stress the North American character of Canada approve of King's emphasis on autonomy. They see the development of Canadian autonomy as the central theme of our history, in the long ascent from colony to nation, and King is credited with completing the process during the 1920s. According to A. R. M. Lower, "Until the second world war

55

MACKENZIE KING AND NATIONAL UNITY

became imminent, the vital aspect of external relations was not foreign policy but the extension and completion of Canadian autonomy," and "the evolution of imperial relations, if it bears the imprint of any one person­ ality, must bear his [Mackenzie King's]." J. M. S. Careless also argues that "in external affairs, at least, King pursued a very definite policy" - that of achieving the status of nationhood for Canada - and that this was vir­ tually accomplished by 1931. Mackenzie King's critics are more inclined to see his policy as a con­ tinuing effort to end the British connection, with anti-British sentiments influencing his policies even after the passage of the Statute of Westminster. This does not mean that they minimize the results of his policy of Canadian autonomy; on the contrary they view them as having even greater signifi­ cance than the historians who are more sympathetic to King's career. It is true that Donald Creighton's Dominion of the North, in what can only be described as a tour de force, manages to make Dominion status inevitable by the end of the First World War and so denies any credit whatsoever to Mackenzie King. "Macdonald, Laurier and Borden," Professor Creighton writes, "had helped to work out the various principles of the new relation­ ship; and the war and the post-war period served to bring the system they had devised into a working reality. All that remained to do was to give formal acknowledgement to the new Imperial association." Elsewhere however, Creighton is more willing to admit that King had some influence on events. In his presidential address to the Canadian Historical Associa­ tion in 1957 he declared: 1

2

3

The 1920's and 1930's were the decades, above all others, in which Canadian national policy, and its supporters and interpreters, required a simple-minded anti-imperialist doctrine which could be used against Western Europe in general and West-European and British imperialism in particular. Mackenzie King was revolutionizing the Commonwealth through the implementation o f D o m i n i o n autonomy ... and Canada, for what was really the first time in it history, was luxuriating to the full in that sense o f physical and spiritual isola­ tion from the rest of the world, that moral superiority to the unfortunate re­ mainder of mankind, which is one of the chief characteristics of N o r t h American continentalism. 4

W. L. Morton sees the same continuing - and nefarious - influence of King's policies between the wars. In a review of a biography of Mackenzie 1 2 3 4

Colony to Nation, 3rd ed. (London, 1957), 481-3. Canada: A Story of Challenge, 2nd ed. (Toronto, 1963), 344-9. Dominion of the North, new ed. (Toronto, 1962), 481. Canadian Historical Association Annual Report, 1957.

56

H. BLAIR NEATBY

King covering the years from 1923 to 1932 he reproves the author for not showing that "the persistent extension of Canadian autonomy without any positive counter-undertaking was in effect to destroy that European coun­ terpoise, once military and next moral, by which Canada had balanced, or offset, the influence of the United States. King thus prepared the present condition of Canada, in which the country is so irradiated by the American presence that it sickens and threatens to dissolve in cancerous slime." These conflicting appreciations of King's version of Canadian auton­ omy clearly reflect different views of what Canada's relations with Great Britain - and the United States - should be. None the less, all of these historians do agree that Canadian autonomy was extended during these years and that Mackenzie King contributed significantly to this extension. They may applaud or deplore the results but they link King's name with the achievement of autonomy. The real test of this autonomy came in 1939 when Great Britain became involved in a European war. An autonomous Canada could con­ ceivably have remained on the sidelines. Every other country in North and South America chose neutrality at the time and, as North Americans, Canadians might have been expected to do likewise. Ten days did elapse between the British and Canadian declarations of war, but the final decision was never in doubt. In 1937 King had privately told Hitler that the Dominions would be involved if Great Britain was drawn into a European war, and in March of 1939 he told the Canadian House of Commons that Canada would go to war "if bombers rained death on London." It is also suggestive that a volume of his wartime speeches, published in 1941, was entitled Canada at Britain's Side. Autonomy or no autonomy, Mackenzie King decided to follow Britain into war in 1939. It is surprising that Canadian historians have not been more puzzled by this apparent inconsistency. The significant changes in the nature of the Commonwealth which they have attributed to King's policies suddenly seem insignificant, and Mackenzie King, instead of determining or even affecting the course of events, is described as merely recording the loyal response of the Canadian people. It is never suggested that all Canadians reacted in the same way or for the same reasons, but, in the final analysis, historians seem to agree that the bonds of empire were decisive. A. R. M. Lower sees Canadians as reluctant and uncertain about the war until the fall of France, but then "the inescapable bonds of blood were sealed again and when to them was joined the eloquence of Mr. Churchill, English Canadians, casting aside whatever elements of national individuality they had acquired, merged their fate once more with England." J. M. S. 5

6

5

6

Canadian Historical Review, X L V (December 1964), 320-1. Colony to Nation, 553.

MACKENZIE KING AND NATIONAL UNITY

57

Careless is more impressed with the relevance of national interests in determining the decision, but he too agrees that "undoubtedly sentiment for Great Britain still played a large part." Even for historians who see King as having single-mindedly destroyed our traditional links with Great Britain, these links seem to have had a remarkable resilience. According to Donald Creighton: 7

A s the sky over Europe darkened with menace, as the very safety of the motherland itself became imperilled, the Canadian consciousness of the reality - and the vitality - of this ancient tie steadily strengthened; and the visit of King George and Queen Elizabeth, in the early summer of 1939, confirmed, though it had no need to inspire, this realization of the values and vital interests which were bound up in the old partnership of the British people. ... In the first ten days of September, 1939 ... the British Commonwealth took its stand and prepared to fight. 8

W. L. Morton also sees the British connection as the decisive factor although perhaps less from sentiment than from an aversion to closer links with the United States, with "the balance towards fighting to maintain the United Kingdom, simply because an alliance with the United States to defend America without a European offset meant absorption to an unpre­ dictable degree into the American power system." In no case does Mackenzie King receive either credit or blame for the momentous decision. When historians agree that the ties with Great Britain were strong enough to bring Canada into the war in 1939, they arouse serious doubts about the significance of King's contribution to Canadian autonomy. Formal constitutional changes mean little if they do not reflect reality; the sequence of precedents in the 1920s leading to the enshrinement of the principle of autonomy in the Statute of Westminster becomes irrelevant if the emotional attachment to Great Britain survived unscathed. It seems unfair either to applaud or to vilify Mackenzie King for his obsession with autonomy when that policy apparently counted for so little. Mackenzie King was naturally inclined to take some personal credit for the Canadian consensus in 1939. At the same time he did not see any contradiction between autonomy for Canada and her participation in the war at Britain's side; he believed that the decision to go to war had only been possible because he had firmly established Canada's claim to autonomy. On 8 September 1939, at the special session of Parliament, he insisted that participation was a voluntary decision: "not because of any colonial or inferior status vis-a-vis Great Britain, but because of equality 9

7 8 9

Canada: A Story of Challenge, 375. Dominion of the North, 504. The Kingdom of Canada (Toronto, 1963), 474.

58

H. BLAIR NEATBY

of status. We are a nation in the fullest sense, a member of the British commonwealth of Nations, sharing like freedom with Great Britain her­ self, a freedom which we believe we must all combine to save." Without this sense of autonomy, he argued, there could have been no general agree­ ment among Canadians to go to war. In an election broadcast in February 1940 he claimed that Canadian unity had been preserved by his insistence on Canadian autonomy: "My task was to see that no false step, no extreme policies or measures, no hasty action should be allowed to destroy, in advance, either the clearness of vision of our people, or its powers of action. I was determined that, if the moment for decision ever came, no cleavages of opinion, in parliament or in the country, should frustrate Canada's power to put forth her utmost effort." Pointing out that Parliament and the nation were united when the momentous decision had to be made, King then asked whether his policy had not been "the right, and, indeed, the only wise and proper one." King's interpretation of events should not be casually ignored. As a politician he may have exaggerated his omniscence, but he had in fact consistently linked autonomy with national unity long before 1939. He had repeatedly described Canadian autonomy as a prerequisite for any major commitment in external affairs. Without autonomy he believed that national agreement on such a commitment would be virtually impossible; only with autonomy would a national consensus be feasible. It was this connection between autonomy and national unity which lay behind his external policy in the 1930s. To comprehend this policy, however, one must first understand what he meant by autonomy and by national unity, for he had his own special definition of these concepts, and the meaning he gave to them coloured all his decisions. Historians have tended to equate autonomy with independence from Great Britain. For some the corollary to this has been the achievement of a distinctive national identity, for others the corollary has been succumbing to domination of the United States; but whatever the final result, autonomy has been seen as a diminution of British influence. Autonomy for Mackenzie King, however, did not mean independence. He defined auton­ omy as self-government but saw no inconsistency in a completely selfgoverning Dominion which none the less had inescapable obligations to Great Britain. Indeed, for King these obligations would become more acceptable and so more secure as self-government became more complete. He used the analogy of the family to explain his concept of autonomy, but in his version the children did not grow indifferent to family interests 10

11

1 0

1 1

House of Commons Debates, Second Session, 1939, p. 30. W. L. Mackenzie King, Canada at Britain's Side (Toronto, 1941), 77-8.

MACKENZIE KING AND NATIONAL UNITY

59

when they became adults. The family bonds survived, and collective responsibility and collective action was not only feasible but inevitable whenever the interests of the family or of one of its members were at stake. This was a natural assumption for one who came from a closely knit family and for whom the family ties could even extend beyond the grave. Autonomy was essential to this family group, because without it the family bonds might be severed. If parents imposed too many restraints on their children, the normal family relationship could be endangered, and the children, by rejecting parental authority, might reject their filial respon­ sibilities. This to King was independence. Autonomy was the means by which this unnatural and undesirable breakdown of family ties could be averted. This version of Canada's relations with Great Britain was based on sentiment rather than on formal commitments. At heart Mackenzie King was a nineteenth-century romantic. But policies based on sentiment are as real as policies based on calculation and are likely to be more consistently pursued over the years. Certainly King was consistent. He resented any restraint on Canadian self-government, premeditated or accidental, im­ agined or real, because of his conviction that autonomy was essential. In the 1920s he at least contributed to the acceptance of this principle. In the 1930s, with formal autonomy conceded, the issue became one of Canadian support for Great Britain in time of crisis, and here again King's version of the family relationship was consistently applied. He took it for granted that Canada should be at Britain's side in a major European war. National unity was easier to define than to achieve. For King it meant that each major national decision should have the support - or at least the acquiescence - of people from each cultural group and from each geo­ graphical region. National policies would usually be compromises, be­ cause the different cultural and regional interests would not be identical. Compromises, however, are never popular; a tariff policy acceptable to both central Canada and the prairies would not arouse much enthusiasm in either region. Political leadership under these circumstances required much circumspection and educational effort. Differing groups or regions had to be made aware of their conflicting interests before they would accept the half-loaf which any compromise involves. Until a compromise was possible, the government could either impose a policy, at the risk of alienating a cultural group or a region, or it could procrastinate. No gov­ ernment, however, can postpone decisions indefinitely and remain in power. Delay, when resorted to, must be used to convince the affected 12

1 2

For King's use of this analogy see H. Blair Neatby, William Lyon King, n (Toronto, 1963), 176-7,

Mackenzie

60

H. BLAIR NEATBY

groups of the necessity of compromise. Mackenzie King's insistence on the need for a national consensus on major national decisions was often discounted as an attempt to justify inaction. His alleged lack of political leadership has been exaggerated, however. He was not always waiting for a problem to disappear. Often he was trying to prepare the ground for a a compromise which he had already formulated. National policies which fitted King's definition were not easily devised in the decade of the 1930s. Observers could seldom find any issue on which there was a clear national consensus. F. H. Soward, writing shortly after the outbreak of war, believed that "in the troubled thirties Canadian unity was more seriously disturbed than at any time since Confederation." The depression had exacerbated the regional and cultural divisions which had always existed. Profound discontent had sired three new political parties for the federal election of 1935, and these parties had won the support of one out of every five Canadian voters. Seemingly stable provincial govern­ ments had been unseated by new parties or by old parties with new leaders; new provincial premiers such as Duplessis, Hepburn, Aberhart, and Patullo were deliberately defying traditional party loyalties and the middle class decorum of their predecessors. At the same time industrial unions were disrupting the structure of organized labour and spreading fears of a radical social revolution. Fascist and communist groups attracted new fol­ lowers, and many saw these extremists as the tip of an iceberg of disaffec­ tion and alienation. Mackenzie King could see all the signs of national disruption in microcosm within the Liberal party itself. T. D. Patullo was behaving like a socialist in Liberal clothing, Gerry McGeer was huckstering social credit, J. T. Thorson was an unreconstructed Progressive, Mitchell Hepburn was busy denouncing Mackenzie King Liberals when he was not conspiring with Duplessis to weaken federal authority, Jean-Francois Pouliot was fully occupied fighting communism. Liberals debated the politics of party survival, because the survival of the party was a prerequisite for any con­ structive government measures. In the turmoil of the thirties, party unity, like national unity, required political sensitivity and sound judgment. External policy in the 1930s had to be devised within the context of this domestic turmoil. A foreign policy which proved unpopular in one sector of Canadian society would aggravate already existing cultural or regional jealousies. In any case, external affairs could not be isolated from the domestic situation because the bitter memories of the cultural clash during the First World War were still fresh, and because the recognition of Canadian autonomy now posed direcdy the question of a distinctive 13

1 3

F. H. Soward, et al. Canada in World Affairs: The Pre-War Years (Toronto, 1941), 14. y

61

MACKENZIE KING AND NATIONAL UNITY

Canadian foreign policy. External affairs added a new and significant dimension to the problem of achieving national unity. French Canadians usually opposed any foreign commitments. This apparent isolationism, however, did not mean that they had no interest in the outside world. They were strongly opposed to any association with communist countries and they had some sympathy for a country like Italy which, at least in theory, was Roman Catholic and corporatist. If French Canadians wanted to isolate Canada from foreign affairs it was not because they were neutral. Rather it was because they harboured deep suspicions of British influence on Canadian policies and feared that English-Canadian loyalties to Great Britain might draw Canada into a war in which Canadian interests were not directly involved. Isolationism would at least ensure that Canada would not be used as a tool of British imperialism. Any generalization about English-Canadian attitudes is likely to be an over-simplification. So great was the diversity of opinions that con­ temporary observers delighted in the parlour game of trying to define categories into which public men could be pigeon-holed. It was easy to talk of collectivists who supported the League of Nations, of imperialists who backed Great Britain, and of isolationists who opposed any commit­ ments. Unfortunately few men fitted into these simple categories. How could one classify J. S. Woodsworth, a pacifist, a leader of a party opposed to any participation in "imperialist" wars, and yet a prominent spokesman for the League of Nations? J. W. Dafoe was usually labelled a collectivist, while O. D. Skelton was considered an isolationist, and yet both of these men might better be described as autonomists. Dafoe's objection to a Canadian policy made in London led him to advocate collective security through the League, whereas a similar sentiment led Skelton to oppose any commitments. Some observers coined hyphenated refinements to describe the complex attitudes of English Canadians, but the absurdity of such categories as collectivist-isolationist or nationalist-imperialist only underlined the difficulty of labelling men who were themselves not always clear or consistent. J. H. Blackmore spoke for many when he plaintively told the House of Commons that he was an ardent advocate of collective security but didn't know with whom to collect. Mackenzie King, as his version of Canadian autonomy suggests, be­ lieved that in time of crisis Canada would "collect" with the Common­ wealth. He believed that Canadian interests were linked with those of Great 14

1 4

Cited in ibid., 87. Soward's chapters in this book are still the best study of the public debate on Canadian external policy in these years. A. R. M. Lower, Canada: Nation and Neighbour (Toronto, 1952), provides a select bibliography on "The Great Debate" and also offers his labels for a number of prominent Canadians during the decade.

62

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Britain and that most Canadians would realize this when the time for de­ cision came. The first problem was to avoid the crystallization of con­ flicting attitudes which would make an eventual consensus impossible. But public opinion must also be guided and shaped so that if Britain did be­ come involved in a major war, most Canadians would be prepared to ac­ cept the policy of participation. King was not a passive attendant upon events. Although he avoided debates on abstract questions of principle between 1935 and 1939, he made decisions which narrowed the range of choice and channelled Canadians towards this ultimate decision. The first major step was the elimination of the League of Nations as a significant factor in Canadian external policy. Mackenzie King, like so many well-meaning men of the era, had first seen the League as a symbol of civilized diplomacy. Another world war seemed unthinkable, and he as­ sumed that major international disputes would be settled by negotiations. The League not only provided the necessary machinery for negotiation but it could also provide the sanction of world public opinion to ensure that negotiations would be effective. He believed that world opinion would be an effective deterrent and that any would-be aggressor would recoil from the threat of being branded as an international outlaw. Japan's aggression against China raised doubts about the effectiveness of this deterrent but it was not until Italian aggression in Ethiopia that King realized that some aggressors would not be coerced by world opinion. In such cases, should the League deplore the aggression but take no further action, or should League members declare war on the aggressor? King made his position clear after the Ethiopian crisis. He bluntly rejected the idea of a coercive League because he realized that Canadians were not prepared to fight for the principle of collective security. When King took office in 1935 he supported the League to the extent of imposing economic sanctions against Italy; economic sanctions seemed the most effective way of expressing disapproval of aggression. He made it clear in his first public statement on the issue as prime minister that this did not imply any commitment to impose military sanctions. The repudia­ tion of Riddell did not involve any change in this policy. King expressed his readiness to extend economic sanctions to include such items as oil, if the Committee of Eighteen and the League itself agreed to such an exten­ sion, although he was not prepared to take the initiative. At this stage the League was still a focus of Canadian external policy. The Ethiopian crisis was significant because it made King realize more 15

1 5

James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada, n (Toronto, 1965), provides the best account of this and of subsequent incidents in external affairs, although his interpretation of Mackenzie King's policies does not always coincide with mine.

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MACKENZIE KING AND NATIONAL UNITY

clearly the implications of League membership. World opinion had not deterred Mussolini. Disapproval, in the form of economic sanctions, had had no effect. On the other hand, if economic sanctions had been extended and had threatened to thwart Mussolini's ambitions, he might have re­ taliated and involved League members in a war. Italy would doubtless have been defeated, but in the meantime Canada would have faced a dangerous internal crisis. Canadian participation would have been opposed by Cana­ dian isolationists and by Canadians who suspected that British imperial interest lay behind the opposition to Mussolini's aim of creating an African empire. This would have meant an open clash with Canadians who sup­ ported the idea of collective security through the League and with those who wanted to be at Britain's side. In his diary King recorded a revealing discussion with Ernest Lapointe soon after the government took office: If the Government was to decide for military sanctions, he [Lapointe] would resign at once. He also said that if we did not, and the question came to be one which we had to decide, he believed that Illsley [sic] and one or two others would immediately resign. In other words, if the question of military sanctions comes we shall have the old war situation over again, with the party divided as it was at the time of conscription. My own feeling is that, if Canada carries out her part with respect to the economic sanctions, we should not be expected to go further. ... Our own domestic situation must be considered first, and what will serve to keep Canada united. To be obliged to go into war would force an issue that might become a battle between imperialism and independence. At all costs, this must, if at all possible, be avoided. 16

The issue was avoided for the moment - the Italian army conquered Ethiopia while the question of further economic sanctions was still under discussion at Geneva - but King could not afford to risk another incident in the future in which the League might insist on showing some teeth. War was inevitable if some country was intent on aggression but it need not be a large-scale war involving a number of major world powers. The principle of collective security was dangerous because it could transform a local in­ cident into a war involving all League members. Not all Canadians, how­ ever, would be prepared to fight for the principle of collective security and the country would be divided. Rather than hope for the best King decided to forestall this danger. He told the League Assembly in 1936 that it should rely solely on mediation and conciliation and on the influence of world opinion to preserve world peace. Canada, at least, he explained, was not prepared to accept "automatic commitments to the application of force." 17

1 6 1 7

W. L. Mackenzie King, Diary, 29 October 1935. The speech is printed in R. A. Mackay and E. B. Rogers, Canada Looks (London, 1938), 363-9.

Abroad

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H. BLAIR NEATBY

The speech was a clear and unequivocal rejection of the principle of col­ lective security. The speech cut through the fuzzy sentimentality with which many Canadians had shrouded the League. Now that the distinction had been made between the League as a kind of military alliance against aggressors and the League as an international forum for discussion, it became clear that few Canadians really wanted a military alliance. They might speak hopefully of the power of reason at Geneva or nostalgically of the League that might have been, but after 1936 the discussions of Canadian policy were not muddled by confusion between the two possible roles of the League or by uncertainty about the government's position. Most Cana­ dians apparently shared King's preference for conciliation rather than col­ lective security. In effect the League was eliminated as a significant factor in the debate over Canada's external relations. With the League eliminated, the debate was thus focused on the cru­ cial question of Canada's relations with Great Britain. If Britain went to war should Canada go to war? Such a hypothetical question had no easy answer. Extreme imperialists would have replied with a prompt affirmative, and extreme isolationists would have been equally prompt with a negative answer, but most Canadians would have given a qualified response. It would depend on circumstances. For many it would depend on whether Canadian interests were at stake, although even the definition of Canadian interests would have offered ample scope for prolonged arguments. For many Canadians, however, there was a preliminary question which had not yet been resolved. Was there any assurance that the question of Canadian participation would be decided on the basis of Canadian interests, however they were defined? What of the possibility that the decision might be de­ termined by the bonds of empire - a combination of British pressure and colonial subservience - and that Canada would be drawn into Britain's war whether or not Canadian interests were at stake? This was not an academic question. King himself saw no significant divergence between British and Canadian interests. Both the British and Canadian people wanted peace; if circumstances forced the British to fight, he assumed that Canadians would react in much the same way to these same circumstances. He believed that Britain was Canada's first line of defence and also that in any war Britain's cause would be the cause of liberty and democracy. The fortunate conjuncture of Britain and the side of right would mean that a consensus favouring Canadian participation was possible. The major obstacle was psychological. Champions of Cana­ dian autonomy would be blind to any arguments for participation if they 18

1 8

For Canadian reaction to the speech see Eayrs, In Defence of Canada, n, 39.

MACKENZIE KING AND NATIONAL UNITY

65

believed that the decision had really been imposed on Canada because of the British connection. In order to assert Canadian autonomy they would oppose participation. A national consensus would only be possible if these autonomists could be convinced that the decision had been made by Can­ ada and for Canada. A sense of autonomy was thus a prerequisite for na­ tional unity if war came. Mackenzie King would naturally have preferred to avoid any decision on participation. He had been through the wartime crisis of 1917 and knew the destructive emotions which a war could rouse. An impassioned debate over participation, added to the internal divisions of the 1930s, could be disastrous. He therefore supported appeasement at the Imperial Conference of 1937. He was not so naive, however, as to think that a Euro­ pean war could be easily averted. Like many of his contemporaries, he oscillated between cautious optimism and dark despair as one crisis was passed, only to be followed by another. Thus King's desperate hope for peace did not blind him to the possibility of war and to the need to prepare Canadian public opinion to face a decision on participation. For King this meant that Canadian autonomy had to be made credible and convincing. For the years from 1936 to 1939 every aspect of external policy was dominated by this aim. The formal assurance of autonomy was summed up in King's oftrepeated assurance that Parliament would decide. This was not an attempt to deny personal responsibility for a decision which might be unpopular. He knew that the initiative would have to come from the government and, as he told the House of Commons, his government would first have to propose a course of action which Parliament could then approve or re­ ject. "Parliament will decide" was none the less a salutory reminder that the members of Parliament had the power of veto. The government could not secretly commit Canada to be at Britain's side if war came. Nor could a hasty but final decision be made by Order-in-Council. Canadians, through their representatives in Parliament, would have the opportunity to revoke any government decision. King was reminding his listeners that the Canadian Parliament was one of the guarantees of Canadian autonomy. The doubters also had to be reassured that the government looked on the outside world through Canadian spectacles. King's speeches on foreign affairs were intended to give this reassurance They almost invariably began with a summary of the various Canadian attitudes and showed a sympathetic understanding and appreciation of the different and often conflicting points of view. Whatever the final decision of the government might be, all Canadians at least knew that their point of view had not been 19

1 9

House of Commons Debates, 30 March 1939, p. 2418.

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H. BLAIR NEATBY

ignored or summarily dismissed. E. J. Tarr compared King's performance in the House of Commons in 1937 to that of a juggler keeping the balls of Isolationism, North Americanism, Imperialism, and Collectivism in the air at once. "One sees them going up and coming down with rhythmic regularity, and suddenly they are lost in the polished phrases of a plati­ tudinous peroration - the magician's handkerchief." It was not a satisfying performance for those who wanted the government to seize one ball with both hands and let the others drop, but at least all groups knew that their position was receiving consideration. It was, as Tarr concluded, "states­ manship honestly striving for national unity." Speeches were not enough. Actions would speak louder than words, and any action which implied that Canada would inevitably be at Britain's side if war came would convince the sceptical that the vaunted autonomy of Canada was a myth. By the end of 1936 King felt that Canadian de­ fence expenditures had to be increased. War might come and Canada must be prepared. The decision was bound to be unpopular among isolationists, but it would also be denounced by autonomists if defence expenditures seemed designed for co-operation with Great Britain in case of war. Spend­ ing money on the army would be interpreted as preparing an expeditionary force and would imply that the die was already cast. The defence estimates introduced in 1937 directed most of the increased expenditures towards the air force and were defended as being necessary for the defence of Canada and Canadian coastal waters. There was no implication of co­ operation with Great Britain. King knew that an air force would be the most useful contribution Canada could make if it did become involved in a European war, so the expenditures were also justified on these grounds, but he emphasized the aspect of home defence because this would not pro­ voke the suspicions of autonomists. It was not always possible to find a compromise which would make future co-operation with Great Britain possible and yet would not commit Canada to such co-operation. In the summer of 1938 the British govern­ ment asked to train pilots in Canada for the Royal Air Force. Surely Canada would allow the mother country to take advantage of its vast open spaces? Mackenzie King, however, rejected the proposal and refused to yield in spite of bitter criticism by the Conservative opposition. It was obvious that permission once given could not be withdrawn if Britain went to war - one of the aims of the scheme was to establish training areas safe from enemy attack - and that Canada would thus have the status of a belligerent. Committing Canada to co-operate in the training of British 20

21

2 0

2 1

Quoted in Soward et al., Canada in World Affairs, 57. For details see Eayrs, In Defence of Canada, n, 91-103.

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MACKENZIE KING AND NATIONAL UNITY

pilots, as King commented in his diary, "would do the Empire more harm than good by, first of all, creating disunion in Canada, and secondly, prejudicing in advance the position that might be taken at a later time. The Bren gun contract posed the same problem. As early as 1936 the British government wanted to place an order for Bren guns in Canada and asked the Canadian government to suggest a manufacturer. The contract would mean jobs for Canadians. More important, Canada had also adop­ ted the Bren as its infantry machine gun, and a joint contract would reduce the cost of equipping the Canadian army. The objection to such an arrange­ ment was that it would implicitly commit Canada to supplying munitions to Great Britain in time of war, and again the possibility of Canadian neu­ trality would be compromised. King procrastinated, and it was not until 1938, when the British insisted on an immediate decision, that he finally agreed. Even then the appearance of autonomy was maintained. The Brit­ ish and Canadian governments signed separate contracts with the John Inglis Company, even though the terms were the same and the price per gun depended upon both contracts being signed. For two years King had run the risk of criticism for indecision and for lack of co-operation with Great Britain because a decision might prejudice his claim that Canada was autonomous. Fortunately for him George Drew misguidedly accused the government of corruption over the Bren contract and so lost the chance to convict the government of the lesser fault of prolonged indecision. King himself was not entirely satisfied with this policy of refusing to make any commitments until the outbreak of war, and explained his di­ lemma frankly in the House of Commons in 1938. "It must be recog­ nized," he admitted, "that this policy is not wholly satisfactory, not a completely logical position. Like many other policies it is not an ideal solution; it is only the best of the available solutions." But the problem of national unity could not be ignored. "It should be plain to everyone ... that to force an issue like this upon the country would bring out deep and in some cases fundamental differences of opinion, would lead to further strain upon the unity of a country already strained by economic depression and other consequences of the last war and its aftermath." The need to prove that Canada was not committed in advance to support Great Britain left King no alternative. The Munich crisis in September 1938 was a turning point in King's 22

23

24

25

2 2 2 3

2 4

2 5

Diary, 13 May 1938. For details see Report of the Royal Commission on the Bren Machine Gun Contract (Ottawa, 1939). George A. Drew, "Canada's Armament Mystery," Maclean's Magazine, 1 Sep­ tember 1938. House of Commons Debates, 24 May 1938, p. 3184.

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external policy. Munich had ended with peace, but the narrow margin be­ tween peace and war showed that war might come at any time. It was no longer enough to be all things to all men, in the sense of showing an under­ standing of all shades of Canadian opinion. The sense of autonomy must still be preserved, but Canadians must now be prepared for the imminent possibility of participation in a European war. King still could not risk an open commitment to be at Britain's side during the Munich crisis. He knew that his government would support Britain if Chamberlain's negotiations failed and war broke out. He also knew that he would then be blamed by his critics for not having helped to deter Hitler by showing that Chamberlain had Canada's support. A public declaration during the negotiations, however, would have meant that Chamberlain, and not the Canadian government, would openly be de­ ciding Canada's fate. King did discuss the possibility of such an announce­ ment with his cabinet. Various opinions were expressed, but Lapointe's reaction was probably decisive. Lapointe was in Geneva, but he cabled that in his opinion the situation in Canada was still delicate. "Submit that Parliament should be summoned, if war declared and no definite com­ mitments made meanwhile ... I do not see how I could advise any course of action that would not only be opposed to personal convictions and sacred pledges to my own people but would destroy all their confidence and pre­ vent me from carrying weight and influence with them for what might be essential actions." For the French Canadians, at least, support for par­ ticipation would depend on avoiding any pledge before war broke out. In the session of 1939, however, King carefully tried to tell Canadians that war might be unavoidable. He began in January by reminding the House of Commons that in case of a European war Canada could not avoid being involved to some extent, repeating Sir Wilfrid Laurier's phrase that "if England was at war we are at war and liable to attack." Two months later he made an even more positive statement: "If there were a prospect of an aggressor launching an attack on Britain with bombers raining death on London, I have no doubt what the decision of the Cana­ dian people will be. We would regard it as an act of aggression, menacing freedom in all parts of the British Commonwealth." He went on to say that a war fought "over trade or prestige in some far corner of the world" would be a different matter but it was clear that the Canadian government intended to support Great Britain in case of a major European war. Now more than ever national unity depended on convincing doubting 26

27

28

Lapointe Papers, Lapointe to King, 24 September 1938. House of Commons Debates, 16 January 1939, p. 52. s Ibid., 20 March 1939, p. 2043.

2 6 2 7 2

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MACKENZIE KING AND NATIONAL UNITY

Canadians that this would be the necessary and proper decision. In another foreign policy speech at the end of March, King repeated his opinion that "the destruction of Britain would be a menace to the freedom of every nation of the British Commonwealth," but he also made it clear that the decision to participate would be made with regret. In one sentence he captured the sense of futility shared by so many Canadians: "The idea that every twenty years the country should automatically and as a matter of course take part in a war overseas for democracy or self-determination of other nations, that a country which has all it can do to run itself should feel called upon to save, periodically, a continent that cannot run itself, and to these ends risk the lives of its people, or risk bankruptcy and political dis­ union, seems to many a nightmare and sheer madness." A nightmare it might be, but King was pleading with his compatriots to realize that they could not exorcize this nightmare by hiding themselves under the blanket of isolation. Even more important was his solemn promise that, if war came, there would be no conscription. He felt safe in making this promise because, as he explained, the days of large-scale infantry battles were gone. But his aim was clearly to reassure French Canadians that the bitter controversies of 1917 would never be repeated. Lapointe followed King by promising that he himself would never support conscription, but he went on to argue that neutrality would be impossible if Britain was involved in a major war. No government could enforce impartial treatment of all belligerents, in­ terning British vessels, and forbidding enlistment in Canada: "I ask any one of my fellow countrymen whether they believe seriously that this could be done without a civil war in Canada." In the debate that followed English-Canadian spokesmen for the opposition parties showed a sober recognition of the need to preserve national unity and many FrenchCanadian speakers expressed confidence in the government's guarantee that war would not mean conscription. Mackenzie King could take some credit for the remarkable moderation of the debate and the even more remarkable support for the government's position from all sides of the House. The moment of decision came in September 1939. By then it was a foregone conclusion. The government introduced a declaration of war in a special session and Parliament did decide - and without the necessity of a recorded vote. Even at this late date, however, many members consented with reluctance. Ernest Lapointe made a moving appeal to his compatriots 29

30

31

» Ibid., 31 March 1939, p. 2422. so 2419. Ibid., 2467. 2

3 1

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H. BLAIR NEATBY

to accept the inevitable, but even so three French-Canadian members spoke against participation. The CCF party was almost split over the issue. The National Council of the CCF, at an emergency meeting, reversed its previous policy of neutrality by a majority vote, but this majority was only achieved by a compromise which would limit Canada's contribution to food and munitions. J. S. Woodsworth, leader of the party, resigned be­ cause he could not accept even this limited degree of participation. National unity had been preserved. A national consensus had been achieved, reluctantly and with scattered opposition, but none the less a national consensus which had the support of representatives from each cultural group and from every region of Canada. Events in Europe had helped to make Canadians aware of the seriousness of the crisis and had strengthened the sympathy and support for Great Britain. Within Canada the solemn promise not to introduce conscription had had its effect. But there can be no doubt that the degree of support for participation was made possible by Mackenzie King's consistent efforts to convince Cana­ dians that now, when the decision was being made, it was being made by an autonomous Canada. Freed from the suspicion that Canada was a British puppet, many accepted the decision who would otherwise have opposed it. King was more than the leader who divided Canada least. He was also the leader who united Canadians on the fateful decision to go to war. 82

83

3 2 3 8

Kenneth McNaught, A Prophet in Politics (Toronto, 1959), 305-7. The phrase comes from F. H. Underhill, In Search of Canadian (Toronto, 1960), 135.

Liberalism

CANADA AND THE WORLD

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Canada and the Pax Americana JOHN W. HOLMES

I SHOULD E X P L A I N this title. Why not the traditional term, "CanadianAmerican Relations"? Aside from the fact that it stimulates instant bore­ dom, we miss the point if we discuss our relationship as if it were between two sovereign though unequal powers or even a simple alliance. The United States, whether we like it or not, is a power unlike others. It is the heart of a neo-imperial system, involved all over the world through alliances, treaties, and understandings, most of them ambiguous like the Monroe Doctrine. It also has its responsibility to fulfil the obligations of a per­ manent member of the Security Council of the United Nations - a responsi­ bility it must take more seriously because other permanent members, like Britain and France, are unable to stretch a very long arm on behalf of the world organization. It has had obligations thrust upon it and it has assumed obligations to preserve world order by maintaining a balance in favour of itself and those it chooses to support. Pax Americana seems also to be a more appropriate term than Ameri­ can Empire because it is less pejorative. A more important reason is that the American international network is not like recent empires. To find any­ thing similar one must go back to the Romans, who maintained their hegemony by special relationships with other peoples. The Americans, reluctant to become involved in direct rule, prefer to hold influence and authority through bilateral or multilateral associations adapted to varying requirements of politics, economics, and geography. Of course imperial powers have usually assumed local governing functions only when they had to do so to protect commercial or security interests they had already ac­ quired. We witness in South Vietnam this persistent dilemma of Washing­ ton: the need to allow a government to acquire responsibility by standing 1

2

1

2

I am encouraged to use this term also because it is the title of a book by Ronald Steel (New York, 1967) which defines the system very well. William Appleman Williams says, "Empire is as American as apple pie," but those are still fighting words to most of his countrymen. See George Liska, Imperial America (Baltimore, 1967) for a provocative com­ parison of the Roman system and what he thinks the American "empire" could be.

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on its own feet and the temptation to interfere to assure effective and decent government. The Pax Americana is an effort to maintain or, as some would say, impose, a world order favourable to the interests of the United States but assumed to be favourable also to the interests of others. "The central lesson we have drawn from our experience," says Walt Rostow, special assistant to President Johnson, " ... is that our main task is the organization of a durable peace." The American imperial style, however, is reflected in his other comment: "We see in regionalism a way not of returning to isola­ tionism but of leaving the nations of the various regions to do as much for themselves as they can." In the benevolence of its intentions and its confidence of a moral mis­ sion the Pax Americana resembles the Pax Britannica which kept the seas free for itself and others before the First World War. It has taken over from that Pax, but it is more extensive. It operates within the new condi­ tions of a nuclear age, which make it more powerful but more vulnerable. As for the missionary zeal, all imperial systems - and I include the Soviet may be accused of hypocrisy, but it is important for us to examine them as historical phenomena. They are capable of good intentions and good deeds, selfish assertion of power, idealism, delusion, and miscalculation. They can be distasteful and indispensable at the same time. It is particularly important for Canadians and others who profit from a peaceful world to judge this American system in all its aspects. A peace­ ful world, it must be added, is not one which preserves the status quo, for it would crack of its own rigidity. It is one of continuing revolution directed towards improving the lot of all men, not to replacing one tyranny by another. Anarchy, international lawlessness, not communism, is the major menace. We must not judge the American system by its follies alone. Like all political systems it is fallible. The Vietnam episode could prove a misjudgment of such proportions that the system would be destroyed by it. American idealism transformed into what Walter Lippmann calls globalism can go terribly astray, but we would be the losers if it was replaced by cynicism and isolationism. The compelling reason to end the fighting in Vietnam is to prevent American power from discrediting itself. Americans themselves are partly to blame for the lack of understand­ ing. They have been misled by their own moral arrogance - a fault common to all English-speaking peoples. They promoted the dismantling of other empires for some sensible reasons but also in the belief that, as Americans were purer of heart than other men, former colonial peoples would accept America as their benevolent protector. That conviction sucked them into Vietnam. The belief that they could do better by developing peoples was 3

3

Sir Montague Burton Lecture, University of Leeds, 23 February 1967.

CANADA AND THE PAX AMERICANA

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not without foundation. They have greater resources to fulfil the responsi­ bilities of enlightened imperialism. They have been generous but impatient, and are now disillusioned by the mistrust of those they seek to help. They failed to foresee also that as a result of their tactics they would be left alone in their newly assumed responsibility for world order. I do not accept the complaint of European reactionaries that it would have been in the Ameri­ can interest to preserve their empires for them. These empires were not the wave of the future. The Americans must be given credit for assuming so much of the economic burden of sustaining former dependencies. It was inevitable, however, that former imperial powers would feel aggrieved and disposed to let the Americans cope by themselves. The Americans, confident of their capacity to put the world right, have been lacking in imagination rather than in benevolence. Notable has been their failure, for example, to appreciate the Commonwealth, the transfor­ mation of an empire into an institution designed to play a part, limited but valuable, in buttressing the fragile structure of intercontinental and inter­ racial co-operation. The Commonwealth was tolerated but never given the backing which would have helped it in its present crisis of credibility. (Per­ haps that would have been too much to expect from the Commonwealth's first drop-out.) The Europeans were encouraged in a continental regional­ ism which has led to their abandoning responsibility for world security to the United States. The British, who have doggedly stood by the Ameri­ cans out of loyalty as well as dependence, were told to abandon their Commonwealth obligations - mocked as nostalgia for imperial glory and shut themselves up in Europe. The Anglo-American "special relation­ ship" was derided, and the Anglo-American alliance, which has meant so much for world security, is being extinguished. Ironically, Americans are now excoriating the British for abandoning Aden and their other commit­ ments east of Suez. The last partner capable of sharing their world respon­ sibilities is about to give up. To be fair, there has been a certain inevitability in this process. The disparity in power, wealth, and technology between the European countries and the United States has made partnership all but impossible. In security matters it is hard for the United States to avoid unilateral decisions. A mechanism to make this alliance effective and acceptable to weak and strong alike is hard to envisage. The Americans have also created difficulties for themselves because the rigidity of their ideology, in the past more than the present, has left their associates sceptical. They too often mistook native revolt for inter­ national conspiracy. As a result their convictions about world order often fail to convince. The extension of their commitments to what look like

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hopeless causes has worried even those who agree with them on the need to "contain" communism. With the decline of cold war enthusiasm, the role of the United States as guardian of the world against communism is being written off. If the Soviet Union and China do not intend to march across Europe and Asia, it is argued, then the peace of the world is assured; we can disband our armies and devote our energies to economic develop­ ment. This belief that United States military power has been accumulated to deal only with the caricature of an antagonist encourages the view that disarmament of the United States and disbandment of its alliances is the path to peace. A half-truth creates a dangerous non sequitur. In Canada and elsewhere there is an undiscriminating opposition to arms, armed forces, and the military brass, all assumed unjustifiably to be bloodthirsty. It is a witless anti-militarism, lacking the integrity of pacifism as a personal philosophy. Its advocates deplore the use of force but demand it in situ­ ations of their own choosing - Rhodesia, for example. Herein lies the non sequitur. If the Americans were wrong in attrib­ uting all disturbances to the communists, then good behaviour of the communist countries is no guarantee of world security. The racial and nationalist conflicts in Africa, for example, will not disappear if Moscow and Peking renounce Marx. Let me illustrate why we need security forces regardless of detente. The confrontation of Malaysia by Indonesia is the kind of aggression to be expected regardless of the cold war. After his meeting with Vice-President Humphrey in January 1 9 6 8 , President Kaunda of Zambia told reporters that only swift action by the United States could avert a racial and ideological catastrophe in southern Africa. At the same time Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore was in London pleading with the British not to evacuate their base - for security as well as financial reasons. India called on the United States and Britain for help when it was invaded. The United Nations needed American assistance to complete its mission in the Congo. Greece and Turkey have been persuaded from combat by American naval pressure. The Middle East has been preserved from selfdestruction by American and Soviet pressures backed by military power. (It would have been better if they had been able to prevent fighting, but they did curb it.) Only the prospect of French intervention prevents many African states from a sordid series of coups and countercoups. The most saintly leader of Africa, Julius Nyerere, asked Canada to train his military forces so that he could preserve the security he needs to develop his country. Who will help this good man if his plans are upset by a conspiracy which may have nothing to do with Moscow or the CIA? Simple doctrines of non-intervention avoid the problem. And assertion of the authority of 4

4

Charles Taylor in the Toronto Globe and Mail, 8 January 1968.

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the United Nations ignores the fact that we of the United Nations can apply only the power which we muster from among our membership. A super-power cannot avoid the consequences of its own strength. Even if it refrains from the exertion of positive force, it exerts negative force. Consider, for example, the United States predicament over the export of arms. If it sells arms to the Latin American countries, it stimulates an arms race. If it refuses, it is denying arms to lesser powers and dictating the strategic balance. I do not justify American policies on arms sales, which are scandalous, although no more so - except in scale - than those of other arms-producing countries. I suggest that in the absence of international regulation the super-power cannot simply abstain. A similar dilemma applies in aid policy, even though there are international institutions in this field. Withholding aid is just as much a weapon as giving it. American investment may bring undue influence in the recipient country, but these funds may put a country in a stronger position to preserve its indepen­ dence. We cannot simply order the United States to stop interfering. In many cases it is doing not very satisfactorily what should be done by international institutions, but the international institutions do not exist and for that lack we are all to blame. Too much having been made of the cold war, there is a tendency to exaggerate its decline. It is, of course, absurd to go on saying ritually that communists may have altered their tactics but their intentions have not changed. The world is changing and they with it. If they ever did contem­ plate conquering the world by military force, which I gravely doubt, they know now it cannot be done. There may be some half-mad militarists or technocrats in the United States who would like to run the world, but we can count on the American people never to accept the austerity involved. If any super-power is going to acquire world hegemony, most of us would prefer the Americans, but no country could sustain such a burden without corruption or without collapsing of its own weight. That is why we must continue groping to organize power and authority in the United Nations. We are particularly conscious at present of the danger of the United States jumping too quickly into intervention. We must not forget, however, that the communists' doctrine of supporting whatever they choose to nominate as "wars of liberation" remains a serious threat to UN authority. They should not be encouraged by an abdication of resistance. If we have reached a more hopeful stage in relations between East and West, this has come out of confrontation, not by the abandonment of resistance. This is a time to think about reciprocal not unilateral dismantling of the military structures which have brought us not peace or certainty but more hope of continuing security than we have had for centuries.

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This question is often confused by contradiction between a country's capabilities and its intentions. Obviously we must not judge the intentions of countries by their military capabilities. The matter, however, is more complicated than it appears to those who call it absurd for the NATO powers to maintain a military posture against the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union has no interest in attacking the West. That estimate of Soviet in­ tentions is probably correct, although one should be cautious about the intentions of any government subject to sudden replacement. We are left, however, with a serious question whether to ignore the fact that Soviet capability of destroying the United States, and probably Canada as well, is increasing daily. I do not judge their intentions by their more effective offence - or defence; it is hard to distinguish - as I would not judge the intentions of the United States by their capacity for overkill. I recognize furthermore that Soviet armament is a response to American armament which is a response to Soviet armament, etc. The United States is consider­ ably overinsured against Soviet capability, but in the maintenance of bal­ ance there are technological factors which make calculations difficult. There is a strong argument for both sides feeling impregnable; security encourages good sense. If the United States were unilaterally to disarm or abandon the arms-balance, I would fear not just the recklessness of Mos­ cow. I would fear the susceptibility to panic of Congress. Those who lived through the 1930s know the demoralization that comes from a conscious­ ness of weakness. "International security is entering a dangerous phase," according to Leonard Beaton. Having come to understand some of the problems of living with nuclear weapons, an older and more insidious threat is starting to emerge. The powers which have been guaranteeing the security of small nations throughout the world are becoming perplexed and weary. They are beginning to question the purpose of it all. ... In a few years, the aligned and neutralists, the large and the small, could find themselves living in a world in which security will depend on the size and efficiency of each country's own battalions. All the hopes of economic development could be lost if the great majority of weak nations could not rely on a security structure maintained with patient determination by the strong. Mr Beaton, like most Canadians, has doubts about the us commitment in Vietnam. Of this he says, however: "No one can predict what effect this experience will have on America's view of the world: but there is a real danger that the wrong conclusion will be drawn and the United States will drastically reduce its support for the world security system. The con-

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sequences of this are appalling and could embark the world on a period of chaos and disorder such as it has not known for centuries." We must get the Vietnam war into historical perspective. George Liska, who argues for an American Empire on Roman lines, maintains that Americans should accept Vietnam as the "first imperial war." Walt Rostow, on the other hand, believes that if the United States proves to the communists that such wars do not pay, this will be the last great confron­ tation of the postwar era. I do not like Liska's cynical Realpolitik, but he obscures reality less than Rostow. I differ with Liska in the belief that the United States would carry on wars like Vietnam as a matter of routine and in several places at once. Still, whatever happens in Vietnam, we can ex­ pect further wars and disturbances on the periphery between zones of great power interest. We are most unlikely, as Rostow hopes, to enter a mil­ lennium in which all peoples bow before American power, renounce their instincts towards aggression, and settle down nicely to decrease their popu­ lations and increase their standards of living. War and violence existed before the Viet Cong began murdering civic officials and the United States started using napalm even though we did not watch such horrors in our living rooms. We should not accept them as inevitable, but they will not go away if we simply express repulsion. Somebody has to do something to repress violence, and it is likely to require more force and permanent commitment than are involved in throwing a snowball through the window of an American consulate. My concern here is with political and strategic aspects, but the same paradox is evident in the economic aspect. It has been well stated by another Canadian, Lionel Gelber, in a recent article in the Yale Review: "To withstand the American economic impact and yet make the most of the economic dynamism that the American economy generates - that is the predicament in which, by accident rather than design, a vibrant American titan has caught its own allies. The economic and political energy of the United States are opposite sides of the same coin. She cannot have the one without the other. But neither can those to whom, like it or not, the Ameri­ can role means so much." The explosion of American technological capa­ city has enabled American enterprises to extend power and a measure of control throughout the non-communist world. This has been good for the United States, but it has also been a major factor in raising world standards of living. If this is economic imperialism, it is an unprecedented variety. It cannot be coped with by parroting Marxist irrelevancies. On the other hand, it does not help to pretend that it is strictly humanitarian. There are 5

6

5 Round Table, no. 223 (July 1966), 215-16. "The American Role and World Order," Yale Review, Summer 1968, p. 534. 6

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few forces more ruthless than Americans doing good. In Canada we need economic strength to enjoy the benefits of the titan without being run over in the process. It is foolish to deny that our involvement with the American economy has an effect on our foreign policy. Of course it has. It is even more foolish, however, to say that it alone determines our international relations. There are strong economic pressures on Canada to align itself with the United States. We have had no firm evidence that the United States would crudely retaliate with what might properly be called sanctions, if we do not. We have differed with them many times and suffered no such punishment. However, the disposition of Washington to treat the Canadian economy as exempt from measures applied to overseas countries is important to us. We keep a canny watch on Congress and the American administration because they can make our life exceedingly difficult. But these are facts of life in an interdependent world which affect all countries. The Indians are restrained in action and speech by their dependence - greater than ours - on American assistance. Even the Yugoslavs calculate the effect, or the timing, of their actions on the us Congress. Lest I seem a defeatist, how­ ever, let me emphasize that economic dependence is not one-sided. The great powers can be dependent on the weak - on the oil-producing coun­ tries for example. The United States is becoming more dependent on Cana­ dian resources to conduct its "imperial" policy and keep its own standard of living high. We have our chips. This is a real problem, but one to be met pragmatically and with discrimination, not with slogans. One aspect of this question of which we have become embarrassingly aware is the defence production sharing programme with the United States. Our industry is so much involved with American defence industry we can­ not contract out of their Vietnam supply unless we renounce a total pro­ gramme which is critically important to our economy. The Canadian gov­ ernment, in order not to contravene the Geneva Agreements of which we are a custodian, forbids the shipping of war materials from Canada to either side in Vietnam, but they are unable under present commitments to prevent Canadian produce finding its way there as a component. Our moral position would be strengthened if we ceased to profit from a war from which we abstain. If our objection is to the Vietnam campaign, how­ ever, should we withdraw from association in defence production with the leading power of the Atlantic Alliance to which we belong of our own will? Such a gesture, by weakening our economy, could lower resistance to the strong economy crowding our borders. The collapse of defence production industries would entail another drain of scientific brains. The argument that we could turn this skill to peaceful production is attractive and not to

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be rejected out of hand, but there would be a loss of technological momen­ tum if we cut ourselves off from American defence production. Facts to be deplored are not to be ignored. If one believes us policy is immoral such economic calculations are sordid. I am not here trying to argue against that position. My point is simply that whatever we do we should foresee the consequences. It would be ironic if by acts intended to establish our independence we undermined it, lost the privilege of our citizenship, and the exemption of our sons from the draft. The issue may be so important that we must take this risk, but let us realize that it would be drastic. It could put our continental relations on a new and less comfortable basis. We have learned how to live with American ignorance; we might have to learn to live with American ill will. Economic interests pose serious considerations for our foreign policy makers. They do not oblige us to be a "satellite" of the United States if we have the will to be otherwise. By concentrating on the refusal of the Canadian government to denounce the United States for its policy in Viet­ nam, our independentists ignore the more significant fact that, contrary to expectations, the United States is at war and we are not. The fact that the prime minister and secretary of state for external affairs criticize but do not denounce the United States is not in itself proof of weakness before Ameri­ can pressure. Their positions clearly reflect their convictions derived from the independent Canadian experience in both North and South Vietnam. There is no reason to think they would speak otherwise if they could dis­ regard practical considerations. My point here is not that Canadian policy is right or wrong but that a country which does not fight in a war in which its large neighbour is engaged is no "satellite." Our obligations in the Con­ trol Commission are a valid reason for non-belligerence, but they are not looked upon as such in Washington and they do not protect us from Ameri­ can wrath. The Johnson administration did not like what they heard from Ottawa. They have got the message of disapproval more clearly than it has come through to many Canadians, and they are not pleased. We have suffered for our independence, if not drastically. The official relationship has lost, for the present at least, the intimacy of close allies. We are less likely to be listened to than the Australians. These are consequences to be ex­ pected. They are bearable. Washington could turn much nastier if our spokesmen became more critical. Whether we would be penalized eco­ nomically is doubtful so long as the United States, being at war, needs our resources and products. We are confused because we have thought of our relationship with the United States as that of allies. But alliances are assumed to act on the basis

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of consensus, and we know that this one does not. In the North Atlantic area there is something left of a consultative alliance and a pooling of military resources. Because of the disproportion of power it wields, the United States has much more than a single member's voice in strategic decisions. It largely controls the development of military technology and makes decisions which predetermine the strategy of the alliance. Neverthe­ less, the fact that major allies are on the ground in Europe gives them some leverage in European questions. The United States, however, appears less and less an Atlantic power and more and more a world power, and the major challenges now are beyond the North Atlantic. It has other alliances, such as the OAS and SEATO, where its policies are virtually unilateral. Americans, being friendly folk, feel more comfortable when they can asso­ ciate allies with their policies. Congress, however, retains its dedication to the principle of taxation without representation for foreigners in decision­ making. "The United States world preponderance is changing the meaning of the Western alliance," according to Maurice Duverger. During the Korean War, the British Prime Minister, with the moral support of all the European governments, was in a position to counsel moderation to Washington, and his words were heeded. T o d a y no European statesman has any influence over the American President's decision on Vietnam. In theory, these decisions concern the United States alone; in practice, things are very different. First, because of the Western alliance, Europeans are morally ac­ complices to an operation they do not approve of. Second, should American escalation in the Far East trigger a war between the great powers, the alliance with the United States would create a serious danger of involvement for Europe, even though the Atlantic Pact does not extend to A s i a . 7

And a Briton, Alastair Buchan, notes that "The cry of loneliness which Europeans hear from Washington cannot easily be reconciled with what seems to be the real desire of those who actually wield power there, namely, to have complete freedom of choice in an emergency. And as Vietnam has shown, it is difficult for the United States to retain the confidence and support of her forty-two allies in four continents, let alone influential nonaligned powers, if they have had no voice in the decisions which create the particular crisis situation." The United States has become the kingpin of interlocking alliances rather than the leader of a world alliance. Its position is thereby more flexible, but because its policy in Asia has been conceived without the NATO 8

7

8

Interplay, vol. 1, no. 3 (October 1967). Crisis Management (Paris, 1966).

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allies, not one of them is associated with the us war effort. Americans find this exasperating because many assume we should pay for protection. For our part, I think we must accept as inevitable that the United States is going to make its own strategic decisions whatever the provisions of its alliances. For its part, the United States must realize that countries like Britain or Canada, let alone France, will only in extreme circumstances go to war alongside the United States when the United States has gone to war by its own will. I doubt if Britain or Canada would stand idly by if the American world system was likely to collapse. It is hard to foresee a situation in which our military contribution would be indispensable, although our real estate might be - or even our moral support, for the opposition in the world to us policy in Vietnam is of such proportions now as to have strategic impli­ cations. It is probably easier for the United States to fight without the complication of allies. If our help or our soil were desperately needed, then the pressure on us from Washington would be much greater than it has been. Canada has, I think, as much freedom of action as a country with our worldly interests can expect. We could shut ourselves up more indepen­ dently if we wanted to be a more Spartan state. We might act more vigor­ ously and imaginatively, but that is a question of the quality of our policy, not its freedom. Like all other interdependent countries we are vulnerable. We know the United States will tolerate our abstention in Vietnam. We can only guess how it would react to our dissociation from NATO and continen­ tal defence. We have not found out because so far there has not been a con­ sensus in Canada disposed to this form of independence - a situation which could be attributed to our national folk wisdom or to our having been massaged by the American media. The consequences of dissociation would depend on the style in which we went about it and the purpose we had in mind. If we acted in a hostile manner, the consequences might be severe. We would have to stand up to strong pressure and intimidation - perhaps even mischief from the CIA. The justification would be that we were opening the United States to sub­ version and attack from other countries. We would be given the Caribbean classification. On the other hand if we sought amicably to alter our role in the alliance, stressing for ourselves overseas development and peace­ keeping, and looked to our defences so that the United States would have nothing to fear from our direction, then the reception would be different. Our disposition towards a role not antagonistic but complementary might even be welcomed. There is no guarantee that it would; much depends on who is president and who is secretary of state. We must ask ourselves, of course, whether it would be in our own

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interests to renounce the pooling of resources and provide adequate de­ fence from our own pockets. Because of its increasing dependence on missiles, the United States has become less interested in Canadian territory and Canadian collaboration in defence. I hasten to add that this trend can quickly be reversed by technological change or alterations of strategic view by the Pentagon. For the moment Canada rather than the United States may see more to gain from the perpetuation of NORAD or some other system of continental association in defence. Doing it on our own could be vastly more expensive. It would probably require national military service as in our models of neutrality, Sweden and Switzerland. Against this, of course, must be set the entangling nature of alliances. The continental mili­ tary association has not forced us into the Vietnam war, but it would make it harder for us to keep out of a spreading war in the Pacific. We cannot escape an ambivalent attitude to the United States role in the world as it now seems to be. There is a case for seeing this new American imperial system as pre­ sumptuous. The United States has assumed a right to patrol the seas and skies all over the world. It keeps part of its fleet in the distant Mediter­ ranean but it is affronted when the Russians, with a more obvious claim to call the eastern Mediterranean an outer defence area, seek to do likewise. It cries "piracy" when the North Koreans interfere somewhat rashly with its right to spy on them. It does not concede to other great powers the regional hegemony it claims in the western hemisphere. Even in that hemisphere the United States interprets the Monroe Doctrine on its own. Salvador de Madariaga has said that the Monroe Doctrine is not a doctrine but two dogmas: "the dogma of the infallibility of the American President and the dogma of the immaculate conception of American foreign policy." United States policies are largely unilateral. It informs its allies but does not consult them. As for international organizations, it will accept their judgments or use their procedures if it wills to do so but not otherwise. It is prepared to make a battleground of other countries to maintain the balance of power in its favour. As its military strength grows, there is a danger of domination by an industrial-military clique with a simplistic view of right and wrong. It has, along with glorious democratic traditions, a tradition of force. Americans can be inebriated by the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a magnificent tune for an iniquitous song. Those who think that their eyes have seen the glory and they have acquired a mandate from heaven to keep the truth marching on need watching. On the other hand the Americans have seen - and realized - visions which changed society for the better all over the world. We have to ask 9

9

Latin America between the Eagle and the Bear (New York, 1962), 74.

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ourselves about the United States, as about the United Nations: Even when we dislike what they are doing, what would we do without them? Canada is grateful to whoever keeps the seas and the air free, whether or not that power has been assigned the task by anyone but itself. There is not likely to be an international force capable of intervention everywhere it is needed. Only the United States and the Soviet Union could do that. The United States makes mistakes, but the record of the Soviet Union is less reassuring. Middle and small powers can provide peacekeeping operations, but the major powers must hold the ring. Even our peacekeeping missions are dependent upon American bases or American transport and, if it were not for the deterrent power of the United States, they might never be allowed to operate. We need the United States air force and fleet, as we once needed the British navy, to evacuate Canadians from troubled spots, rush aid to the survivors of earthquakes, and act as the one universal agency of relief and succour. We shall cry out for them if a blood-letting breaks out in southern Africa. We Canadians are frightened by the military power of the United States and its appalling arsenal - as so many Americans are. Nevertheless, most of us sleep better for knowing it exists while the world remains unpredictably restless. We want the Americans to give up nuclear weapons but not in order to leave other powers in possession. The Ameri­ cans are not as immaculate as their national tradition has led them to believe, but their record under unparalleled temptation is better than others under less temptation. Finally, they have the virtue of internal dis­ unity - a better guarantee of wise restraint than the disciplined unity of other great powers. Let us stop thinking of this as a problem peculiar to Canada. Our relationship with the giant has its own features because of our geography and our cultural vulnerability, but Australia's situation makes it more dependent upon the United States than we are. Britain, because of its economic weakness, has in some respects less independence than we. The Russians and Chinese, the Indians and Guatemalans have their own vari­ ations of the problem. For each of us it is a coming to terms with a fabulous country from whose power and wealth most of us expect much but of whose sheer size we are fearful. Importunate Canadians must also remem­ ber that the United States is meshed in special relationships with many other countries and will not give a first priority to Canadian positions on general policy matters just because of our propinquity. There are two biases in Canada which prevent a cool calculation of our interest. The first is the familiar mortification known as anti-American­ ism. I do not mean criticism of the United States on specific issues or even some of the general trends of policy now evident but rather the prejudice,

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sometimes deep but usually shallow, which finds satisfaction in evidence of American sin and error. There is surely no need to justify our right as citizens to disagree freely and loudly with American behaviour. The second bias which interferes just as much with clear thinking is what I might call anti-anti-Americanism. There are two forms of this mental weakness. One, which is the more respectable, is based on the simple faith that the United States is the leader of the "free world" and, because it protects our interests, we should sacrifice all our private views to support our champion. It usually disparages mere Canadian views. It trusts that simple faith in Big Brother is, like truth and beauty for Shelley, all we know on earth and all we need to know. The other and less respectable school just sees our crass material interests in going along with the Americans in order not to interfere with our big buck making. Anti-anti-Americanism is the colonial mentality transferred to another Mum - what we might call the "ready - yep - ready" attitude. The view of the United States as engaged on a crusade ignores the very practical fact that, although the case of the United States may be just, it is run by human beings who make mistakes and who need the counsel of their friends, including us. To counter it we have the new demonological approach. Although this approach is anti-American, it resembles a familiar attitude of many Americans to the Soviet Union or China. We all know that attitude: that all troubles in the world have their roots in Moscow, that association with or approval of Soviet policy, Soviet ballet, or even the Moscow Dynamos, is a flirtation with the devil. But those who deplore that American attitude most are transferring it to Washington, the more fashionable demon these days. Canadian policy is viewed by these people as good or bad not because of the merit of the causes it espouses but insofar as it displays independence of the United States. This attitude towards the United States, which has become a world-wide virus, has irrational ele­ ments in common with anti-semitism or puritanism. Canadians, a moderate people by repute, too often have immoderate views of what we can do in the world, fluctuating between pretention and denigration. We see ourselves either as saints and crusaders or fools and cowards. There is a little of all these qualities in a delusion into which I fear we are falling. We have some international reputation for hypocrisy, which is not entirely deserved. However, if we do not look more shrewdly at some of our most honoured principles, we may come to earn this repu­ tation. The danger is in self-deception by our better instincts. We are a decent and peaceful people who have created a community remarkably free of violence. We have an honourable military tradition, but we are one of the

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least militarist people in the world; we have been too busy growing wheat and playing the stock market. Our temptation has been to ignore the preva­ lence of violence in the world and leave the violent means of coping with it to peoples who like that sort of thing. It was revealing, I am afraid, that so much of the opposition in Canada to nuclear weapons was directed towards getting the nasty things off our soil, as if that painless gesture had anything much to do with the real problem. It was in the tradition of sanctimoniousness which has been the least attractive side of our religious life. Now, I think, we are in danger of using our internationalism, our devotion to the United Nations, as an escapist mechanism. It is no service to the U N to use it to avoid responsibility. The United States did so in the late 1950s when it substituted a "Leave it to Dag" attitude for a diligent effort to cope with world problems through the U N . This may have looked like deference to the U N but it was a repudiation of the responsibility for initiative required of the UN'S strongest member. It is no denial of loyalty to the U N to recognize that we cannot at present cope through it with all manifestations of violence which erupt. We recognized this honestly in 1949 when we reluctantly accepted the imperative of a North Atlantic Treaty under Article 51 of the U N Charter. We did so also when we agreed in 1954 to serve in the International Control Commissions for Indo-China even though they were not U N operations. In the latter case, of course, we were on the spot. We could not refuse because to have done so would have upset the armistice precariously achieved at Geneva. A refusal would also have made us look too conspicuously like a United States satellite because of the antipathy of the United States to the Geneva settlement. There was no escape in rhetoric. We glory in our participation in U N peacekeeping, and we should con­ tinue to do so. However, it costs us relatively little, abets our diplomacy, gives our armed forces one function on which there is general agreement, and raises few domestic problems. It would raise a lot of problems, how­ ever, if we were to take too much cognizance of the kinds of violence which are unlikely to be contained in this way. We are immaculate and fastidious about our peacekeeping. We could not consider helping our Malaysian brethren resist aggression from Sukarno because it was not a U N operation. The blunt fact, of course, was that anything that could, however distortedly, be called a defence of empire would raise all kinds of local hornets. Many Canadians call upon Britain to get rid of Ian Smith. Few recognize that we would be obliged by our theory of Commonwealth to join in any expedition which would forcibly remove him. For us, only the decent practice of mediation. There are a good many Canadians who talk very hawkishly about Vietnam but are content to leave the fighting to

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Americans. Our doubts over United States action in the Dominican Re­ public and its manipulation of the OAS are well based, but we, of course, want to keep out of that mess entirely. We did our duty by UNEF, but it would have been for others, if required, to break the blockage in the Gulf of Aqaba to fulfil a guarantee for which we had some considerable respon­ sibility. In every one of these cases there have been some good reasons for our not participating, including the danger of splitting the country. We must be honest enough, however, to recognize that even noble people like us are inhibited by domestic politics and an anxiety to keep our defence budget one of the lowest in the alliance. The tendency to attribute our reluctance always to moral discrimination recalls the more unattractive side of the foreign policy of Mackenzie King. Frank Underbill's famous comment that Mr King never learned that the world was inhabited by carnivorous animals has been excessively quoted, but it is worth repeating for the benefit of those Canadians, of all parties, who are his spiritual heirs. I have recently read these words by William R. Kintner, a former member of the planning staff of the us National Security Council: "For bet­ ter or worse, the United States cannot escape the dilemma of power. If the United States is to have the option of introducing constructive changes into the existing world order it must ensure its own and the world's security during the process of change." This assumption of a God-given responsi­ bility to run the world for its own good can be nauseating. It is frightening also because it is based on an illusion about the political efficacy of nuclear power which the Vietnam campaign is proving questionable. However, before we nice Canadians throw up, we had better make sure that we have some alternative plan for holding the world together. It had better be more practical than the ritual incantation of faith in a United Nations system which, when we get out of our pulpits, we recognize as an ideal to which we are working rather than a framework on which we can yet lean. The Americans may be assuming responsibilities they have no right to pre­ empt, and they may often be wrong-headed in the way they seek to carry them out, but there is at least a sense of responsibility there. The logic of my argument is not that we must abandon our indepen­ dence and join the Americans in what they are doing. The Americans want it to be their show and they will have to accept the consequences. I have criticized the Canadian disposition to leave the messy jobs to others and to blink the harder questions of international security. However, I recog­ nize that it is partly a consequence of the realization that we do not have and are not likely to have much influence on the policy of the super­ powers. We cannot be blindly committed to join a partner who calls all the 10

1 0

Peace and the Strategy Conflict (New York, 1967), 179.

CANADA AND THE PAX AMERICANA

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signals. For this reason there is an argument for us to explore for ourselves special military roles like peacekeeping. We may well consider also whether we might not make our major contribution to international order by economic means, an area in which we are a more considerable force. Various tasks for Canada within and without the alliance can be reasonably justified, provided they are recognized as complementary to and not a substitute for what other countries, large and small, are doing to keep the world from despair and anarchy. We can recognize the need for American world power without feeling obliged for either moral or practical reasons to be inevitably associated with the American military role. We do not much like the Pax Americana as a way of keeping the peace. Not many Americans, who pay for it with treasure and blood, like it either. Nevertheless Pax means peace, and we can advance from one kind of peace to a better kind more surely than we can move forward from chaos. We can move forward from a Pax Americana or a Pax Russo-Americana, but we are doomed if we revert to the graceless state in which only the weak care about international order. The struggle against international anarchy has been going on for cen­ turies. It has progressed by means of various instrumentalities: the de­ velopment of international law, regional and international alliances and organizations, the establishment of empires and the breaking up of empires. The policy of no country has been all virtuous, but some countries have felt more responsible than others for strengthening world order. It is true that they tend to identify the cause of world peace with the securing of their own interests, but they are not always wrong in doing so. Canada has on the whole marched with those who tried to strengthen the international fabric. We have done so a good deal more boldly after 1939 than before. The United States tradition until the last quarter-century was to stand aside, to shut off its own hemisphere from contagion. Now, however, it has embraced the cause of world order and done so with such enthusiasm that it is discouraging those who were once in the van. There are strong pres­ sures in Canada to contract out of the struggle to keep world order. This would be contrary to our best tradition, but we are faced with a real problem, nevertheless. We want to pull our weight but it becomes increas­ ingly difficult to see how we can affect policy. In our frustration it is tempt­ ing to go it alone, but we lack the national disposition to be loners. We do not want or hope to be a super-power, but we are an expectant major power. If we stay in the struggle I think we can hope, not to determine the path of the Pax Americana, but to contribute something to making it more agreeable for others. We more than any other people know that the Americans are pulled

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in contrary directions. If the United States is in danger of losing its moral perspective - and that is a persistent danger for all great powers - so too are its critics. They are being seduced by a new kind of history for the gullible. The "revisionist" historians have served a useful purpose in seeking to correct the bias in conventional interpretations of the cold war, but they have gone on to emulate on the Left the absurd simplifications of the Right. It is one thing to acknowledge that the suspicions, misunder­ standings, and miscalculations of the United States and the West played their part in the breakup of the wartime alliance, but to ignore, as they do, the dark isolationism of Moscow and the ruthless extension of Soviet power is just bad history. So is the interpretation of American policy as the unfolding of a plot for world empire. While recognizing the danger that all imperial power corrupts, it is, I insist, immoral not to discriminate between free societies with all their faults and unfree societies with what­ ever virtues they may have. We must not cut ourselves off from a position of friend and confidante of the United States, because it needs friends terribly in the dizzy loneli­ ness in which it finds itself. We must show the special understanding required when our friends are under too much pressure to be very under­ standing themselves. At the risk of sounding patronizing, I would say that we need to keep close to the Americans to encourage them in their great traditions, to encourage those Americans who have no taste for world domination and want to work with the rest of us to substitute for empires more just and representative institutions. It was a highly placed American - Mr McNamara no less - who said recently: "The United States has no mandate from on high to police the world, and no inclination to do so. ... The plain truth is the day is coming when no single nation, however power­ ful, can undertake by itself to keep the peace outside its own borders. Regional and international organizations for peace-keeping purposes are as yet rudimentary; but they must grow in experience and be strengthened by deliberate and practical cooperative action."

Antecedents and Origins of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs* EDWARD D. GREATHED A Democracy which undertakes to control its own foreign relations ought to know something about the subject. Elihu Root

INSTITUTES of international affairs are phenomena of the twentieth cen­ tury. They did not replace the pacifist, humanitarian traditions of the many peace societies which existed during the nineteenth century and continue to flourish in different forms today. Their unique character and contribu­ tions have not been their aims, but their methods. In their investigations of the causes of international conflict, these institutes have successfully substituted scholarly enquiry for moral fervour. Looking back to the initial impulse which resulted in the formation (1910) of one of the earliest of these institutes, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the American statesman and jurist, Elihu Root, wrote: It was necessary for us to pass off the field of mere persuasion and writing and speaking, which was tending to the repetition of platitudes and saying to people already convinced the things they had heard hundreds of times to get to the bottom of the real facts and, in addition, to carry to the minds of the people more of an understanding of what international relations are, what the basis of them is, what their rights and the limitation of their rights are, what their duties and obligations are, and the methods by which those rights could properly be maintained and those duties actually performed. ... [Our work] has gradually changed from the production of public excitement in favor of peace to the application of public feeling in favor of p e a c e . 1

* This is an edited version of a previously unpublished paper. I am indebted to many persons and institutions, too numerous to identify here, for much assistance in the preparation and subsequent scrutiny of this essay. I would, however, like to pay tribute to the cheerful, helpful staff of the CIIA - servants of a remarkably durable institution which last year (1968) celebrated its fortieth anniversary. Quoted by Nicholas Murray Butler, Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections ( N e w York, 1940), n, 104. See also Institutes of International Affairs (New York, 1953), 45-6. 1

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The shock of the First World War provided the immediate stimulus for the creation of the first direct antecedent of the Canadian Institute of Inter­ national Affairs ( C I I A ) . The Allied delegates who met in Paris in 1919 were appalled both by the horrors their nations had recently experienced and by the amount of technical data that had to be gathered to prepare the treaties of peace and to resolve the vast problems of reconstruction. Both the British and the Americans had shown foresight in recognizing the extent of this task. Well before the conclusion of hostilities both national groups, but especially the Americans, had recruited small armies of experts to assist their official delegations in the planning of the peace. This display of diligence brought together in Paris an exceptional group of men. Close rapport was struck between members of the British and American dele­ gations who were repeatedly drawn together in quite informal circum­ stances. Several years later, the editor of The Times, Geoffrey Dawson, wrote in a leading article that "These discussions, informal meetings, and talks were so profitable and instructive that it seemed a pity that facilities for the exchange of ideas and information should come to an end." The fact that they did not end with the conference was largely due to the initiative of Lionel Curtis, that indefatigable proponent of imperial federation, a prominent member of the Round Table movement, and a member of the British delegation in Paris. With his customary zeal, he revealed his plan for the establishment of an "Anglo-American Institute of Foreign Affairs" on 30 May 1919 at a dinner attended by members of both the British and American delegations. No Canadians were at this meeting. The meeting resolved to appoint a committee of three American and three British members "to prepare a scheme for the creation of an Institute 2

3

4

5

2

3

4

5

For a sampling of references to this subject see Harold Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (London, 1933), 24 ff.; James T. Shotwell in Institutes and Their Publics: Proceedings of the International Conference of Institutes of International Affairs (New York, 1953), 1-3; Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry: American Prepara­ tions for Peace, 1917-1919 (New Haven, 1963); G. P. de T. Glazebrook, Canada at the Paris Peace Conference (Toronto, 1942), chap. in. See The British Institute of International Affairs (London, 1922), 5. This pam­ phlet, hereafter cited as the BUA, contains both the report of the Provisional Committee to prepare a constitution for and select the original members of the BnA, and the report of the Inaugural Meeting of the BIIA held in London on 5 July 1920. Selections from the former report are in H. W. V. Temperley, ed., A History of the Peace Conference of Paris (London, 1920), I, v-vi. Quoted by Ivison S. Mac Adam in Institutes and their Publics, 88. See also the remarks of Lord Grey in the BUA, 22. See Stephen King-Hall, Chatham House: A Brief Account of the Origins, Pur­ poses and Methods of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London, 1937), 11 ff.; and The Council on Foreign Relations: A Record of Fifteen Years. 19211936 (New York, 1937), 5 ff.

THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

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of International Affairs." T h e committee of six reported back twice and on 17 June their recommendation w a s adopted: 6

Until recent years it was usual to assume that in foreign affairs each Govern­ ment must think mainly, if not entirely, of the interests of its own people. In founding the League of Nations, the Allied powers have n o w recognized that national policies ought to be framed with an eye to the welfare of society at large. The proceedings at Paris have shown h o w necessary it is to create some organization for studying the relation of this principle to practical questions as they arise. Resolved Therefore: (1) That those present undertake to form an Institute entitled "The Institute of International Affairs, founded at Paris, 1919," composed at the outset of two Branches, one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States. (2) That the purpose of this Institute should be to keep its members in touch with the international situation and enable them to study the relation between national policies and the interests of society as a w h o l e . 7

At this point it was recognized that no further development of the insti­ tute could be undertaken until the Paris Congress was over, and until the delegations had returned to their countries. On their arrival home, the American members of the proposed institute discovered that an informal group called the Council on Foreign Relations had been meeting since 1918 to hear speakers on international affairs, and to discuss American wartime and postwar policies. The Americans now joined forces - drop­ ping the idea of an international institute - and in 1921 incorporated a new Council on Foreign Relations. The stated purposes of the council echoed the sentiments of the Anglo-American talks in Paris: T o afford a continuous conference o n international questions affecting the United States, by bringing together experts o n statecraft, finance, industry, education and science; T o create and stimulate international thought among the people of the United States, and to this end, to co-operate with the Government of the United States and with international agencies, co-ordinating international activities b y elimi­ nating, insofar as possible, duplication of effort, to create new bodies, and to employ such other and further means, as from time to time may seem wise and proper. 8

The separation of the original American branch freed the British to establish a national institute perhaps better suited to their conditions and intellectual habits. Through its philosophy and the way in which it was e The BIIA, 16. Ibid., 16-17. The Council on Foreign Relations, 8. 7 8

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established, this British institute left its indelible stamp on the character of similar organizations which evolved later in other Commonwealth countries. In Paris, in May 1919, the British members of the Institute of Inter­ national Affairs formed a Committee of Selection, to prepare a list of original members for the British branch. After the Paris conference, the Committee of Selection and the British section of the Provisional Commit­ tee were merged into a new Provisional Committee. Its task was to prepare a constitution and select the initial membership for the British branch. Under Lord Robert Cecil's chairmanship, this committee submitted its report to the Inaugural Meeting of the British Institute of International Affairs on 5 July 1920. The committee avoided nominating individual members or drafting a constitution because, it contended, the final deter­ mination of such matters depended on the character of the new organiza­ tion. The committee's main concern was to establish "a definite conception ... of objects ... and of the type of institution best calculated to secure their attainment." The privacy of meetings, the better information of mem­ bers, and, above all, the "iron rule ... that the Branch as such should in no shape or form express an opinion on any aspect of international affairs" were seen as the primary traits of the institute. The committee's report also reiterated the widespread belief that gov­ ernments would have to become more cognizant of the force of public opinion on international issues, and that international institutes should play a leading role in educating the minority that helps shape public opinion. The committee summed up its beliefs in commenting on the in­ adequacies of the postwar peace efforts at Versailles: 9

10

11

12

... one chief cause was the state of knowledge and mind in each of those com­ munities. Had the delegates sent to the Congress been none but the wisest and most virtuous of mankind, they would still have found, in the temper and out­ look of the nations to whom they were answerable, formidable obstacles to a lasting settlement. ... These discordant opinions have grown in part, at least, from what public men have said and written in the past. Once established, they are slow to change. And so in a crisis, public men find themselves swayed by forces which they themselves have helped to create. 13

The speeches at the Inaugural Meeting of the BIIA, which followed the presentation of the Provisional Committee's report, further reflected the thinking of the founders of the institute movement that the institute should * The BIIA, 9. Hereafter referred to as the Royal Charter, the R I I A . " The BIIA, 9, 13. Ibid., 9-10.

1 0

1 2

BIIA

or, after 16 July 1926 when it was granted a

1 3

Ibid., 6-7.

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be an impartial body, should collect and disseminate expert knowledge on international affairs, and finally, should be scientific in its approach to the subjects it studied. This three-point expression of intent became the credo of the

BIIA.

14

The intellectual underpinnings of the B I I A deserve pondering both because of their novelty and because of the pervasive influence they were to have on the thinking of those persons who, in the next few decades, par­ ticipated in the formation of similar institutes around the Commonwealth. As A. J. P. Taylor has observed, the establishment of the BIIA was a "striking example of a view commonly held in the twentieth century that, if men accumulated enough information, they will inevitably find an­ swers." In spite of warnings expressed by some of the founders of the B I I A at their first meeting about placing too high a premium on the acquisition of knowledge as a sure guide to international sanity, the convictions of those who took up the cause, later and elsewhere, faithfully imitated the ethos of the BIIA. At the same time, the first off-shoot of the B I I A - the Canadian Institute of International Affairs - developed out of the interest of some Canadians in the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) which, despite its name, grew out of origins quite separate from those just described. The IPR grew from a proposal made as early as 1916 by a group of Hawaiian business and professional men who asked the Honolulu branch of the Y M C A to sponsor a conference of representatives on the problems economic, political, and religious - of the Pacific basin. Several years later, in the United States, an academic investigation "designed to deter­ mine scientifically the results of the contact of Oriental and Occidental on the North American continent" was initiated under the direction of Dr Robert E. Park of the University of Chicago. This investigation was jointly financed by the Institute of Social and Religious Research (New York), and by groups of businessmen and students of international affairs who lived in the west coast cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. 15

16

17

18

1 4

1 5

1 6

1 7 1 8

For a full account of the views expressed at the Inaugural Meeting, see ibid., 20-34. English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965), 274. See also Robert Cecil's remark at the Inaugural Meeting of the B I I A that "Politicians, of course, will never learn anything from anyone, and experts will be there to explain what real ignorance is." The BIIA, 34. For example, see the comments by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour on Germany before the First World War, in the BIIA, 29-30. Institutes of International Affairs (hereafter Institutes), 72. The Canadian Institute of International Affairs: Its Organization, Objects and Constitution (Montreal, 1929), 1. This pamphlet is hereafter cited as the C1IA.

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The Hawaiian proposal and the separate work of the racial survey in the United States coincided because of a growing American awareness that friction with Asia arose both from political and economic conflicts with Asian powers and from the American racial antagonism of the 1920s, accented by the passage of restrictive, discriminatory, immigration laws by the us Congress. The immigration legislation was only a symptom of more profound misunderstandings. Information available in the United States on demographic trends, land utilization and food production, and standards of living in Asia was either ... unreliable or unknown. Yet it was on the basis of such alleged 'facts' that social attitudes were moulded that had their outcome in immigration restrictions." The Hawaiian conference proposal of 1916 was never acted upon, but in 1924 the increasing tension in American-Asian relations prompted a similar proposal. It led, in the summer of 1924 at a Y M C A world conference in Austria, to the co-operation of the Y M C A national committees of eight Pacific countries, including Canada, in making the arrangements for the first IPR conference in Honolulu in the summer of 1925. Among the Americans who attended the conference, and who were later to play a role in the formation of the CIIA, were Ray Lyman Wilbur and J. Merle Davis. Dr Wilbur was president of Leland Stanford Univer­ sity and chairman of the prevously mentioned racial survey. Mr Davis was the secretary of the survey. The Canadian delegation was led by John Nelson, then a freelance writer and editor from Vancouver, and a wellknown Rotarian. The secretary to the delegation was Stanley Brent, also from Vancouver and the secretary of the local YMCA. Other Canadians present were Miss L. M. Bollert, dean of women at the University of British Columbia, George H. Cowan, a lawyer and former M P from Van­ couver, and Mrs Percival Foster of Toronto, field secretary of the Domin­ ion Council of the Y W C A . 19

41

20

21

22

1 9

2 0

2 1

2 2

The Oriental Exclusions Act (1924) has been cited as an example of such laws. See Understanding Asia: The Aims and Work of the Institute of Pacific Relations (New York, 1951), 10. The Study of International Affairs in the Pacific Area: A Review of Nine Years* Work in the International Program of the Institute of Pacific Relations, rev. ed. (New York, 1936), 3. Institutes, 72-3. On the I P R - Y M C A connection see Institutes, 73; also CIIA Archives, Toronto, N. A. M. MacKenzie Papers, J. Merle Davis to Thomas M. Haslett, 20 April 1927. There is some doubt as to the exact composition of the Canadian delegation. The CIIA, 3, lists the five persons noted plus Mrs John Nelson and Miss Cowan. However, the Institute of Pacific Relations (Honolulu, 1925), a pamphlet on the 1925 conference, lists in its "Who's Who" Newton W. Rowell (p. 18) and another lawyer, Albert G. Virtue of Lethbridge (p. 2 0 ) . The writer could find no evidence in the Rowell Papers (Public Archives of Canada) or elsewhere that Mr Rowell attended the conference.

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The chief result of this conference was the establishment on a perma­ nent basis of the IPR with headquarters and secretariat in Honolulu. The institute's stated purpose was "To study the conditions of the Pacific peoples with a view to the improvement of their mutual relations." This was to be achieved through biennial, international conferences, the promo­ tion of research, the exchange of information, and the co-ordination of the work of the national committees. It declared itself as non-governmental, "non-sectarian, non-controversial and non-propagandist. It is not a pacifist society." Its financial support was to come from private sources, and its national committees (or "units") were to be autonomus and self-support­ ing. The conference concluded its proceedings by appointing an interim "Organizing Committee" charged with making final arrangements for a permanent institute, and consisting of Ray Lyman Wilbur, chairman; J. Merle Davis, secretary; and one representative each from Canada, China, Hawaii, and Japan. The Canadian member was John Nelson. While the CIIA modelled itself on features of both the B I I A and the IPR, there is evidence of the existence in Canada of two earlier private institu­ tions concerned with international affairs which foreshadowed the CIIA'S establishment in 1928. About one of these, the Canadian "groups" of the Round Table movement, there is a growing literature. About the second, the Canadian Association for International Conciliation, there is little in­ formation. We know only that two weeks before the outbreak of the First World War - a most inopportune time - Mackenzie King wrote to J. W. Dafoe inviting him to join the association. King reported that, at the request of Nicholas Murray Butler (an early, prominent member of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and others in the parent American association, he had agreed to become the chairman of an "Or­ ganizing Committee" which would form a Canadian branch. (King men­ tioned no other members of the committee which suggests that he was the committee.) The association, as described to Dafoe by King, was to be 23

24

25

26

27

2 3 2 4 2 5

2 6

2 7

Quoted in the CIIA, 3; see also Institutes, 20-1. The CIIA, 2. It is unfortunate that the known papers of John Nelson, who was to play a central role in the formation and establishment of the CIIA, are so incomplete, especially in the pre-1925 period. Therefore it cannot be said precisely when and how Nelson became involved with the IPR, though it is evident that he was involved in its work at a very early stage. For example, the articles by James Eayrs and Carroll Quigley in the Canadian Historical Review of March 1957 and September 1962 respectively. The question of the influence of the Round Table movement on such organizations as the R I I A , the I P R , and the CIIA is interesting, and deserves separate treatment for which there is not space here. Public Archives of Canada ( P A C ) , Dafoe Papers, Mackenzie King to J. W. Dafoe, 21 July 1914. The writer has been unable to find any other reference to this asso­ ciation.

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an informal, loose organization of "men of known like sympathies and purposes in international affairs"; no "unnecessary publicity" would be given; and there would be a limited membership of prominent persons from across the country. Its purpose would be to promote "conciliation as a means of maintaining and furthering friendly relations between nations," and to encourage consultation among other national groups "on matters which may have a bearing on the promotion of world peace." Dafoe either had a premonition about the soon to be felt consequences of the Archduke's assassination, or else was sceptical of the grandiloquence of the association's objectives. At any rate, his papers do not contain a reply to King's letter. The more genuine and enduring precursor of the CIIA was of course the B I I A whose origins have already been examined. The earlier quoted report of the Provisional Committee submitted to the Inaugural Meeting of the B I I A noted that " ... in the list of original members in the British Branch will be found the names of public men who are domiciled in the various Dominions and in India, including those who were members of the Peace Delegations in Paris. Our hope is that these groups will hive off and form Branches in Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, New­ foundland and India, in close relations with the British Branch." While Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa were not invited to join in the early deliberations, it was the clear intent of the men behind the Paris "movement" that these countries should follow the ex­ ample set by the British and the Americans. An instance of this intent was revealed by Sir Abe Bailey, the South African mining magnate, friend and great admirer of Cecil Rhodes, and patron of both the Round Table move­ ment and the RIIA. In 1928, in a letter to the Prince of Wales, Sir Abe offered an endowment of £ 5 , 0 0 0 in perpetuity to Chatham House. He stressed his belief in the objectives and methods of the RIIA, and noted that at Paris in 1919, "It was felt that if the British and American Common­ wealths set the example the [institute] system would spread to the rest of the world," an opinion which echoed the views of the BIIA'S Provisional Committee. These hopes were reinforced by the inclusion, in the RIIA'S charter of 1926, of an explicit aim of the institute, viz., "To encourage and facilitate the formation of branches and committees throughout our Dominions." Only three members of the Canadian delegation to the Paris peace con28

29

30

™ The BIIA, 13. MacKenzie Papers, Sir Abe Bailey to H R H The Prince of Wales, 18 July 1928 (mimeographed copy of letter). The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Charter and By-Laws (London, 1926),5.

2 9

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ference joined the B I I A as original members: Sir Robert Borden, Sir George Foster, and Loring Christie. The other seven Canadians listed as original members were O. M. Biggar, A. J. Glazebrook, Vincent Massey, Professor W. S. Milner, Sir Joseph Pope, the Hon. N. W. Rowell, and Professor G. M. Wrong. By 1926 this initial group of ten had increased to about twenty-five. Of the original group, N. W. Rowell was most interested in forming a Canadian branch of the British Institute. On 13 April 1920 Rowell replied to a circular from Robert Cecil, chairman of the BIIA'S Provisional Committee, announcing the intention to found the British In­ stitute. Rowell was enthusiastic about the suggestions of the Provisional Committee that branches of the B I I A be formed in Australia, Canada, and elsewhere, and that these branches would be in close relation with the parent organization: "... I should be very glad to co-operate in endeavour­ ing to establish a branch in Canada. We need in Canada just such an organization as this Institute would provide to develop sane and practical interest in international affairs and to promote international co-opera­ tion." Little came of this suggestion at the time. When Rowell visited London in December 1920, officers of the B I I A again enquired about the possibility of forming a Canadian branch. But on his return to Canada, some Toronto members of the British Institute urged the founding of a Canadian League of Nations Society as a better alternative: "Their idea appeared to be that as Canada is a member of the League of Nations, a study of international questions under the auspices of a society associated with the name of the League would be more likely to make an appeal to young Canadians than such a study independent of it." This suggestion of early 1921 contra­ dicts an account in the earliest known publication about the formation of the CIIA, "In the initial steps, looking to its creation, it was felt that it would be unwise to duplicate any similar organizations already active in Can­ ada." What were these "similar organizations" in early 1921? Rowell himself did not seem to know of any a year earlier. It was not until 31 May 1921 that the organizational meeting of the League of Nations Society in Canada took place in Sir Robert Borden's office and only in 31

32

33

34

35

36

37

The full membership of the Canadian delegation at Paris is in Glazebrook, Canada at the Paris Peace Conference, Appendix B , 138-9. 32 Escott Reid, The CIIA: After Ten Years, 1927-37 (Toronto, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, mimeo., 16 January 1937), 9. Rowell Papers, N . W. Rowell to Lord Robert Cecil, 13 April 1920. Rowell Papers, Rowell to Dafoe, 28 March 1921. The CIIA, 9. See quotation attached to n. 33. Rowell Papers, File A ( V I I ) L N S , 7907, unsigned memorandum, 'The League of Nations Society in Canada - Programme for the Fall Months of 1921," n.p., 1921.

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1925 was the Canadian League founded (of which more will be said later). The Canadian membership of the BIIA was too small and too scat­ tered in 1921 to be holding regular gatherings, though groups of BIIA mem­ bers resident in Canada were meeting in the mid-1920s. The recommendation of the Toronto members of the BIIA probably persuaded Rowell to drop the project of creating a formal branch of the institute in Canada, and to turn his interests to the organization of a Cana­ dian branch of the League of Nations Society (LNS) . On this matter he was also influenced by Robert Cecil, an avid supporter of the League, who may have suggested such a course to him during his visit to Britain late in 1920. In any event, Cecil wrote to Rowell about a Canadian LNS early in 1921. Rowell, in turn, asked Dafoe for an opinion. The ensuing correspondence throws an interesting light on Dafoe's views of such organizations. The influential editor's immediate response was to dismiss the necessity for an LNS in Canada: "They form societies upon the slightest provocation in England; this is one of the great indoor sports of that country." Dafoe predicted that such a society would be difficult to maintain in Canada be­ cause of the "physical conditions" and because of the very different "men­ tal habits of the [Canadian] people." He cautioned that the establishment of a Canadian LNS might be interpreted as indicating that such a society was needed to combat the enemies of the League; he would prefer, he wrote, to have it assumed that Canadians supported the League, "in vari­ ous degrees of warmth no doubt," and leave it at that. Rowell may have intended to set up a Canadian B I I A - L N S amalgam. In his reply to Dafoe, he expressed agreement with the editor's general senti­ ments, but added that he foresaw an organization less formally constituted than those in Britain, the real value of "which might be the means of con­ veying information about the League and stimulating interest in interna­ tional affairs." Rowell noted that already active LNS groups had arisen spontaneously. Dafoe did not object to this kind of development. He was only adverse to the idea of prominent persons creating organizations which "might lead to a supposition in the public mind that the cause of internationalism in Canada needed some special advocacy." He was personally reluctant to join these organizations because he thought it unwise for journalists to be tied to societies "engaged in what might be called propaganda work." 38

39

40

41

42

43

38 T h e C / 7 ^ , 9 . Rowell Papers, Rowell Papers, Rowell Papers, Ibid. Rowell Papers,

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Rowell to Dafoe, 8 March 1921. Dafoe to Rowell, 22 March 1921. Rowell to Dafoe, 28 March 1921.

4 2

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Dafoe to Rowell, 16 April 1921.

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Whether he had such suspicions about the BIIA is not clear, but, contrary to an earlier assumption of Rowell, Dafoe noted in his letter of 16 April that he had never joined the British Institute. While the origins and development of the LNS in Canada are not the subject of this essay, it should be noted that several of the leading promoters and founders of the society were closely linked with the later formation of the CIIA. AS mentioned, the society's first meeting was in Borden's office. For the first four or five years of the society's existence, 1921-4, Rowell was actively engaged in its work, and during 1921 and 1922 both he and Borden were deeply involved in its establishment. The society's first execu­ tive included Sir Robert as president, and Rowell as vice-president and chairman of the Executive Committee. General Sir Arthur Currie signed the invitation to the inaugural meeting, and was an honorary vicepresident. Sir Joseph Flavelle was an early financial subscriber to the society. Borden, Rowell, Currie, and Flavelle were all to be among the CIIA'S founders. Rowell spent much time in the 1920s interesting himself in private organizations devoted to international affairs. As a Methodist whose church was deeply involved in missionary work in China and Japan he had taken an early interest in Pacific problems at a time when few Canadians were similarly inclined. While it is not clear how Rowell met John Nelson, some of whose activities in the IPR have already been described, the two men were to become closely associated in the creation of the CIIA. After the 1925 IPR conference, Nelson had returned with other mem­ bers of the Canadian delegation who had all been impressed with "the urgent necessity of the creation of a national Canadian organization which would make possible effective Canadian participation in future conferences and studies of the Institute of Pacific Relations." Nelson had taken on special responsibilities as the Canadian member on the IPR'S executive, and he was anxious to establish the IPR firmly in Canada. As a writer and editor, and later supervisor of public relations for the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada at its headquarters in Montreal, he was equally aware that to accomplish his task in Canada, he would have to enlist the support of prominent Canadians - Dafoe's admonition to the contrary. To do so, 44

45

46

47

48

Rowell Papers, Rowell to Dafoe, 28 March 1921. One of the stated aims of the society, "To study international problems and Canada's relation thereto as a member of the British Commonwealth and of the League of Nations," was similar to the early expressed object of the CIIA. League of Nations Society in Canada (Toronto, undated pamphlet), 3. Rowell may have met Nelson at the 1925 IPR conference in Honolulu. See n. 22. ? EscottReid,77*eC///*,9. See quotations attached to n. 40 and n. 43.

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Nelson wrote to Rowell in late November 1925 with a request that Rowell become chairman of the IPR'S Canadian section. He also asked him for advice on making contacts for the IPR in Britain. Rowell declined Nelson's invitation, but in doing so he made a com­ ment which might be described as the specific impulse that led, two years later, to the CIIA'S establishment. 49

I should be very glad to see some organization here which would discuss inter­ national relations. The difficulty is to maintain so many different organizations, and there has been some talk of establishing a Canadian Branch of the Institute of International Affairs. I do not see why a branch of that Institute, which has its headquarters in London, might not be associated with this work [of the IPR], and I think through the Institute of International Affairs we can interest in­ fluential people in England in this work in the Institute of Pacific Relations. I shall be very glad to discuss with you the best method of approach. 50

This one suggestion provided a key for the unlocking of many doors. It suggested an entry for the IPR into Britain, raised the possibility of linking the B I I A with the IPR, and finally, indicated a way of creating a Canadian Institute of International Affairs. Rowell's remark also forecast, with re­ markable clarity, the nature of the future relationships of the three institu­ tions. The above possibilities were quickly realized by Nelson. He was "greatly interested" in Rowell's suggestion, he replied, and made the fur­ ther observation that he had learned of the BIIA only at the IPR executive meeting in San Francisco in October 1925: "Offhand, the formation of the Canadian branch would seem to be exactly what we want. I would be glad of any further information with respect to this body [the BIIA] as I confess I am quite ignorant about it." Nelson urged Rowell to develop his initia­ tive, for, as he concluded in this same letter, "I believe it [the institute possibility] is one of the well worth while things in Canada today and that it has very great significance from the Imperial standpoint as well." At the same time, Nelson wrote to the secretary of the IPR passing on Rowell's suggestion. The secretary, Merle Davis, strongly supported the idea: "I should think that the Institute of International Affairs would be the logical medium through which to work. It will be a fine thing if a Cana­ dian branch of this Institute is organized." Nelson also aired Rowell's 51

52

53

4 9

Britain was not represented at the 1 9 2 5 IPR conference, a matter the institute wanted to rectify in time for the second meeting in 1 9 2 7 . Nelson was probably asked by the IPR to arrange this. See the CUA 1. CIIA Archives, Nelson Papers, Rowell to John Nelson, 2 1 November 1 9 2 5 . Nelson Papers, Nelson to Rowell, 2 5 November 1 9 2 5 . Nelson Papers, Nelson to Davis, 2 5 November 1 9 2 5 . Nelson Papers, Davis to Nelson, 1 December 1 9 2 5 . y

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T H E CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

proposal to a fellow delegate at the 1925 IPR conference, Stanley Brent, secretary of the YMCA in Vancouver. He urged that a proposal, made at the IPR'S recent executive meeting (October 1925), that IPR groups be set up in several Canadian cities to meet monthly with invited speakers on in­ ternational affairs, be altered in the light of the current initiative to organize a Canadian branch of the BIIA. "Don't you think," he asked Brent, "[the BIIA] is the natural organization through which we might act? The fellows in the Empire Club are extremely sympathetic to the idea and I am sure we could get together a fine group in Montreal." Branches, he concluded, might also be formed in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Brent was sceptical about the wisdom of establishing a new organization which would compete with existing ones. In Vancouver, he cited as examples the Van­ couver branch of the LNS, various clubs at the university, and the "Foreign Bureau" of the local board of trade. Nelson was not easily deterred. He now had three tasks in mind: to stimulate Canadian interest in the IPR by winning the support of wellknown Canadians; to begin planning for an adequate Canadian delegation to the second IPR conference which, like its predecessor, was to be held in Honolulu in the summer of 1927; and to accomplish these tasks by realiz­ ing Rowell's proposal for the founding of a Canadian branch of the British Institute. In 1926 and the first half of 1927 he was to spend much time completing the first two of these endeavours, and starting on the third. Nelson sought support from the IPR Secretariat. He expressed the hope that Dr Wilbur would lend his name, and some time, to promoting the or­ ganization of a Canadian group which would study foreign relations; as a by-product, this effort would help prepare a Canadian delegation to the July 1927 IPR conference. On 22 February Nelson informed Rowell that Dr Wilbur was inviting Vincent Massey to become chairman of the IPR'S Canadian section, an action which Wilbur took a few days later when he invited Massey to become the Canadian national representative of the governing body of the IPR, the Pacific Council. The offer was not ac­ cepted. No further progress was made for many months. As late as 1 No­ vember Davis asked Nelson whether Rowell might again be approached about taking the position. Shortly after Davis reported that Borden was 54

55

56

57

58

59

5 4 5 5 5 6

5 7 5 8 5 9

Nelson Papers, Nelson to Stanley Brent, 30 November 1925. Nelson Papers, Brent to Nelson, 11 December 1925. Nelson Papers, Nelson to Davis, 22 January 1926. Dr Wilbur spoke to various groups in Toronto and Montreal in the latter part of February 1926. In Montreal Sir Arthur Currie, principal of McGill University, was host to Dr Wilbur. Nelson Papers, Nelson to Rowell, 22 February 1926. Nelson Papers, Wilbur to Vincent Massey, 26 February 1926. Nelson Papers, Davis to Nelson, 1 November 1926.

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considering the position. A few days later Sir Robert accepted the chair­ manship with the caution that he would not be able to give it much time. Meanwhile, progress had also been made in plans to form a Canadian branch of the (now) Royal Institute which, by 1926, had about twentyfive members resident in Canada who were organized and meeting in groups. Given the intentions of Rowell and Nelson, and in order to avoid the creation of two institutions with precisely the same objects, two meet­ ings were held in Toronto in the autumn of 1926. At the first, Merle Davis, general secretary of the IPR, met a number of Canadian members of the RIIA to discuss the composition of a delegation to the forthcoming IPR con­ ference. "He also suggested," in the words of Norman MacKenzie who was at the meeting, " ... the formation of groups of Canadians who might be interested in the work and future of the Institute of Pacific Relations. The Canadians with whom Mr. Davis discussed these matters were of the opinion that it would prevent overlapping, and be a better plan if they organized a Canadian Institute of International Affairs on the lines of the Royal Institute, which would direct the study of international affairs in Canada and would be responsible for Canada's representation in the Insti­ tute of Pacific Relations." Twenty-two years later, Dr MacKenzie, then an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto and a Canadian member of the RIIA, recalled for the national secretary of the C I I A t h a t " [Professor] George Smith, Colonel [C. S.] Maclnnes, Mr. Rowell and a number of others were at that meeting and they asked me to act as the Secretary of it and of the informal organization that was set up following it." The second meeting, which took place in Toronto in the fall of 1926 to discuss the formation of a CIIA, was held following a dinner at the home of Sir Joseph Flavelle. Thirty people attended, a number of whom were Canadian members of the RIIA. Also in attendance in addition to the host were Sir Robert Falconer, president of the University of Toronto, C. A. Magrath, chairman of the Ontario Hydro-Electric Commission and of the Canadian section of the International Joint Commission, Vincent Massey, and N. W. Rowell. R. Wilson Harris represented the R I I A and John Nelson the IPR at this meeting: 00

61

62

03

64

6 0 6 1 6 2 6 3

6 4

Nelson Papers, Davis to Nelson, 12 November 1926. PAC, Borden Papers, Borden to Nelson, 15 November 1926. SeetheC/M,9. N.A.M. [MacKenzie], 'The Canadian Institute of International Affairs," Cana­ dian Forum, rx, no. 106 (July 1929), 339. MacKenzie Papers, N. A. M. MacKenzie to Douglas A. MacLennan, 31 March 1948. Dr Mackenzie's reference to "the informal organization" was presumably to a Toronto branch of the not yet formally established CIIA.

T H E CANADIAN I N S T I T U T E OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

105

... the facts from the standpoint of both of these organizations, were presented and thoroughly considered and discussed. It was the unanimous judgment of this gathering that the Canadian organ­ ization should be formed either as a branch of, or in affiliation with the Royal Institute and in affiliation as well with the Institute of Pacific Relations. It was felt that Canadian interest was not limited to the Pacific, but embraced the problems common to the whole British C o m m o n w e a l t h . 05

Following these meetings, Nelson directed his considerable energies in­ to establishing IPR branches in various Canadian cities. While the nature of the new organization was not yet formally agreed upon, Merle Davis wrote Nelson on 22 November (a letter in which he also expressed his pleasure with Borden's acceptance of the chairmanship of the IPR'S Canadian sec­ tion) : "It is clear from Sir Robert's letter ... that the understanding is that [the Canadian] Pacific Institute is a branch of the British [sic] Institute of International Affairs." He also noted Professor MacKenzie's progress in organizing the Toronto branch. Earlier he had asked about Sir Arthur Currie's efforts to form a Montreal branch, and had commented about Dafoe's "very great interest in the Institute," and the good chance of estab­ lishing a branch in Winnipeg. On 11 December Nelson also heard from Stanley Brent that at a dinner the previous evening addressed by Rowell, "those present constituted themselves the Vancouver Committee of the In­ stitute of Pacific Relations and of the Royal Institute of International Af­ fairs." George H. Cowan, who had been on the Canadian delegation to the 1925 IPR conference, was made chairman, and H. R. MacMillan vicechairman, of the new Vancouver branch. Thus, by the end of 1926, th nascent CIIA had branches in various stages of organization in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Nelson now turned his attention to dealing with the Royal Institute. He wanted to make arrangements for a representative British delegation to the 1927 IPR Conference, and also clarify the status of the CIIA which had 00

07

68

09

6 5 6 6

6 7 6 8

6 9

The CIIA, 9. Nelson Papers, Davis to Nelson, 22 November 1926. An official IPR publication put it slightly differently: 'The Canadian Branch of the Institute of Pacific Rela­ tions has been constituted by the Royal Institute of International Affairs of Canada as an affiliated body with special responsibility for the Pacific area. Sir Robert L. Borden, of Ottawa, is Chairman of the Canadian branches of both Institutes," News Bulletin of the Institute of Pacific Relations, February 1927, p. 18. Nelson Papers, Davis to Nelson, 12 November 1926. Nelson Papers, Brent to Nelson, 11 December 1926. Dean F. H. Soward was one of this group. He joined the RIIA in the summer of 1926. In December 1926 the RIIA had accepted an IPR invitation of September 1926 to attend the 1927 conference. Nelson Papers, Nelson to E. P. Brown, 29 October 1926, and Nelson to Brent, 18 December 1926. Also the CIIA, 6-7. For the story

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EDWARD D. GREATHED

only tentatively been defined at the autumn meeting in Flavelle's home. He was uncertain, he wrote to Brent, about this latter point, and had writ­ ten to the RIIA to see "if they want us to proceed without further reference to them or if they would prefer to set up the organization themselves." To discuss these matters, Nelson, on the invitation of the RIIA, visited London from the end of January 1927 to early March. For the IPR, he went as "representative of the British Dominions on the [IPR'S interim] Executive," and while in London helped to ensure the attendance of a representative British group to the second IPR Conference. At the request of some leading members of the fledging CIIA, he discussed the possibility of the Canadian group's affiliation with the Royal Institute, and then worked out the terms of this affiliation which were agreed upon and ap­ proved on 2 March 1927 by the RIIA'S council. The discussions in London about the nature of the R I I A - C I I A relation­ ship led to two conclusions. The CIIA was to be affiliated with, and not to be a branch of, the parent institute, and "it was felt to be expedient that the Canadian body should bear a Canadian name." The main details of the affiliation, as approved by the RIIA, were as follows: 70

71

72

73

That a Canadian Institute of International Affairs should be formed with branches or groups in a number of provincial capitals. That the Canadian Institute should frame its o w n rules, and exist as an inde­ pendent body to be affiliated with the British Institute in Great Britain. This affiliation to be subject to the adoption by the Canadian Institute of rules simi­ lar in purpose to two provisions of the Charter of the Royal Institute of Inter­ national Affairs which respectively provide: ( 1 ) That membership should be confined to British subjects. ( 2 ) That the Institute as such shall not express an opinion o n any aspect of international affairs. That, subject to the decision of the members of the Canadian Institute, w h e n formed, the existing members of the Royal Institute in Canada should automatically become members of the Canadian Institute in whose hands the election of all future members would r e m a i n . 74

Still outstanding was the question of drawing a constitution for the new organization, and deciding on its name. Shortly after his return, Nelson

7 0 7 1 7 2 7 4

of the RIIA'S early association with the IPR, see J. Merle Davis, "Europe meets the Institute," Pacific Affairs, May 1928, pp. 12-15. Nelson Papers, Nelson to Brent, 17 December 1926. TheC/M,7,9-10. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 24. Other details respecting exchange of membership facilities are on p. 25. The first paragraph of these terms gives the impression that the RIIA thought Montreal was a "provincial capital." 7 3

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wrote to Davis about his meetings in London and the developments of the Canadian group: "The organization in Canada involves even terminology. I am not yet quite clear what we should call our organization in order to preserve its identity on the one hand with the Institute of Pacific Relations, and on the other to make available the enormous benefits that accrue from affiliation with the Royal Institute." Because of the burden of preparing a good Canadian delegation for the IPR'S second conference in July, the drafting of a constitution and fur­ ther efforts to organize branches in Canada were postponed until after the Honolulu conference. In addition to obtaining suitable delegates for the July conference, the organizers faced the problem of defining the status of Canadians going to Honolulu. What organization would they be represent­ ing? Nelson gave this opinion to Colonel C. S. Maclnnes: 75

... I think there is no objection to our delegates being spoken of as coming from the Canadian Institute, or if you like the Pacific relations division of the Institute. Should there be any misgiving on this point they need not be spoken of as representing anyone. In a large sense I should feel that they do not repre­ sent any particular group, even though selected and dispatched by our Institute. I think w e shall find the Canadian Institute will be a very shadowy body pro­ viding us with just sufficient background to give some sort of cohesion to our different g r o u p s . 76

Nelson's correspondence in the months preceding the IPR conference reveals his difficulty in assembling a prestigious delegation including some of the future founders of the CIIA. Borden was going to be in Britain; F. N. Southam was co-operative in trying to make arrangements for one of his newspapermen to go, but he could not attend himself; Rowell was com­ mitted to his work on the Customs Inquiry Commission; Flavelle, who was in Honolulu in April 1927 and who had become very interested in the work of the IPR, could not return again in July; and MacKenzie was com­ mitted to Geneva where he was a legal adviser to the International Labour Organization. However, a Canadian delegation of eighteen (including persons in the capacities of full and associate members) was finally orga­ nized, composed mainly of members of the informal groups which had earlier been established in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Delegates who were later to be founders of the CIIA included Sir Arthur Currie (chair­ man), John Nelson (secretary), C. A. Bowman, editor of the Ottawa 77

78

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Nelson Papers, Nelson to Davis, 16 March 1927. In his reply on 29 March, Davis commended Nelson for his large part in the satisfactory results of th London meetings. Nelson Papers, Nelson to C. S. Maclnnes, 22 April 1927. Nelson Papers, Rowell to Nelson, 2 May 1927. Nelson Papers, Davis to Nelson, 18 April and 3 May 1927.

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Citizen, Stanley Brent, secretary of the Vancouver YMCA, R. W. Brock, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science, University of British Columbia, and John MacKay, principal of Manitoba College. The delegation was, with the Japanese, second only in size to the American. The British dele­ gation, headed by Sir Frederick Whyte, stopped in Canada en route and held discussions with the Canadian contingent about the future of th Canadian Institute. In a telegram of good wishes to the departing Cana­ dian delegates, Colonel Maclnnes informed Nelson that Loring Christie, a former official of the Department of External Affairs, and Sir Joseph Flavelle were preparing a draft constitution for the Canadian Institute. The experience of the Canadians at the second IPR conference is rele­ vant to this essay only in that a report by two members of the delegation pointed to the character and needs of the developing Canadian Institute of International Affairs. Regarding the selection of delegates to future con­ ferences of this kind, it observed: 79

80

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82

At a meeting where no official opinions are expressed, the value of a member depends entirely on himself. Those present should be m e n of wide experience, or have special knowledge of Pacific problems, and they should be given suffi­ cient notice in order to prepare themselves to take part in the discussions. T h e group should be representative. T h e attendance of members of the staff of the University is highly desirable, but it is equally important that there should be an adequate number of businessmen, lawyers, and politicians as well. It might also be pointed out that w o m e n were included in the membership of all coun­ tries except Canada and N e w Zealand. T h e wives of two of the Canadian mem­ bers were asked to take part unofficially, in an attempt to rectify this omission which, though not serious, might be considered in preparing for a future gathering. 83

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The names of the full Canadian delegation are in the CIIA, 4. In an interview with the writer, Dean V. W. Bladen (who was on the delegation) recalled Sir Arthur's distinguished leading of the group and Currie's outstanding contribution to th conference. Ibid., 3. There were 140 delegates from ten countries and two international organizations. For the names of the full British delegation see the CIIA, 7. For a note on th discussions, see ibid., 10. Nelson Papers, Maclnnes to Nelson, 27 June 1927. But in a letter of 27 September 1927 to Miss Elizabeth Green of the IPR Secretariat, Nelson noted that the CIIA'S constitution was then being prepared by a member of the Canadian delegation to the 1927 conference, Henry T. Ross, secretary of the Canadian Bankers' Associa­ tion. For an interesting comment on the work and influence of Loring Christie, see "Canada's International Status: Developments at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919," External Affairs, 16, no. 4 (April 1964), 14, 163-72. MacKenzie Papers, T. F. Mcllwaith and V. W. Bladen, "Report on the Second Session of the Institute of Pacific Relations," November 1927, 2.

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Assessing the value of the conference, the report said: "In connection with international affairs, it is necessary to emphasize the extraordinary ignorance of the average Canadian concerning the Orient; the Institute [of Pacific Relations] by means of education, especially with the cooperation of our universities, might do much to overcome this deficiency." The re­ port concluded that "the main purpose of the Institute [of Pacific Rela­ tions] is not to reach solutions, but to promote discussion as a means of stimulating interest in Pacific problems." John Nelson's initiative in organizing a CIIA was evident even at this second IPR conference. 84

85

Several meetings of the Canadian group were held in Honolulu and the ques­ tion of permanent organization w a s broached. It w a s agreed that a society should be organized in Canada, affiliated with both the Royal Institute of Inter­ national Affairs and with the Institute of Pacific Relations. A t the request of the members [of the Canadian delegation], the draft constitution of the Institute of Pacific Relations was revised to permit the affiliation of a Canadian society of this type. Mr. Lionel Curtis explained the relation of such a society to the Royal Institute as analogous with that of the D o m i n i o n s t o the Mother C o u n t r y . 86

The return of the Canadian delegation in August marked the begin­ ning of an outpouring of speeches and articles on the work of the confer­ ence by Bowman, Currie, MacKay, and Nelson. It also saw considerable progress in the formal establishment of the Canadian Institute. A branch in Ottawa had been organized in 1927. Nelson wrote to the IPR secretary to say that, in addition to the branches already formed in Montreal, Otta­ wa, Toronto, and Vancouver, a dinner was being held in Winnipeg on 30 September with the intention of establishing a branch. The creation of a branch in Winnipeg involved the absorption of another Canadian or­ ganization, the Canadian League; the new branch of the institute wa formed from three Winnipeg locals of the league. 87

88

T h e Canadian League had been formed in 1925 "to foster in Canada a national as opposed to a sectional spirit; to stimulate popular interest in public affairs; to study topics of Canadian interest, and to exercise a constructive influence * Ibid., 5. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 4. Curtis also said later that one of the lessons of the conference was that "the Institute [of Pacific Relations] had moved from the plane of religion to the plane of politics. Now I am the last to say that religion and politics have nothing to do with each other. In my view politics is religion turned inside out, and religion is politics turned inside in." Lionel Curtis, "A British Appraisal," News Bulletin of the Institute of Pacific Relations, March 1928, p. 15. Nelson Papers, Nelson to Green, 27 September 1927. Ibid.

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upon public opinion." It had at one time about thirty groups established in fifteen cities, and a total active membership of about three hundred. It reached its zenith about the end of 1927 and thereafter rapidly declined, many of its most active members becoming members of the Canadian Institute. By 1 9 3 2 it had virtually ceased to e x i s t . 89

However, "The League's initial success demonstrated the growing demand among Canadians for information about international relations." The demand was also evident from the fact that in the autumn of 1926 a programme of speakers and discussion groups was arranged for the ex­ isting branches for the coming winter. At the same time, a draft consti­ tution had been prepared as a result of meetings in Montreal and To­ ronto. Colonel Maclnnes, the first chairman of the Toronto branch, and Professor MacKenzie, its first secretary, were both active in working out the final details of the new constitution, and in discussing the character of the institute. MacKenzie replied to a request of Maclnnes for comments on the constitution: "It has occurred to me that in the proposed list of executive officers there is no one representing the Maritime Provinces and in my opinion no Canadian organization should omit this." Yet for some reason, and despite MacKenzie's suggestion of four possible names, no maritime representative was included on the initial CIIA executive. A decision on the all-important question of membership had to be made, a decision which would contribute much to moulding the character of the institute. It was agreed that the organization should be private, with a membership confined to persons interested in and informed about inter­ national affairs, and of such calibre as to attract the "interest of visiting pro-consuls ... " In a memorandum, Maclnnes described the CIIA to one 90

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Reid, The CIIA, 10. The League came about largely as a result of a trans-Canada journey made by the Hon. W. D. Herridge and Mr J. M. Macdonnell who estab­ lished contacts with their First World War comrades. Institutes, AO. The CIIA, 10. Ibid. Also MacKenzie Papers, MacKenzie to MacLennan, 31 March 1948. John Nelson probably had a role in these matters, but unfortunately there is no correspondence in his papers from August to December 1927. MacKenzie Papers, Maclnnes to MacKenzie, 19 October 1927; MacKenzie to Maclnnes, 26 October 1927. This omission was rectified later in 1928 with the election of Professor R. A. MacKay of Dalhousie University, and Dr Henry Munro, superintendent of educa­ tion in Halifax, to the Executive Council of the institute. The CIIA, 10. It might be noted here that Dr MacKenzie was a native of the maritimes, though at this time he was residing in Toronto. MacKenzie Papers, Maclnnes to MacKenzie, 21 November 1927; also Maclnnes to MacKenzie, 17 November 1927; MacKenzie to Maclnnes, 27 January 1928; and Maclnnes to Rowell, 1 November 1928.

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of its early outside speakers as a modest organization with none of the amenities of its British counterpart. Initially, the Canadian activities would be "largely confined to getting in touch with those who had special knowl­ edge of some particular country, or question, and obtain the benefit of an informal and private discussion - the Press not being admitted." A year after the formal establishment of the CIIA, Professor MacKenzie wrote that its founders had intended to develop 97

... a small group of well-informed men and women in Canada who, because of their training, knowledge and position, may be of some assistance in dealing with the external affairs of our country, and who may help to form an intel­ ligent public opinion on such questions. We are not interested in a large membership not [sic!] in propagandist work, and aim as far as possible to keep our membership limited to those who can make some contribution to the knowledge and study of international affairs. 98

In its Annual Report for 1926-7, the RIIA noted: "Arrangements are contemplated under which the Canadian members of the [Royal] Institute, who now number 32, may form themselves into a Canadian Institute with provincial branches. It is hoped that Sir Robert Borden will act as Presi­ dent of the Canadian Institute." These branches had now been formed, a draft constitution had been prepared, and Sir Robert had been persuaded to preside over the new organization. It remained only to bring the CIIA into formal existence. To accomplish this, Borden called a meeting at his home, "Glensmere," in Ottawa for 30 January 1928. In addition to Borden, the elected representatives from the newly formed branches who attended were C. A. Bowman (Ottawa), Sir Arthur Currie (Montreal), J. W. Dafoe (Winnipeg), C. S. Maclnnes (Toronto), John Nelson (Montreal), and, as Dafoe noted later in a report of the meeting to the Winnipeg branch, "a young professor of Toronto University whose name, I think, was Mac­ Kenzie." Dafoe was right. The other member present was Professor 99

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MacKenzie Papers, Maclnnes to Brigadier-General Sir Gordon Guggisberg, 25 November 1927. MacKenzie Papers, MacKenzie to W. A. Mackintosh, 22 April 1929. Royal Institute of International Affairs, Annual Report, 1926-7, pp. 2-3. The Canadian members of the RIIA were automatically transferred to the CIIA. Dafoe Papers, memorandum of 23 February 1928. Because Dafoe was ill the evening he was to give this report to the Winnipeg branch, the Hon. T. A. Crerar did it for him. On 27 February 1928, Crerar reported that there was little dis­ cussion and general agreement on the detailed matters concerned with the CIIA'S establishment. In the same memorandum, Dafoe reported news from Nelson that the Montreal branch was "trying to interest French-Canadians in the [Institute] but so far with no success. Mr. Bourassa is a member of the Royal Institute but so far he has not accepted the invitation of the Montreal [branch] to join them." The earliest membership records of the CIIA contain no evidence that Mr Bourassa joined the Canadian Institute.

EDWARD D. GREATHED

112

N. A. M. MacKenzie of Toronto who attended holding proxies for Sir Joseph Flavelle and N. W. Rowell. Dafoe noted that "Mr. [J. T.] Thorson, M.P. accepted the nomination of this group [the Winnipeg branch] to join me in its representation but found he could not attend as the meeting took place while the debate on the address was proceeding, with Mr. Ben­ nett and Mr. King as speakers." The first meeting of the CIIA'S Executive Council dealt primarily with two matters: relationships with the IPR and the Royal Institute, and the election of officers for the national organization. The minutes show the distinction which the CIIA chose to draw between its relationship with the IPR, and its relationship with Chatham House. As regards the IPR, the CIIA was to become the Canadian national council of the IPR, or, in other words, the CIIA would be the IPR in Canada. As such, it would be inde­ pendent and free to "determine its own constitution and rules of proce­ dure." As regards Chatham House, the CIIA was to be affiliated with the RIIA on the basis of the agreement reached between John Nelson and the RIIA, and approved by the council of the RIIA in March 1927. In short, the affiliation depended upon the willingness of the CIIA to include certain pro­ visions in its constitution relating to the character of the Canadian orga­ nization, and to participate in a reciprocal exchange of privileges. Part of the terms of affiliation with the RIIA allowed for half of each member's annual subscription to the CIIA to go to the Royal Institute. The other half was to go to the branches, and, as Dafoe noted in his previously mentioned report, the "sad discovery" was made at this first meeting that the split allowed no provision for a central fund. Plans were made to correct this oversight. On a motion by Maclnnes, seconded by Bowman, the affiliation with the R I I A was approved; and on a motion by Dafoe, seconded again by Bowman, the CIIA accepted membership in the I P R . The meeting elected the following as national officers: president, Sir Robert Borden; vice-president, J. W. Dafoe; secretary, John Nelson; and treasurer, F. N. Southam. The new constitution also provided that: 101

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Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Minutes, i, 1928-34. Minutes of the first Meeting of the Executive Council, 30 January 1928, p.l. 102 Dafoe Papers, Dafoe memorandum (see n. 100). Article 10, para. 4 of the CIIA constitution. See the CIIA, 18, 26-7. This status was officially recognized by the governing body of the IPR, the Pacific Council, in 1928. The RIIA also joined the IPR in 1928. See Reid, The CIIA, 9, and Curtis, "A British Appraisal," 16-17. Article 10, paras. 1, 2, and 3 of the CIIA constitution. See the CIIA, 18, 24-5. CIIA, Minutes of first Meeting, 8. i°e lbid.,9. "7 lbid.,1. 1 0 1

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113

The persons whose signatures are affixed to these articles shall be the initial members of the Institute and of the Executive Council, to wit: The Right Honourable Sir Robert Borden, Ottawa C. A . B o w m a n , Ottawa Sir Arthur Currie, Montreal John N e l s o n , Montreal Frederick N . Southam, Montreal Sir Joseph Flavelle, Toronto The Honourable N e w t o n W. Rowell, Toronto Charles S. M a c l n n e s , Toronto John W. D a f o e , Winnipeg John M a c K a y , Winnipeg Reginald W. Brock, Vancouver Stanley Brent, V a n c o u v e r . 108

The CIIA was thus founded. And as one of its founders wrote, shortly before the organizational meeting of the institute, t o the Canadian who donated Chatham House t o the RIIA: "We are making a quiet and modest start, but we hope that such an organization will be both of value and inter­ est, and may some day make a contribution similar to that of the parent organization." Less than a year before his death on 9 January 1944, J. W. Dafoe wrote a letter to the national secretary of the CIIA in which he reminisced about the origins of the institute. In the course of his remarks, he said: "I should like to see due credit given to the real founder of the Institute, who was the late John Nelson." The editor was echoing the substance of a resolution approved by the National (formerly the Executive) Council of the CIIA at the time of Nelson's death: "Throughout the early days of the Institute when ability, energy and enthusiasm were essential to establishing the Canadian Institute, he gave unstintingly of his time, energy and ability to promote the interests of the Institute and to encourage the serious study of international affairs. It can be said of him more truly than of any other that he was the real founder of the Canadian Institute." 109

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108 Article 6. The CIIA, 15. Because of his role in the establishment of the CHA, N. A. M. MacKenzie was later added to this list of founders. With the exception of C. A. Bowman and N. A. M. MacKenzie, the founders are now deceased. 109 MacKenzie Papers, Maclnnes to Colonel R. W. Leonard, 12 January 1928. A report on the new Executive Council of the CIIA and on the initial membership of the institute is in Pacific Affairs, June 1928, pp. 17-19. Since 1950 an annual grant has been made to the CIIA from the estate of Colonel Leonard. Dafoe Papers, Dafoe to MacLennan, 5 April 1943. CIIA, Minutes, n, 1935-6. Minutes of the ninth Annual Meeting of the National Council, 7 February 1936, p. 2. 1 1 0 1 1 1

EDWARD D . GREATHED

114

John Nelson's early interests in the IPR led to his chairing the Canadian delegation to the first IPR conference in 1925. He planned and organized the Canadian delegation to the second IPR conference in 1927, acted as secretary to the delegation, and, between 1925 and 1927, was the inter­ mediary in bringing the RIIA into the IPR, and in bringing a new CIIA into affiliation with the RIIA and into membership in the IPR. Also, largely be­ cause of his initiatives, the first branches of the CIIA were brought into ex­ istence. At the meeting in Borden's home, Nelson was elected the CIIA'S first secretary, a position he held until 1932 when the first full-time secre­ tary, Escott Reid, and a permanent CIIA Secretariat was established. Nelson was again a member and the secretary of the Canadian delegation which attended the third IPR conference at Kyoto in 1929; he also participated in the fifth conference at Banff in 1933. He was honorary secretary of the C I I A from 1932 to 1934, and its vice-president from 1934 to his death in 1936. Nelson's contribution to the founding and early work of the CIIA has no doubt been obscured by the prominence of so many of his co-founders. Again, unlike a number of them, he was neither an intellectual nor a public figure involved in affairs of state. But he was a concerned, private citizen whose influence on making his fellow citizens better informed about events in the world was greater than perhaps he would ever have acknowledged or indeed suspected. John Nelson fitted perfectly into that important category of public spirited Canadians who endeavoured, in an atmosphere of wide­ spread indifference in the 1920s and 1930s, to further a vital function of the CIIA, viz., "to develop, educate and enlarge the group of Canadians who were interested in international affairs and who [knew] something about them." Some months after the inception of the CIIA, one of its founders, C. A. Bowman, wrote an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen about the develop­ ment of the institute movement in the 1920s. Mr. Bowman referred to the post-First World War desire for more public information and educa­ tion on international issues, and the early development of the RIIA as a re­ flection of that desire. He went on: 112

Foreign news is published more or less daily in every newspaper, but the great majority of readers are less interested in news items from distant lands than they are in local topics. It is perhaps too much to expect as popular interest in international affairs as in sporting events such as Mr. Tunney's meeting with Mr. Dempsey. 1 1 2

MacKenzie Papers, MacKenzie to MacLennan, 2 April 1943.

THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

115

There is a growing interest, however, in the vital question of safeguarding civilization from another war. A n increasing number of people appreciate the necessity of understanding more about international relations.

The editor concluded his observations with a reference to the CHA'S recent establishment: "The benefit in this plan of spreading public information on international affairs is obvious. Without encroaching on the work of the League of Nations Society, it is helping to bring the weight of informed public opinion most effectively behind humanity's great effort to emanci­ pate itself from the law of the jungle in the adjustment of international differences." That the hope which characterized these sentiments, and which was characteristic of the ambitions of many of the CHA'S founders, proved in 1939 to be tragically misplaced detracts little from the efforts of such men as N. W. Rowell and John Nelson who, together, were primarily respon­ sible for the formation and establishment of the Canadian Institute of In­ ternational Affairs. They had, after all, attempted to cultivate "a lily in the barnyard of politics." 113

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C A. Bowman, "Interest in Foreign Affairs," Ottawa Citizen, 27 October 1928, p. 26. This remark was applied to the IPR and quoted by J. B. Condliffe, "An Experi­ ment in Diagnosis," Pacific Affairs, March 1928, p. 14.

Canadian and Australian Self-interest, the American Fact, and the Development of the Commonwealth Idea K. A. MacKIRDY*

CANADA A N D A U S T R A L I A were among the first by-products of the American Revolution. The territory later to be included within the Dominion of Canada first acquired its geographic limits from the definition of the boun­ dary between the United States and what remained of British North America. The exodus northward of displaced persons from the former col­ onies set the pattern for the spheres of language predominance in Canada by introducing a significant English-speaking settler community west of the long-established Canadiens of the St Lawrence and reinforcing the English community in the maritimes. The exodus also became the basis of a nationmoulding myth - strengthened by the events of the War of 1812 - that this founding people fled or were driven to their new, raw home not by oppres­ sion of the religious or political establishment of the old world, but by the excesses of democracy in the new. No such antithesis to the familiar American thesis was brought to Australia by its conscript pioneers (as might have happened had James Matra's scheme for establishing a haven for Loyalists in the more fertile southeastern portion of New Holland, then recently discovered by James Cook, been acted upon) . Following the American Revolution the British government regarded the finding of a new repository for felons of the type who had earlier been sent to the southern mainland colonies more pressing 1

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* The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the Canada Council and the Research School of the Social Sciences of the Australian National University for grants which permitted him to revisit Australia and undertake some of the research embodied in this article. This point is made pictorially in the memorial to the Loyalists in Crysler Hall, Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ontario. The seamier side of the War of Independence, best viewed by the losers, is depicted in facsimiles of orders for confiscation of Loyalist property and the physical maltreatment of Loyalists. The presentation suggests that the Loyalist concept of Interdependence (upon which, it indicates, both the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations are based) was a preferable political concept to that of Independence. "James Maria Matra's Proposal, 23 August 1783," in Historical Records of New South Wales (Sydney, 1892) I, pt. 2, pp. 1-6. 1

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than the plight of the dispossessed Loyalists. Hence it authorized the estab­ lishment of a penal colony in what would become Australia and in January 1788 the "true patriots" of the First Fleet landed at Sydney. Because these enforced emigres and those, bond or free, who followed them, had no Loyalist traditions, no influential French element concerned with the pres­ ervation of its language and culture, and no expanding American republic as their immediate neighbour, they viewed the American Revolution and the success of republican democracy in a more favourable light than did their fellow subjects in British North America. As the "currency" lads and lasses grew to maturity they defined their identity in contrast to, and in friction with, emigrant Britons, not with another product of the new world environment, as did Canadians. Historians of the British Empire-Commonwealth recount approvingly the working out of the techniques of colonial responsible government in British North America that led to the subsequent federation of these self-governing colonies into a nation-in-the-making, which nevertheless retained a political connection with the mother country. They likewise applauded the adoption of these Canadian innovations by colonies of European settlement elsewhere, which permitted the empire to be trans­ formed into the early Commonwealth. In important respects this interpretation represents a misreading of the Australian experience. The history of that experience suggests that the constitutional innovations which were designed to meet the peculiar needs of British North Americans vis-a-vis the United States never met the then current needs of the Australians, whose constitutional suits were, never­ theless, cut to the Canadian pattern. The present Australian disenchant­ ment with the Commonwealth, which contrasts with efforts by Canadian officials to retain that organization as a vital ingredient of Canadian external affairs policy, is not a recent development. Commonwealth de­ velopment and Australian needs have been out of step from the earliest germination of the Commonwealth idea. The observation that a nation has no permanent allies, only permanent interests, has general application. For the British North American provin­ ces that became Canada the paramount interest has been survival, just as for les Canadiens within this larger entity it has been la survivance. To the larger Canada the major challenge to survival has come from the much more populous, wealthier, and expansive English-speaking republic to its 3

3

Free emigrants from Britain differentiated between themselves and the nativeborn by the terms "sterling" and "currency," the local medium of exchange being at a discount to the British. As is so often the case, the term was adopted by those it was intended to abuse as a badge of honour.

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K. A. MACKIRDY

south. American opportunities have lured many Canadian emigrants across the border, and those that remained in Canada have sometimes questioned whether the building of a separate nation across the larger but more rugged half of the continent was worth the lower living standards it entailed. The response to this challenge has been to call in the old world to redress the imbalance in the new. The conscious policy of not cutting ties with Europe and the continuing effort to retain, and later to forge, new lines of communication beyond America, to provide military (as long as possible), social, and economic counterinfluences to the United States, have been distinctive characteristics of Canadian nation-moulding. In the 1830s, the Baldwins in Upper Canada and, with less precision, Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, strove to reconcile the demand for popular control of the colonial government without surrendering to republican principles, by evolving the idea of applying the still novel techniques of collective cabinet responsibility to the colonial scene. Two decades after these theories had been put into practice the political leaders of British North America responded to the doctrine that self-government implied self-defence (then current in Westminster) by forging a federal union while retaining their association with the United Kingdom which had vari­ ous uses for them. "We will become a great nation," John A. Macdonald told a Halifax audience immediately after the Charlottetown conference in September 1864, "and God forbid that it should be one separate from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." Recognizing that the rights of minorities are endangered by the homogenizing processes of a democracy, George Cartier assured his co-linguists during the Confederation debates of 1865 that a major guarantee of their rights was that their federation was being based on monarchial, not democratic, principles. Although the Canadians retained the political association with Britain at a time when the latter's opinion moulders were anxious to shed colonial responsibilities, the Canadian leaders did not wish to have their own free­ dom of action unduly curtailed by this association. The need to negotiate 4

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For example, Sir Henry Taylor to the Duke of Newcastle, 26 February 1864, Sir Frederic Rogers to Sir Henry Taylor, 1865, and Disraeli to Derby, 30 September 1866. Quoted in George Bennett, ed., The Concept of Empire: Burke to Attlee, 1774-1947, 2nd ed. (London, 1962), 211-14, 229. Edward Whelan, comp., The Union of the British Provinces (Charlottetown, 1865, reprinted 1927), 48. Province of Canada, Parliamentary Debates on the Subject of the Confederation of the British North American Provinces (Quebec, 1865), 59. For example, The Times leaders, 24 October 1864 and 7 January 1865; Arthur Mills, "British North American Federation," Edinburgh Review, cxxi (1865), 181-99. I am indebted to Mrs Ann P. Power for drawing my attention to these references.

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trade and other matters with their neighbour and with other nations in the continuing effort to diversify external contacts, and even the Dominion's trade war with Germany following the introduction of the British tariff preference in 1897, prepared the way for the recognition of the Dominions as distinctive entities on the international scene in the twentieth century. Australia's major problem, on the other hand, was isolation from kith and kin rather than unwelcome nearness. Their most apparent permanent interest, which spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was to keep the nation white. Before the early 1890s Australian isolation had fostered an atmosphere of security which encouraged various groups to advocate a union of the colonies and the establishment of a republic and thus separate the new nation from Britain and her old world anachronisms. But before the end of the century Australian voices of separatism had been muted by the increasing obviousness of Australia's vulnerability to European and Asian aggressors. The result was that shortly before Canadians began minimizing the value of possible British military assistance in their rela­ tions with the United States, Australians were coming more generally to recognize the value of such assistance for themselves. Although actual or potential economic depressions in Canada ought to bring forth advocates of partial or complete, economic or political, in­ corporation of Canada into the United States, advocates of a separate Canadian republic were rare. The Canada First movement of the 1870s an early attempt to foster a national sentiment - was undermined by charges that it harboured separatist sympathizers. John S. Ewart, an 8

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For example, George Brown's trips to Washington in 1874 to attempt to revive reciprocity. For example, Sir Alexander Gait's unfruitful negotiations in Paris and Madrid in 1874, and Sir Charles Tupper's renewal of them in 1884. A trade treaty with France was concluded in 1895 as a result of these protracted negotiations. The question of military confrontation with the United States came to a head in the closing years of the nineteenth century. The effect of the crisis on Canadian nationalism is examined in N. Penlington, Canada and Imperialism, 1896-1899 (Toronto, 1965). The problem of defending the long border, and the British recognition of its impossibility, are repeatedly referred to in R. A. Preston, Canada and "Imperial Defense": A Study of the Origins of the British Commonwealth Defense Organization, 1867-1919 (Durham, 1967). This theme has been explored in D . F. Warner, The Idea of Continental Union: Agitation for the Annexation of Canada to the United States, 1849-1893 (Lexing­ ton, 1960). G. T. Denison, The Struggle for Imperial Unity (London, 1909). It is noteworthy that Denison, a founding member of the Canada First group, did not see a contra­ diction between his espousal of Canada First and Imperial Federation. Cf. the view of another staunch advocate of a distinctive Canadianism who also sup­ ported Imperial Federation, Principal G. M. Grant of Queen's: "We are Cana­ dian, and in order to be Canadian we must be British." Penlington, Canada and Imperialism, 66.

K . A. MACKIRDY

120

active supporter of a distinctive Canadian nationalism in the next genera­ tion, believed that his goal could best be achieved in a Kingdom of Canada joined in a personal union with the Crown of Great Britain. As Ewart read his history, John A. Macdonald's plan, like his own, was to retain the monarchy as a device to differentiate Canada from the United States. Although in 1917 Ewart was driven by his fears of resurgent imperialism (exemplified by Lionel Curtis and the Round Table group) and by the centralizing tendencies of the Imperial War Cabinet to espouse a re­ public, he lived to see his original ideas substantially realized in the Statute of Westminster. Because republicanism in Australia did not remain a live issue in any one colony for a period of time, most Australian historians have tended to dismiss nineteenth-century Australian republicanism as the relatively harmless idiosyncrasy of important individuals. To be sure advocates of separation in Australia were always in a minority, but so were the advo­ cates of separation in the thirteen colonies, and in Philadelphia itself, in late 1775. The persistence of the republican issue in Australia in the seven­ ties and eighties suggests that the republican solution to terminating the friction between metropolis and colony would have been adopted but for the Canadian precedents which indicated an alternative, officially sanc­ tioned route to "home ruled." It is unlikely that the challenge in the Aus­ tralian setting would have evoked the response of embryonic Dominion status. The intellectual father of Australian republicanism was John Dunmore Lang. Scottish born (as was W. L. Mackenzie, who proclaimed a Canadian republic in 1847), he arrived in Sydney in 1823. Until his death in 1878 this clergyman, educator, journalist, immigration promoter, M L C , and M L A was the gadfly-in-chief of eastern Australia. His opinions cannot be lightly dismissed. 13

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The case is presented in his The Kingdom of Canada, Imperial Federation, The Colonial Conference ... and other essays (Toronto, 1908) and The Kingdom Papers (Ottawa, 1911-17), 2 vols. Kingdom Paper no. 21, Imperial Projects and the Republic of Canada (Toronto, 1917). Ewart had refrained from issuing his papers from the outbreak of war in August 1914 until he published this substantial booklet of 126 pages dated Aug­ ust 1917. His commentaries on the loosening of Commonwealth ties are contained in his The Independence Papers (Ottawa, 1925-30). Exceptions include: Brian Mansfield, 'The Background to Radical Republicanism in New South Wales in the Eighteen Eighties," Historical Studies, v (May 1953), 338-48; and Henry L. Hall, Australia and England: A Study in Imperial Relations (London, 1934), chap. 4, "John Dunmore Lang and Separatism," 71-102. The chapter includes an appendix with a sampling of references to separatist sentiment in published materials, government despatches, and speeches.

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In calling at the middle of the last century for Freedom and Indepen­ dence for the Golden Lands of Australia, Lang reflected the security felt in Australia when the Royal Navy still ruled the waves and, thanks to the insulation provided by its far distant ships, colonists were not confronted with the hard decisions of Realpolitik. In innocent self-assurance he re­ sponded in 1852 to his own query whether an Australia completely inde­ pendent of Britain could protect itself from foreign aggressors. "For who, I ask, are the enemies with whom the Australian colonies, if free and independent, would have to contend? Is it the Aborigines of their own territory?... Is it the New Zealanders [i.e., Maoris] or the South Sea Islanders? Is it the Malayans of the Indian Archipelago or the adventurous subjects of the Emperors of China or Japan? These inoffensive and unwarlike people could never find their way to the Australian colonies. In Lang's view, the only nations capable of attacking an independent, united Australia were France, Russia, and the United States. 11

18

... but so far from any of these great powers having the slightest inclination to meddle with us in such circumstances ... the tidings of our freedom and inde­ pendence would be received [in their capital cities] ... with the most cordial welcome... T h e fact is the only chance we have of hearing of war in any shape in Australia for a century to c o m e lies in our connection with Great Britain, as a group of her many dependencies. A n d considering the warlike propensities of our worthy Mother ... our chances of peace under her wing are at best very precarious. 19

Lang concluded this argument by suggesting that if Britain were at war, Australian commerce might be harassed, and Australian seaports raided, "from no hostility to us as Australians ... but simply to annoy our pugnacious parent in London." The popular Sydney Bulletin put Lang's latter point succinctly in 1891 when it suggested that the fashionable English idea of Australian loyalty was, "Be a good boy, cheer the dear, good Queen, and we'll see the naughty Russian doesn't bite you." "Unfortunately," the Bulletin added, "the little 20

(London, 1852, 2nd and enlarged ed., Sydney, 1857). The publication of the second edition was delayed by the author's decision not to publish during the Crimean war, and by the granting of responsible government, which he regarded as but a prelude to complete independence. Lang's other major expositions of his republican views are: The Coming Event: or The United Provinces of Australia (Sydney, 1850), and The Coming Event! or Freedom and Independence for the Seven United Provinces of Australia (London, 1870). Freedom and Independence, 1st ed., 77. Ibid., 79-80. 20 Ibid., 80. 1 7

1 8

1 9

122

K. A. MACKIRDY

boy is getting sense enough to see that if he doesn't cheer the Queen the naughty Russian wouldn't want to bite him." The imperial connection from which Canadians, in constant friction with their republican neighbours, saw protection was viewed by many Australians as a possible embarrassment. Isolated as the Australians were, the only nation with whom they could generate political friction was Britain herself. But as the turn of the century approached Australian isolation dimin­ ished. The threats inherent in French and German colonial annexations in nearby areas in the preceding decade were accented by the race for colonies which led to the defining of spheres of influence in China. "Things in 1897," the Bulletin observed, "are very different from things in 1776, and the Australian Republic would have nothing like the chance to grow unmolested to greatness that the American Republic enjoyed. ... To sepa­ rate from Britain would make this country liable to attack." Not only were the possibilities of French, German, or Russian occupa­ tions of empty Australian territory now appearing more possible to Aus­ tralians, but the Asians were also posing threats. As Lang's "adventurous subjects of the Emperors of China or Japan" found their way to Australia as individual immigrants Australian colonists began devising legislative barriers against them. When the British government, mindful of its im­ perial, diplomatic, and commercial stakes in Asia, strove to modify the racialist tone of these enactments, the repercussions exacerbated intraimperial relations. As the several restatements of the journal's "National Policy" between 1889 and 1892 illustrate, the Bulletin linked the desir­ ability of establishing a republic with the exclusion of orientals. The con­ flict of British and Australian interests over the White Australia policy was explained by the Bulletin in its defence of the adoption of the dictation test in 1901. The Bulletin agreed that it was a devious means to achieve a desired end, but, "Australia is not a free country. It is part of an Empire, the population of which is something like 90 percent nigger. It is a section of the biggest nigger state in the world, and the policy of Britain is largely dictated by its nigger interests and nigger considerations." 21

22

23

24

2 1 2 2

2 3

2 4

"Imperial Federation Again," 7 February 1891, p. 6. 'The Devil - Australia - The Deep Sea," 8 January 1898, p. 7. See also "More about the Devil and the Deep Sea," 16 April 1898, p. 6. Both editorials refer to intervention in China as a warning of what could happen in Australia. "The National Programme," 20 April 1889, p. 6. In the issues of 7 March 1891 ff. and 30 April to 4 June 1892 the Bulletin recapitulated in point form what it then referred to as its National Policy. "A Nigger-State Politician's Extraordinary Yearning for a White Australia," 14 September 1901, p. 8.

123

CANADIAN AND AUSTRALIAN SELF-INTEREST

Japan's impressive victory over China in 1894-5 and her continuing naval construction posed another threat to Australians. As late as 1888 Robert Thomson, an advocate of a federal Australian republic, had wel­ comed the prospect of a war with China, then still the chief Asian power. The sacrifice of some Australian manhood in this "truly righteous and holy cause" would be the necessary price to pay for the total expulsion of the orientals from the island continent, the strengthening of the federal union, and the demonstration to the world of Australian national maturity. By the end of the century Australians were becoming more appreciative of the protection that British subjects in distress could still hope to claim from the Admiralty and the Foreign Office. Canadians, during roughly the same period, were reappraising their relationship with the United States. Unpleasant as the Alaska Boundary Settlement of 1903 was to Canadian pride, and loud as were the charges that the unfortunate Lord Alverstone had capitulated to us pressure, the decision did mark the final definition of the boundary between the two countries. If Canadians compared the history of Canadian-American and Mexican-American boundary adjustments, they had reason to be satisfied with the value of the continuing association with Britain. The 1890s saw the rise, the faltering, the revival, and the culmination of the Australian federation movement. During the preceding decades it had been the republicans who had been most vocal in advocating federa­ tion, but when Sir Henry Parkes, the aging premier of New South Wales, espoused the cause of "federation under the Crown" in 1889, he patterned his scheme on the Canadian rather than the American model. Although the Bulletin called for "the Republic - Not the Dominion" and deplored Parkes's acceptance of a failing experiment, noting that "within a few years Canada will either be an independent republic or an integral part of the United States of America," Parkes's fellow practitioners of the art of the possible followed his logic. The Canadian model permitted a national entity to evolve within the imperial system with a minimum of dislocation. As Australians debated the question of federation, they frequently fol25

26

27

2 5

2 6 2 7

Robert Thomson, Australian Nationalism: An Earnest Appeal to the Sons of Australia in Favour of the Federation and Independence of the States of Our Country (Burwood, nr. Sydney, 1888), 112-13. 'The Republic - Not the Dominion," 30 November 1889, p. 4. The Australasian Federation conference met in Melbourne in 1890 to discuss the proposal. It was agreed to summon a convention of delegates selected by the legislatures of the Australasian colonies. This National Australasian Convention met in Sydney from 2 March to 9 April 1891 and produced a draft constitution. The movement then lapsed following the failure of the New South Wales legis­ lature to accept the constitution. A new convention, consisting of delegates elected directly by the people (except from Western Australia, where they were

124

K. A. MACKIRDY

lowed American precedents in the details of their constitution but rarely questioned the basic principle of the Fathers of Canadian Confederation that their union would take place within the imperial association. Never­ theless, readers of the debates of the Australian conventions will not find in the submissions of representatives of the more populous Australian colonies the repeated affirmations of the importance of continuing an as­ sociation with Britain and expressions of disapproval of American prin­ ciples and unchecked democracy which studded the Confederation debates in the Province of Canada in 1865. In view of the imperial enthusiasm associated with the Diamond Jubilee of 1897 this difference in tone was symptomatic. It seems probable that, but for the Canadian precedents, the more mature eastern Australian colonies would have broken the British con­ nection before 1888, the centenary of the foundation of the mother colony. A comparison of the speeches and writings inspired by that event in all the colonies of Australia with similar commemorative statements by Canadians four years earlier on the centenary of the arrival of the Loyalists in Canada illuminates the contrasting roots of national identity and self-interest in the two communities at the turn of the century. A few lines from two poems indicate the difference in tone. The Rev. LeRoy Hooker of Kingston, Ontario, stressed old world connections, and anti-republicanism: 28

29

What did they then, those loyal men, W h e n Britain's cause was lost? D i d they consent A n d dwell content Where Crown, and Law, and Parliament Were trampled in the dust?

2 8

2 9

appointed from the legislature) met in Adelaide, then Sydney, and then Mel­ bourne in 1897-8. Between sessions the draft constitution was debated in the colonial legislatures, and suggested amendments were considered by the conven­ tions in the subsequent session. The draft consitution was then submitted to the electorates of four colonies. When the necessary majority was not obtained in New South Wales amendments were made by a conference of colonial premiers and the revised draft again submitted to the electors in all the six colonies. (Queensland, which was not represented at the 1897-8 convention, and Western Australia voted only on the revised draft). The draft was then submitted to the British Parliament. A topic explored in E. M. Hunt, American Precedents in the Australian Federa­ tion (New York, 1930). Although he denied that it would endanger the British connection, Sir George Grey's advocacy of a governer general being elected directly by people of the Commonwealth would seem to lead to the early establishment of a republic. Official Report of the National Australasian Convention Debates (Sydney, 1891), 561-6.

125

CANADIAN AND AUSTRALIAN SELF-INTEREST

They would not spurn the glorious old To grasp the gaudy new. Of yesterday's rebellion born They held the upstart power in scorn To Britain they stood true. 30

Two typical Australians, Philip Beck and Fergus Hume, on the other hand, rejoiced over the absence of conflict in the history of their land, and in the fading of old world memories. Tyrants - despots - we have neither: free and boldly have we trod Only owing love and duty to our conscience and our God. We have heard not War's harsh trumpet calling to the battle plain, Nor have plenteous harvests ripened over men unjustly slain. Girdled by our isolation, as the old world fades from view, Ancient quarrels are forgotten; we begin the world anew. 31

The creation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901 represented the first additional adherent to the Canadian model of moving from colonial to national status through constitutional evolution. It con­ trasted with the actions of a long roster of Latin American states (to which the South African Republic and the Orange Free State might temporarily have been added) who used force of arms to achieve immediate indepen­ dence, the way the United States had. During the twentieth century, the route to independence through a Dominion status was to be followed by New Zealand, South Africa, and others; these were examples of what Kenneth Robinson has called "the demonstration effect" of Canada's development to Dominion status serving as a model for British policy­ makers and the politically aware in Britain, India, and the dependent empire. There is no need to recite here the oft-noted milestones on the road to Dominion autonomy in this century. It should be noted, however, that the form of imperial, and later Commonwealth, relationships which Canadian and Australian leaders considered desirable for their country's local selfinterest continued to differ. The Australians became increasingly con­ cerned with the naval deterrent in the Pacific and Indian oceans, and, on occasions such as the visit of the Great White Fleet in 1908 and of another us naval squadron in 1919, were reminded of the United States as 32

8 0

3 1 8 2

"The United Empire Loyalists," in Centennial of the Settlement of Upper Canada by the United Empire Loyalists (Toronto, 1885), 63, as quoted in K. A. MacKirdy, J. S. Moir, and Y. F. Zoltvany, Changing Perspectives in Canada History (Toronto, 1967), 61. "A Centennial Song," in Melbourne Argus, 26 January 1888, p. 5. Kenneth E. Robinson, The Dilemmas of Trusteeship: Aspects of British Colonial Policy Between the Wars (London, 1965), 12-13.

126

K. A. MACKIRDY

another possible protector of a White Australia. Canadians, on the other hand, tended to advocate a looser imperial association. The reaction of French-Canadian nationalists to Canadian participation in the Boer war forced policy-makers to view imperial commitments more suspiciously. With the opening of the prairie wheatlands and the accompanying upswing in industrial expansion Canadians developed a new confidence in their national destiny. They believed that co-existence with the United States was now possible, although it was still desirable to keep open as many channels of trade and communication as possible with the world beyond the Americas. To live with Americans meant also to do business with them, and to handle a multitude of problems on a government-to-govern­ ment level. The establishment of the International Joint Commission in 1909, the stationing of a special mission to Washington during the First World War, the separate diplomatic negotiation of the Halibut Treaty, and the final establishment of the Canadian legations at Washington, then Paris, Tokyo, and elsewhere, were among the responses to these needs. Australians during the interwar years, on the other hand, with the exception of W. M. Hughes's solo turns at the Paris Peace Conference, pressed for an integrated imperial foreign policy. Until 1940, unlike Cana­ dians, Irish, and South Africans, they restricted their foreign representa33

34

35

3 3

3 4

3 5

The Argus reported that as the us fleet sailed into Sydney harbour the people around him had their eyes fixed on a single Japanese spectator: 'They stared at him, and you could see the unspoken, universal thought. That is America's great fleet. I wonder what he thinks of it?'" 21 August 1908, p. 4. See also two poems in the Bulletin, 20 August 1908, p. 7, 'The Fleet That Is Not Ours" and ' T o a Visiting Admiral." The featured cartoon in the Bulletin of 25 September 1919, p. 5, depicted the Japanese being frightened of young Australia's friendship with an Uncle Sam in a navy uniform. The featured cartoon of two issues earlier (11 September) had depicted both Uncle Sam and the Japanese as shoddy street traders trying to fleece Young Australia. Yet the earliest recorded advocacy of the establishment of a separate Canadian ministry of "Imperial and Foreign Affairs" came from the pen of an ardent imperialist, not from that of a nationalist. "Postcriptum" to W. Sanford Evans, The Canadian Contingents and Canadian Imperialism: a Story and a Study (London, 1901). Hughes was more active than Sir Robert Borden in advancing a claim for separate Dominion representation at the Paris Peace Conference, but whereas Borden's Cabinet colleagues in Ottawa pressed him to take a stronger stand, their Aus­ tralian counterparts tried to restrain Hughes, an impossible exercise from the other end of a transoceanic cable. Hughes's desire to gain a place at the Peace Conference stemmed from his concern with Japanese claims which might under­ mine the White Australia policy. I am indebted to Mr. L. F. Fitzhardinge for letting me read the manuscript of his article, "Hughes, Borden, and Dominion Representation at the Paris Peace Conference," which will be appearing June 1968 in the Canadian Historical Review.

CANADIAN

AND AUSTRALIAN

127

SELF-INTEREST

tion to a High Commission in London which maintained liaison with the Foreign Office. The defence policy of the various anti-Labour parties and coalitions which held power for all but two years of this period favoured close co-operation with Britain which, in effect, meant dependence upon Britain. While the Labourites in opposition preached disarmament, and then emphasized Australia-based airpower, the government placed its reliance on naval forces. These forces, in turn, depended for their effective­ ness on the British construction of a naval base at Singapore, and the stationing there of an adequate battle fleet. During the interwar years Aus­ tralian concern with defence can be sampled in questions asked in the Australian Parliament about the "Singapore Naval Base." While a succes­ sion of British governments launched the project, abandoned construction, revived it, dawdled, then rushed it to near completion in time to have it surrendered ingloriously to the Japanese invaders in February 1942, Australians vented their disillusionment and recrimination against a Britain that had failed. These sentiments were also evident in an Australian Associated Press despatch filed during the Malayan campaign. For 2 years ... people in Australia - and, indeed, in the whole world - had been told time and again that the defences of Malaya was [sic] impregnable, yet in a short period strategic defence areas have been lost and Singapore itself, which has been described as the "world's strongest fortress" ... is perhaps in jeopardy. ... Malaya has been let down, and Australia has been let down by men who have committed the same mistake that Britain has committed so many times in this war. The enemy has been underestimated. 36

A common foreign policy had failed to hold at bay the enemy Austra­ lia feared most. The first cartoon in the Melbourne Argus after the Japan­ ese intervention was a simple reminder of Australians' paramount interest: an uplifted arm grasping a rifle was superimposed on an outline map of Australia with the heading "Keep it white." During these years when fear of Japan had revived Australian interest in the imperial association, Canadians, secure in their "fire-proof house, far from inflammable materials," had gone through an isolationist phase similar to that of their American neighbours. Canadian membership in the League of Nations was valued chiefly for the opportunities it provided of demonstrating Canadian autonomy. The League had the same statusconferring function for Canada that the United Nations has had for the new Afro-Asian states. Yet although Canadian leaders appreciated this 37

Sfl 3 7

23 December 1941, p. 1. 9 December 1941, p. 4.

128

K. A. MACKIRDY

function they usually strove to limit the responsibilities arising from League membership. Likewise, Canadian initiative in defining the grow­ ing autonomy of the Dominions stemmed largely from a desire to avoid British-contracted commitments. By the 1930s the question of Dominion neutrality in the event of Britain's involvement in war was being debated in both Canada and South Africa. There the presence of Canadiens and Afrikaners, long settled, isolationist, and non-British, strengthened the hand of leaders interested in toning down protestations of imperial loyalty in favour of national, regional, or communal loyalties. But this factor was probably less important in these countries in stimulating discussions of neutrality than their sense of geographical security, for imperial loyalty, like gratitude, is frequently given in anticipation of favours. Favours might be economic and military, and might come from areas within the Empire-Commonwealth other than the metropolis, although even Canadians, in the most economically mature of the Dominions, con­ tinued to view the Commonwealth association primarily in terms of AngloCanadian relations until the Second World War. Earlier, there had been Canadian initiatives, such as the hosting of the Colonial Conference of 1894 to discuss intercolonial co-operation in the construction of an all-redroute Pacific cable and trade relations. In taking such action Canadians were concerned, as they still are, about the dangers of becoming too gready dependent on the American market. In 1876 the United States replaced Britain as the main supplier of Canadian imports. Even the introduction of British preference in the Canadian tariff of 1897 scarcely modified the trend of a declining British and increasing American percentage of this market. The British share of the Canadian export market remained higher through the days when wheat was the major Canadian export staple, while the United States became the major purchaser of the newer exports such as pulp and paper, the production of which required larger capital invest­ ment and a more elaborate corporate organization. During the interwar years the position of chief purchaser of Canadian products alternated between the two countries. This is illustrated by the percentage distribu­ tion of Canadian foreign trade (Table 1). 38

39

3 8

3 9

As in Senator Raoul Dandurand's speech on the Geneva Protocol, 2 October 1924, in which the familiar phrase quoted above appeared. The speech is quoted in W. A. Riddell, Documents on Canadian Foreign Policy, 1917-1939 (Toronto, 1962), 462-5. The CCF party in its national annual convention of 1936 adopted a foreign policy statement favouring Canada taking steps to assure her neutrality in a future war. The full text appears in R. A. MacKay and E. B. Rogers, Canada Looks Abroad (Toronto, 1938), 387-8. The parliamentary debate on the subject is summarized in F. H. Soward, et al. Canada in World Affairs, The Pre-War Years (Toronto, 1941), 43-9. f

129

CANADIAN AND AUSTRALIAN SELF-INTEREST TABLE 1 Imports

Exports Rest

UK

1922

15.7

Rest of

Commonwealth 4.3

of

us world 69.0 11.0

Rest UK

40.4

Rest of

Commonwealth 6.3

of

us world 39.5 13.8

1938 18.2 11.0 61.0 9.8 38.2 10.1 39.6 12.1 1965 7.2 4.3 70.0 18.5 13.8 5.9 56.8 23.6 SOURCE: Canada Year Books. The 1965 figures include former Commonwealth countries still receiving Commonwealth preference in the Commonwealth totals.

During this same period Australia's position was less ambiguous; Britain remained unchallenged as chief supplier and purchaser of Austra­ lian goods. This fact is demonstrated by the percentage distribution of Australian foreign trade (Table 2 ) . Moreover Britain also remained the main source of investment capital (Canadians had turned to New York) and its international banker. With the abandonment of the formal gold standard in the 1930s Australia associated itself with the sterling bloc and Canada with the dollar bloc. TABLE 2 Exports

Imports

UK 1922-3 1938-9 1964-5

Rest of Commonwealth

51.9 11.9 41.7 18.0 26.3 13.5

us

Rest of world (Japan) UK

18.9 17.3 15.9 24.3 23.9 36.2

(3.0) (8.9)

Rest of Commonwealth

44.1 13.3 54.5 15.0 19.6 20.5

us

Rest of world (Japan)

8.2 2.9 10.1

33.4 27.6 49.6

(7.9) (4.2) (16.7)

SOURCE: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia. In the 1967 issue the division of trade statistics between Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries was dropped.

The Imperial Economic Conference, which met at Ottawa in 1932, was viewed by many imperialists at the time as an opportunity, made pos­ sible by the British retreat from free trade, of developing an economic community of interests to supplement the apparent loosening of political ties. The series of hard-bargained bilateral agreements which emerged from the conference fell far short of their predictions, as the participating politicians and civil servants had expected. Although the outcome satisfied neither the Canadians nor the Australians, Canada reaped two major side benefits. The Ottawa agreements, by raising the possibility of a closed imperial trading system, more effectively checked American advocates

130

K. A. MACKIRDY

of still higher tariffs than unilateral Canadian retaliatory action could have; further, they eased the task of Canadian negotiators in subsequent trade talks. Finally, the Ottawa Agreements also created an incentive for American firms to build branch plants in Canada that would serve the empire market until postwar problems of dollar-sterling convertibility restricted the Canadian ability to sell within that market. The Second World War produced a number of impressive examples of the war-waging potential of the Commonwealth, from the Air Training Scheme in Canada to the teamwork of Australians, Britons, Indians, New Zealanders, and South Africans in the Eighth Army that routed the Afrika Corps at El Alemein. The fact that the Commonwealth association was unable any longer to provide protection for Australia was underscored by the fall of Singapore. It was natural for Prime Minister John Curtin to respond to that crisis by saying that "free from any pangs as to traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom" Australia would look to the United States for security. This statement had been preceded by a rash of editorials critical of British bungling of the Southeast Asian situation. Still the sentimental ties with "Home" remained strong as was illustrated by the criticism of Curtin's statement, which he answered by an assurance that Australia's loyalty to king and empire remained unshaken. It was from America that a reassuring stream of troops arrived in Australia, later bolstered by the Australian troops which the Curtin gov­ ernment recalled from the Middle East over Churchill's objections. The arrival of the Americans brought the two peoples into contact with each other in large numbers for the first time. In effect this event marked the discovery of America by the Australian populace, in a period of crisis, when the survival of White Australia was in doubt. Inevitably there were local frictions, but the image of the Americans was established as those who came to the assistance of the nation at the time of its greatest need. The impressive Australian-American Memorial in Canberra, around which, significantly, the Australian Defence Service's offices are arranged, and the annual commemoration of the Battle of the Coral Sea perpetuate this memory of the Americans - one very different from the Canadians' traditional image of their southern neighbours. Differing attitudes of the two countries toward the potential impact of the United States on their national identities helps to explain Australian 40

41

42

A summary of such editorial criticism as well as excerpts from Curtin's article appear in Keesing's Contemporary Archives, 27 December 1941 to 3 January 1942, pp. 4965-6. 41 Ibid. "Australia - The American Impact," Round Table, xxxn (December 1942), 511-18. 4 0

4 2

CANADIAN AND AUSTRALIAN SELF-INTEREST 131 and Canadian attitudes toward the postwar transformation of the Com­ monwealth. From an intimate group of European or European-dominated nations, capable of acting in concert and mounting a considerable military force, it has evolved into a loose British Empire Old Boys' Club, primarily Afro-Asian in membership, with many of the newcomers hyper-sensitively anti-colonialist and neutralist in international politics, and concerned with racial slights, whenever these are committed by whites. Such an association could not meet Australian security needs. Although Australians strove hard to prove themselves good friends and neighbours to the Asians to their north, and the Colombo Plan emerged from an Australian initiative at a Commonwealth ministerial meeting, it was not a congenial associa­ tion. A writer in Australia in World Affairs, 1956-1960 noted a growing disenchantment with the new association, and a tendency to stress direct Anglo-Australian relations. British Commonwealth commitments, for instance Britain's pledge to Malaysia when the latter country was in con­ frontation with Sukarno's Indonesia, endangered rather than enhanced Australian security. Britain's retreat from east of Suez, and her efforts to enter the European Common Market have strained Anglo-Australian relations. At the same time, a marked upturn in Australian trade with both the United States and Japan has lessened the former dependence on Britain for money and markets. Sentimental ties were also weakening. Postwar immigration plans had, for the first time, introduced a large nonBritish element into the population, whose indoctrination from migrant camp on was to become Australian, not British. Many British immigrants were also bringing with them a less favourable image of the old land than their predecessors from the heart of empire in its palmier days. The Canadians, unlike the Australians, have found the wider, looser Commonwealth association when used in conjunction with the United Nations (another institution concerning which Australian official opinion is more jaundiced than Canadian) well suited to their politics of survival. Through such international groups Canadian policy-makers have furthered their goals of keeping open lines of communication and working against the development of closed regional groupings. Perhaps Canadians have over-emphasized the utility of an Ottawa-New Delhi axis within the Com­ monwealth, but the desire to foster such relationships, at a time when the 43

44

4 3

4 4

Gordon Greenwood and Norman Harper, eds., Australia in World Affairs, 19561960 (Melbourne, 1963), 56, 58-9. See above, n. 43. Michael Baume criticized the lack of business acumen of the postwar British in 'Trading with the 'Brits,'" Quadrant, ix (January-February 1965), 32-6. This was one of five articles in a featured section, "The British and Us," which indicated the new trend in Australian attitudes toward the British connection.

K. A. MACKIRDY 132 American administration viewed the Nehru government with suspicion, illustrates the utility they are seeking in the Commonwealth: not military potential, but dialogue. The phrase is trite, but the concern is real. Can­ ada's fireproof house is not bombproof. Situated between Russia and the United States, and on the great circle route between continental China and continental United States, Canadians have more reason than had the Australians of Lang's day to feel that their security could be endangered by the actions of another power. But isolation is no longer an adequate solu­ tion. The climate of peace must be cultivated. A century ago the Fathers of Canadian Confederation frustrated the hopes of the Little Englanders by providing for the indefinite continuation of the British connection in North America to counter American influ­ ences. Now, although a contracting Britain is finding Commonwealth ties a matter of even greater embarrassment, and the prevailing Australian tendency is to write it off, the Canadians, who, by their stubborn pursuit of their self-interest might be said to have invented the Commonwealth, are still finding the association of use in the continuing tasks of differentiat­ ing themselves from the United States and in combating the present ten­ dency toward mutually exclusive regional groupings. Viewed in this light the entire Commonwealth experiment might be defined as a selfish Cana­ dian plot.

The Canadian Doctrine of the Middle Powers

R. A. MacKAY

T H E CONCEPT of Canada as a middle power came into the political vocab­ ulary of Canadians towards the end of the Second World War and it quickly caught on among politicians, journalists, and academics. For one reason, it seemed to sum up aptly the position Canada had come to occupy in the Grand Alliance as, in fact, third partner on the western front, and it seemed to promise continuance of this role in the new United Nations. For another, it had no historical or political overtones which might have of­ fended either major ethnic group of the nation. At any rate, the label stuck, and it still sticks, whatever its present significance or validity.

The concept had a political, rather than a scientific, origin. It arose out of the discussions preceding the establishment of the United Nations. The Canadian government had been far from happy with the concentration of authority for the conduct of the war in the hands of the "Big Three," and there was good reason to believe that they would attempt to perpetuate this situation in the postwar period. When Prime Minister King visited England in the spring of 1944, Churchill regaled him with his plan for a world organization: it would have a central council consisting of the big four, on which Britain would speak for the Commonwealth, and regional councils on which states with interests in the region would be members; on the American council, Canada could represent Britain and other Com­ monwealth nations. King took strong exception; Canada would not be prepared to represent Britain in the American region, he said, nor would it be prepared to have Britain represent it on the central council. With respect to the central council, he said, "we would wish to have our own right of representation, if not as one of the big three or four, at least as one of the medium powers that would be brought into the World Organization in some relation which would recognize that power and responsibility went together and [would] recognize our individual position." 1

1

J. W. Pickersgill, The Mackenzie

King Record, i (Toronto, 1960), 678.

134

R. A. MACKAY

Churchill's grandiose plan for a world organization was soon given decent burial, but the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals which emerged later in the year were hammered out in meetings of the big four alone. The pro­ posals took no account of King's plea, pressed at the Commonwealth meetings and in Washington, for a special position for the "medium powers." The key issue was that of membership on the Executive Council (subsequently the Security Council). The big five were to be permanent members; the remaining six seats were to be filled by election for two-year terms. In debate on the proposals, King strongly opposed "the simple division between great and small powers," and he pressed instead the adoption of the functional principle in council elections. Speaking in the debate in Parliament, King declared: The simple division of the world between great powers and the rest is unreal and even dangerous. The great powers are called by that name simply because they possess great power. The other states of the world possess power and therefore, the capacity to use it for the maintenance of peace - in varying degrees ranging from almost zero in the case of the smallest and weakest states up to a military potential not far below that of the great powers. In determining what states should be represented on the council with the great powers, it is, I believe, necessary to apply the functional idea. Those countries which have most to contribute to the maintenance of the peace of the world should be most frequently selected. The military contribution actually made during this war by the members of the United Nations provides one good working basis for a selective principle of choice. 2

Meantime, a memorandum setting out the Canadian position was dispatched to the governments of the big five. It declared: "Under the proposals a country which would be called upon to make a substantial contribution to world security has no better chance of election to the Security Council than the smallest and weakest state." Canada certainly made no claim to great power status, but its record in two great wars had shown both a readiness to join in concerted action against aggression and the capacity for substantial military and industrial production. There were other states whose potential contribution to the maintenance of peace was of similar magnitude. The support of these states for the new organization would be essential. It was urged, therefore, that changes should be made in the draft charter to ensure "that such states were chosen to fill elected seats on the council more frequently (or possibly for longer periods) than states with less to contribute to the maintenance of security." The memorandum did not use the term "middle powers," though it 3

2 8

Canada, House of Commons Debates, vi, 1944, p. 5909. This memorandum was made public in 1965, in External Affairs, xvn, no. 2 (February 1965), 57-61.

THE CANADIAN DOCTRINE OF THE MIDDLE POWERS 135 was used in a covering dispatch to the heads of missions concerned, in­ structing them to present the memorandum to the governments to which they were accredited. These instructions recognized the difficulty of de­ fining "a so-called middle power," and suggested it might be necessary "to fall back on some special 'methods of nomination' or 'weighted voting' " related to military or financial contributions, or even to debarring from election members who had failed to make satisfactory military agree­ ments or were in default on financial obligations to the organization. Attempts, however, to have the draft charter amended before the general conference, which met later in San Francisco, failed. Persistent efforts of the lesser powers, largely under Australian and Canadian leader­ ship, however, resulted in two amendments favourable to the middle powers. One provided that before calling on a member for military sup­ port, the Security Council must invite it to attend appropriate council meetings at which it would be entitled to participate and to vote. The second was a mild application of Mr King's functional principle for eligi­ bility to election to the Security Council. In the Dumbarton Oaks Pro­ posals, geographical representation had been the only qualification. Article 23 of the charter was amended to read: "Due regard being paid specially in the first instance to the contribution of members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security and to other pur­ poses of the Charter, and also to equitable geographical representation." This provision, however, was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The history of functionalism in elections to the Security Council can be briefly told. The first election was a reasonable compromise between the functional and geographic principles: elected were Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Poland, the Netherlands, and Australia. Canada, though obtain­ ing substantial support, withdrew on the third ballot in favour of Australia, which pressed its case strongly on the ground that there was no other 4

4

It is sometimes suggested that Canada's proposal for a special status for middle powers was naive. But it was not unusual for diplomacy to recognize gradations of states, even if the distinctions followed the ranks of their respective rulers emperors, kings, princes, and so on. The peace conference of 1919 had made distinctions in representation: The principal allied and associated powers being allotted five seats each at plenary meetings of the conference; three seats were allotted to a second group, two to a third, and one each to neutrals and new states being organized. Moreover, the League had also wrestled with the problem, Brazil, Spain, and Poland having pressed at an early stage, and with some success, to have their claims to continuous membership on the council accepted by the practice of re-election. When Germany joined in 1926, the council was enlarged and new rules for election, which failed to satisfy the demands of Brazil and Spain for continuous membership, were established. They withdrew membership from the League. F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (London, 1952), 323-7.

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power to represent the Pacific area. From the first, however, eastern European and Latin American members began to stake out claims for continuous representation of their respective regions. Commonwealth members, including Canada, laid claim to continuous Commonwealth representation among elected members. By the early fifties, the Assembly became virtually deadlocked year after year over elections to the Security Council, and the situation worsened with the great increase of membership after 1955. After prolonged discussion, with the aim of taking some account of the increased membership, the council was enlarged in 1963. By this time the bloc system of representation seemed the only way out of repeated deadlocks over elections. It was formally approved by assembly resolution allocating among four groups the seats to be filled by election. Five seats were to be filled by African or Asian states; two by Latin American states; two by western European and Other states (which in­ cludes "old" Commonwealth states); one by eastern European states. Similar rules were adopted for elections to the Economic and Social Coun­ cil, the chairmen of committees, the general committee of the assembly, and the vice-presidents of the assembly. If the functional principle is fol­ lowed in these elections, it is within caucuses of the particular blocs. The tendency in all groups is, however, to pass the honours around. As for the middle powers, they never developed into a bloc. If some middle powers have co-operated from time to time in support of a particular proposal, it has been on ad hoc basis. When enlargement of the Security Council came, they made no very serious attempt to secure repre­ sentation or to revive the idea of functionalism in elections. 5

6

One weakness of the case for special recognition of middle powers in the United Nations was that there was no agreed list, nor any agreed definition or description. The five permanent members of the Security Council constituted a convenient list of great powers, even if, as Mr King said, they were self-elected. At the bottom of the scale of any list of powers according to importance were several states which everyone would agree 5

6

United Nations General Assembly, Resolutions, adopted 17 December 1963 (effective 1965). The claim for a Commonwealth seat was dropped, the newer Commonwealth members preferring to take their chances in their regional bloc. The European and Other group appears to be the only group listed that does not hold caucuses. In practice functional representation has been widely followed, if not formally approved in principle, in several of the specialized agencies of the U N , notably FAO, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Interna­ tional Monetary Fund, ICAO, and in many subordinate commissions or other bodies established by the General Assembly. But this is outside the scope of this paper which is concerned with the political role of middle powers.

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should be labelled "small," and since the Second World War the number of small, even minuscule, states has greatly increased with the collapse of European empires. But where in any hierarchy of powers would one draw the line between small and middle powers? Mr King's proposal of functional representation would have finessed the problem had this been accepted, but it had no appeal to small powers against whom it would have discriminated. The Canadian case for a special position for the middle powers in the new world organization was that its primary function would be to preserve peace, by overwhelming force or threat of force if need be. This attitude was, of course, not unique to Canada; it was shared generally by all peoples who had been at war. In keeping with this view Canada continued to press for the working out of military agreements between the council and individual members as provided for by the charter. Mr St Laurent, then secretary of state for external affairs, summed up in the General Assembly of 1946 the Canadian view of the functions of the United Nations: "The Government and people of Canada are anxious to know what armed forces, in common with other members of the United Nations, Canada should maintain as our share of the burden of putting world force behind world law" A significant assumption of Canadian thinking was that the middle powers (or medium states, to use Mr King's term) could be entrusted to use their power responsibly in the interest of the world community. One consideration about the middle powers presumably was that individually or collectively they could not withstand pressure from the world com­ munity, or even from the great powers individually. The position of the great powers was, however, a different matter since they could protect their interests by the veto. Speaking in the General Assembly on the re­ port of the Atomic Energy Commission and referring especially to the refusal of the USSR to forego the veto on sanctions against a violation of the proposed scheme for international control, Mr St Laurent faced the issue squarely. If the situation ever developed, he said, where the opposi­ tion of a great power could be overcome by force, it would make no sub­ stantial difference whether it had the right of veto or not, since resort to force against a great power would mean war. He was already disposed to accept the right of a great power to veto sanctions, since it corresponded to the realities of the situation. 1

8

7

8

Statement in the opening debate of the General Assembly, 29 October 1946, Canada, Department of External Affairs, Conference series, 1946, The United Nations, 1946, pp. 105-6. (Italics added.) Canada, House of Commons Debates, 16 October 1945, pp. 1195-1202.

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Despite the failure to achieve satisfactory amendment of the UN char­ ter at San Francisco, the role of the middle powers in the United Nations continued to be a recurring theme in public addresses and in the press. One of the best articulated statements on the theme was an address in 1947 by R. G. Riddell of the Department of External Affairs, who no doubt reflected the views of Mr St Laurent, then secretary of state for external affairs, since Riddell was working closely with him at the time. Riddell did not attempt a list of middle powers, but he did suggest their characteristics: "The Middle Powers are those which by reason of their size, their material resources, their willingness and ability to accept respon­ sibility, their influence and stability are close to being great powers." This last phrase - close to being great powers - admirably sums up what Cana­ dians, whether politicians or private persons, meant then and still do by the term "middle powers." They did not mean states in the arithmetical middle between the very small and the very great, but secondary states (to use King's term) which just missed being great powers. This could have included Belgium and the Netherlands, which, if small in terms of territory in Europe, were influential world powers as centres of large empires over­ seas, and India, which was just emerging from imperial control. The possibilities offered these middle powers in the development of collective security through the United Nations, Riddell argued, were of "tremendous importance." In a predatory world, the middle powers are more vulnerable than their smaller neighbours, and less able to protect themselves than their larger ones. In gen­ eral they have extensive territories, sometimes widely scattered; they have resources which are of importance to other states; their territory is usually of strategic importance to their larger neighbours. They have not, however, the means to defend themselves single-handed. They must look to some kind of association with other states to maintain their security, and indeed their national integrity. The simplest kind of association is, of course, a straight military alliance. But if this is the simplest, it is also the least satisfactory form of security for the smaller members of the partnership. It is only, therefore, by placing their security arrangements in the wider framework of a more general international structure that the secondary states can avoid endangering their own safety by the very measures which are designed to protect them. 9

Riddell thought that because the stakes in the general security system were "very high" for middle powers, their strong support for the United Nations could be counted on. He was less hopeful of the great powers. 9

Canada, Department of External Affairs, Statements June 1945.

and Speeches, 48/40, 22

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Professor Glazebrook, writing at about the same time as Riddell, also attempted to describe the characteristics of the middle powers. He would add together the three factors (he does not state in what proportions): "Their opposition to great power control; their growing tendency to act together; and the influence they have independently come to exert." He courageously ventured an open-ended list of middle powers which he thought would be generally accepted. These were: Belgium, the Nether­ lands, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and India. Such a list, however, would hardly be accepted today, especially after the re­ covery of Western Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the decline in status of Belgium and the Netherlands following the collapse of their empires. Nor would the tests which Glazebrook suggests serve to single out middle powers from small - indeed Glazebrook readily admits that small powers often exhibit the characteristics of the middle powers. Most of the flock of new nations which have since then emerged from colonialism would, moreover, outdo middle powers in voicing opposition to great power con­ trol. Nor is there today much evidence of middle powers tending to act together as a group or bloc, if indeed there ever was. But both Riddell and Glazebrook were writing in the brief postwar period when there was still hope, though it was declining, that the United Nations could develop into an effective system of collective security. Within months the situation had changed profoundly with the onset of the cold war. 10

A distinctive feature of the cold war was the bi-polar concentration of power without precedent in modern history. This resulted mainly from two developments: first was the race between the United States and the Soviet Union in nuclear weaponry which, although ultimately resulting in a stalemate between the two, dwarfed all other powers in comparison with them; secondly, each super-power sought to buttress its nuclear strategy by regional alliances or understandings - NATO, the Warsaw Pact, for a time the Sino-Soviet Alliance, SEATO, CENTO, NORAD, and so on, were born of the cold war. Some states avoided the network of alliances, notably the traditional neutrals of Europe, Sweden and Switzerland, and for the most part Arab and African states just emerging from colonialism. Of these non-aligned states only India and Sweden had much claim to middle power rank, and of the two only India continued to have much influence in world affairs, perhaps because it was, in fact, the most active Asian power in world politics pending the return of China to the world arena. As for the middle powers, membership in an alliance gave them some sort 1 0

G. P. de T. Glazebrook, "The Middle Powers in the United Nations," International Organization, 1, no. 2, (June 1947).

R. A. MACKAY

140

of voice in alliance policy, but in any alliance, voices tend to be listened to in accordance with the military potential they represent. One important result of the cold war was the eclipse of the United Nations as a potential system of collective security. The military clauses of the charter became virtual dead-letters. A U N cover was provided for collective action by the United States and its closest allies in Korea, but this was a "one-shot" operation; it has not served as a precedent. More­ over, it should not be forgotten that it was made possible procedurally by the fortuitous circumstance that the USSR was boycotting the U N , and was not present for the crucial vote in the Security Council. Had it been present the veto would almost certainly have been applied. Despite Korea, there is little reason to assume that any real progress had been made in achieving effective collective security through the United Nations. The nuclear stalemate did, however, open the way for a special role for the lesser powers, namely, peacekeeping. A detailed account of peacekeep­ ing ventures would be out of place here but an examination of the assump­ tion frequently made that peacekeeping is peculiarly a middle power role is relevant. Although Canada played a leading part in 1956 at the time of the Suez crisis in initiating the United Nations' Emergency Force, U N E F was far from being solely a middle power operation. Canada had stout support among Scandinavian and certain Latin American states, most of whom had doubtful claims to middle power rank. Great power attitudes were even more important; the United States gave the proposal diplomatic support, while the USSR, although objecting to authorization of the force by the General Assembly rather than by the Security Council and threatening to withhold financial support, abstained on the vote. The fact was, interven­ tion by the lesser powers served the national interests of the super-powers at the time, neither of whom could have intervened without risking a confrontation with the other. Nor would U N E F have been practicable if either Britain or France had been prepared to resist. In short, U N E F was possible only because of great power acquiescence. The force when finally organized was widely representative of small powers. By general agreement forces from the permanent members of the Security Council were not accepted. Twenty-four other members offered forces but only those from ten members were accepted - Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, India, Indonesia, Norway, Sweden, and Yugoslavia. All but three or four of those who participated were clearly 11

1 1

Other offers were not taken up for one reason or another - from Australia and New Zealand, because they had openly supported the British intervention; from

T H E CANADIAN DOCTRINE OF T H E M I D D L E POWERS

141

small rather than middle powers. The Congo force was even more a small power operation: twenty-nine U N members provided forces including such small powers as Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea, and Ireland. Every peacekeeping operation has been an ad hoc arrangement, especially with regard to participation. Canada has participated in every U N peacekeeping venture so far, whether of the truce-observation type as in Kashmir, or the militarypresence type as in Cyprus. This extensive participation is no doubt partly the reason for the widespread myth among Canadians that peacekeeping is a middle power function, and as such appropriate to Canada. But not all states which might claim middle power status have been as active partici­ pants - for example, Australia, which is preoccupied with south east Asia; Poland, which is still on Moscow's leading strings; or West Germany, Italy, and Japan, none of whom would likely yet be welcomed in late colonial areas where all peacekeeping operations have so far taken place. On the other hand, several states with no pretentions of middle powermanship have been active and effective peacekeepers, notably Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, and Tunisia. The fact is, in any specific peacekeeping operation, the rank of the state offering a contingent is virtually irrelevant (except that contingents are not accepted from permanent members of the Security Council). Of far greater importance are acceptability by the parties to die dispute, im­ partiality on the issues involved, technical competence of the forces of­ fered. Moreover, every peacekeeping force has been partly representative in character. In the case of UNEF, for example, Yugoslavia was presumed to be representative of eastern Europe, India of Asia, Colombia and Brazil of Latin America. 12

Although the concept of the middle powers has had little vogue outside Canada, it still seems basic to Canadian thinking on foreign affairs. A serious effort to grapple with the concept was made by the Banff Confer­ ence on World Development in 1965, and the volume of conference ad­ dresses edited by J. King Gordon under the title Canada's Role as a Middle Power is a highly significant contribution to Canadian thought on foreign affairs. No attempt was made to reach agreement on a fist of middle powers or on their characteristics. But it was generally assumed that there were such states as middle powers, and that there was at least in idea a Pakistan, because it was a Moslem country and a member of the Bagdad Pact which India strongly suspected; forces from Rumania and Czechoslovakia were "not activated," and so on. John G. Stoessinger, The United Nations and the Super Powers (New York, 1966), 71 ff., 80 ff. " Ibid., 80.

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middle power policy, to which middle powers, including Canada, more or less conformed. The most philosophical, and the most significant contribution for our purposes was a short paper by Professor Paul Painchaud - "Middlepowermanship as an Ideology." Professor Painchaud dismissed in a sentence or two the use of the term middle power as a scientific measure of power in the international system on the grounds of its methodological difficulties and that it was going out of fashion. But the term, he thought, had another and more important use as a sort of "ideology of foreign policy" signifying "a certain type and a certain content of policy. He admitted the difficulty of constructing a theoretical model of middle power policy, or of defining in abstract fashion a doctrine of middlepowermanship, common to all mid­ dle powers. He took refuge instead in an analysis of the global situation in which the concept of the middle powers had emerged, and he proceeded to analyse Canadian policy in this historical context. The dominant influence on Canadian foreign policy for twenty years, says Professor Painchaud, has been the cold war which has resulted from deadlock between the super-powers. Because of Canada's geographic situ­ ation, the cold war has compelled Canada to follow a single type of diplo­ macy "to prevent, whatever the cause and wherever in the world it might be, an aggravation of tensions between the two great powers which would go beyond the moderate and tolerable level of their opposition." Canada alone can have little influence on either of the antagonists; "the only source of possible and real influence on the cold war of which Canada can dispose has been and remains the United Nations." Here her role is that of mediation in the broadest sense of endeavouring to ameliorate the ten­ sions of the cold war. "Mediation, principally within the United Nations, constitutes for Canada an important and fundamental element of its ideology of a middle power." Under conditions of the cold war Canada had to place itself more and more at the disposition of the United States. This affected her role as mediator; sometimes it was advantageous, at other times a handicap. But the cold war epoch is passing into history; the bi-polar system of interna­ tional relations is giving way to a multi-polar system. In view of changing international conditions a new political attitude, which can conceive of an international role divergent from that of the United States, is required of Canada. Only thus can Canada fulfil the role of mediator, inherent in its position as a middle power. It might then become possible for a number 13

14

1 3

"

J. King Gordon, ed., Canada*s Role as a Middle Power (Toronto, 1966), 29. Ibid.,3\.

THE CANADIAN DOCTRINE OF THE MIDDLE POWERS

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of other states, notably those of Latin America, to play a more active and constructive role in the solution of international conflicts. It is difficult to do justice to Professor Painchaud's thought because of the brevity of his paper, and what follows may well be unfair, but he inspires some questions of importance to this topic. With his conclusion that Canada's basic role in world affairs is that of a mediator in the broad sense, there can be little quarrel, except perhaps about the tactics to be followed. Indeed the then Prime Minister, Mr Pearson, who was present at a final session of the conference, agreed on this role for Canada, but gently suggested it had long been followed by Canada, even at the risk of being considered an international busybody. But one has the feeling that the concept of the middle powers has been obtruded on what might other­ wise have been a straightforward account and criticism of Canadian policy which would have arrived at much the same conclusion. For example, is mediation the exclusive policy of middle powers? May it not be equally the policy of small powers or of some of the great powers, though there may well be differences in the success with which small, middle, or great powers pursue the role? Further, is it sound to attribute to the concept of middle powers a "cer­ tain type and content" of diplomacy? What evidence is there that middle powers follow common policies, different from or distinct from, those of small or great powers? If there is no sound evidence, might it not be doing violence to language to ascribe to the idea a content which the facts out of which the idea emerges fail to support? In conclusion, it may well be asked whether the term middle power should not be restricted to its original use - as a rough, comparative assess­ ment of a state's capacity to hold its own vis-a-vis other states in a still anarchic condition of international society. That there are states in terms of power between the great and the small (among them Canada), that they exercise more influence in world affairs than the small and less than the great seems obvious. That they are more moral, more enlightened, more unselfish, is neither obvious nor proven. To attribute to a quantita­ tive term a moral, or ideological, or political content seems to me to clutter thought rather than to clarify it.

Collectivization, Depression, and Immigration, 1929-1930: A Chance Interplay HARVEY L. DYCK

In October 1929 Canadian officials learned of startling developments in the Soviet Union which threatened to intrude on their interests and those of the German government. Thousands of German-speaking peasants in the USSR (the majority of them Mennonite) were abandoning their villages in panic and fleeing to Moscow; their desperate venture had as its goal im­ migration to Canada through Germany's mediation. Before the end of 1929 this seemingly trivial, though dramatic, event of Soviet domestic life led to a chance interplay between the USSR's titanic social revolution and Germany's and Canada's deepening economic crises. In Germany news of the assembling of the refugees combined with growing social instability to fan anti-Soviet sentiment and weaken Weimar Germany's long-standing partnership with the USSR. In Canada appeals to admit the refugees prompted a major debate about immigration policy; the debate helped to crystallize those group, sectional, and economic interests that in 1929-30 closed Canada's borders to most prospective immigrants until after 1945. For one charged moment the internal problems of three different societies came, in this way, to intersect in the lives of disoriented peasants huddled together in dachas in Moscow's suburbs. The gamble led, for some of them, to deliverance and a new, though hard, life in Paraguay or Canada; but for most it ended precipitously in exile, starvation, or death. Finally, because the tragic story unfolding in Moscow was fully reported in the international press its major repercussion was to focus world-wide atten­ tion on the staggering human costs of Stalin's agrarian revolution. The first German-speaking colonists began leaving the Soviet countryside in the winter of 1928-9. Under pressure of the early moderate phase of Stalin's collectivization drive - a massive, forcible, grain-gathering campaign - a handful of anxious Mennonite families in Siberia quietly sold their household and agricultural assets and slipped illegally across the border into China and Persia. A larger number (some seventy families by July) boarded trains for Moscow in an effort to emigrate legally. But as

COLLECTIVIZATION, DEPRESSION, A N D I M M I G R A T I O N

145

Soviet authorities repeatedly rejected their applications for passports and their meagre funds dwindled their future became overcast. When the German Ambassador in Moscow also refused to intervene on their behalf even representatives of Mennonite refugee organizations abroad urged them to return to their villages. Dr B. H. Unruh, a leading member of the emigre Mennonite intelligentsia in Germany, summed up the cheerless situation: "I cannot understand how mature men can act in this way, leaving their nests with families in times such as these when one knows precisely that Moscow will not issue any passports." Nevertheless, in mid­ summer the repeated, direct, personal pleas of members of the seventy families to high Soviet functionaries elicited an unexpected ruling: they would be permitted to leave the USSR as a group; further petitions for emigration, however, would be rejected for the duration of the first fiveyear plan. The departure of "the seventy" in late August coincided with the start of a more repressive, intermediary, phase of Stalin's agrarian revolution: a speeding up of the assault on the peasant upper classes and regional experiments in total collectivization. The goal was to drive kulak elements out of the villages altogether; the remaining middle and poor peasants were then to be herded into collective farms through measures that would render individual farming prohibitive. The collectivizers pinned their hopes on their ability to split peasant settlements along class lines. Often, when resistance mounted, they had no alternative but to resort to force. The result was an atmosphere of panic spreading throughout peasant Russia in the summer and fall of 1929. The hard edge of repression fell most heavily upon communities such as those of the Mennonites - with a high proportion of legally desig­ nated kulaks and a high degree of social cohesion. In 1929-30 the 120,000 Russian Mennonites, living in closed colonies in the steppe areas of the Black Sea, the Trans-Volga, and western Siberia endured the full range of the collectivizers' techniques. For example, in 1929 a small Mennonite village of thirty households in the Siberian colony of Slavgorod, produced 1,500 poods of grain and was assigned a delivery quota of double that 1

2

3

4

1

2

3 4

H. J. Willms, comp., Vor den Toren Moskaus (Yarrow, BC, 1960), 11-17; Bethel College Library, Newton, Kansas, Peter Braun Collection, B. H. Unruh to Peter Braun, 12 June 1929; Gerhard Epp, In den Steppen Sibiriens (Rosthern, Sask., n.d.), 125-6. Herbert von Dirksen to the German Foreign Ministry, 1 August 1929, carried in full in Rote Fahne, 14 November 1929. The authenticity of this document is at­ tested by German Foreign Ministry, Zechlin to Schubert, 14 November 1929, microfilm serial 4562/E160326-9. Braun Collection, B. H. Unruh to Peter Braun, 12 June 1929. Willms, Vor den Toren Moskaus, 17.

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amount. Four other villages in the same area harvested 25,000 poods and were required to deliver 34,000. In order to meet these confiscatory de­ mands peasants would deliver grain purchased on the open market with money earned from the sale of their furniture, cattle, and implements; when such funds failed to cover mounting arrears, fines were imposed equalling many times their value. As a last step to the abyss the remaining possessions of peasant households would be sold at forced auction and family heads deported for having "malevolently refused" to fulfil state demands. Throughout Russia peasants responded to crushing pressures such as these by bribing or murdering officials, hiding grain, slaughtering cattle, or by arson, suicide, and internal migration. The Mennonites, however, were conditioned by their historical experience to seek relief in flight and emigration. They interpreted collectivization in traditional terms as a recurrence of the persecution that had driven their Anabaptist forebears to migrate first from the Netherlands to the Vistula estuary and then to Russia, and they responded in the traditional way. They could also count upon the support of thousands of their co-religionists abroad, who had settled in Canada a few years earlier, and upon a functioning international Mermonite refugee organization. Thus news of the departure from Mos­ cow of the seventy families triggered a mass, panicky flight. It spread rapidly from the ethnic German Slavgorod region of Siberia to all Mennonite colonies of the USSR: Omsk, Novosibirsk, Pavlodar, Orenburg, Ufa, Samara, the northern Caucusus, the Crimea, and the Black Sea Steppes. The mass movement had neither organization nor leadership. A family would hear of the chance of escape from relatives already in Moscow, sell what it could at private auction, and entrain for the capital. The first such auction in an area had an electric effect and was followed by many others. By mid-October neighbouring colonies of Lutheran and Catholic Germans, including those of the populous Autono­ mous Volga German Republic, were rapidly being drawn into the move5

6

7

5

6

7

Otto Auhagen, Schicksalswende des Russlanddeutschen Bauerntums, 1927-1930 (Leipzig, 1942), 42, 65 ff.; O. Auhagen, "Wirtschaftsumschau," Osteuropa (November 1929). E. K. Francis, In Search of Utopia (Altona, 1955), 35. Soviet propogandists termed the mass movement "counter-revolutionary activity": N. L. Emma, Die Auswanderung ist eine konterrevolutionare Aktion (Moscow, 1930); and A. Reinmarus and G. Frisen, Mennoniti (Moscow, 1930), 75-7. German Foreign Ministry, memorandum by Trautmann, 13 November 1929, microfilm serial 2860/D561114-8; B. H. Unruh, "The Background and the Causes of the Flight of the Mennonites from Russia in 1929," Mennonite Quarterly Re­ view, October 1930, pp. 267-81; ibid., January 1931, pp. 28-41; Auhagen, Schick­ salswende, 55-60.

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ment. The dachas of Moscow were becoming a strong magnet acting on a high proportion of Russia's one and a quarter million ethnic Germans. Since the movement was part of the ferment accompanying collectiviza­ tion, Soviet authorities had no choice but to stop it. By prohibiting auc­ tions, refusing rail tickets to colonists, halting Moscow-bound trains after they had passed through German areas and seizing their colonist passen­ gers, and by posting armed guards at village exits, the government suc­ ceeded in this task. After mid-November only a few plucky stragglers managed to flee at night across open fields into non-German areas, board trains headed away from Moscow, and then, by circuitous routes, join their co-nationals in Moscow. Most of the eighteen thousand colonists who ultimately reached Mos­ cow had the single-minded intention of going to Canada. Because many of their people had preceded them there in the years 1923-7, they assumed that Canadian conditions favouring immigration had not changed: only the obduracy of the Soviet government stood between them and their goal. Initially, therefore, they appealed directly to the Central Executive Com­ mittee of the RSFSR and of the USSR. A group of them then sent a lengthy petition to six additional key organs of the Soviet government; it concluded with the melodramatic threat that if their wishes to emigrate were further refused they would go to Red Square as one man and perish. On the advice of a sympathetic party official they also staged a mass demonstration of women and children in the reception room of President Kalinin's office, but with indifferent results. Letters for help, suggested by Tolstoyans in Moscow, were directed to Lenin's widow, Krupskaia, and Maxim Gorky. As a last resort interviews were obtained with Smidovich, chairman of the Committee of National Minorities, and Yenukidze, a high government official. The results, as one colonist later recalled, were uniformly dismal: "Repeatedly they urged us, 'Go home, return to your villages.' 'But we have no homes, they have taken everything,' we would reply. They would then promise to return our property. [But knowing that life in Russia had become impossible for us], we would plead, 'We want nothing back; we want only to leave, even if we have to walk to the border.' " Throughout October and the early part of November Soviet authori­ ties hesitated to use force against the "counter-revolutionary" colonists in Moscow for two main reasons: the unexpected keen interest which the German government had shown in the colonists and the wide reporting of 8

9

10

11

12

1 3

8

9 1 1 1 3

Willms, Vor den Toren, 73-4; German Foreign Ministry, memo, by Trautmann, 13 November 1929, serial 2860/D561114-8. Willms, Vor den Toren, 74. Auhagen, Schicksalswende, 53. Willms, Vor den Toren, 52-3. Auhagen, Schicksalswende, 54. Willms, Vor den Toren, 52. 1 0

1 2

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HARVEY L. DYCK

the vicissitudes of their flight and stay in the capital by the foreign press. On 11 October Professor Otto Auhagen, Germany's agricultural attache in Moscow and a respected and widely read authority on Soviet agricul­ ture, visited the despairing refugees - some twenty-five hundred at the time - in the company of two German and three American journalists. Deeply moved by the experience, he called on his government to intervene diplomatically to better the lot of the colonists in the villages and secure the emigration of those already in Moscow. On the same day Professor Unruh, confidante of the Russian Mennonites and European head of Mennonite refugee organizations, presented an equally energetic plea to the German Foreign Ministry. Both gave details of the catastrophic develop­ ments in Moscow and similar assurances that if the refugees were brought to Germany they could proceed direcdy to Canada on the basis of firm, standing, credit agreements between the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Indeed many of the refu­ gees had already obtained pre-paid tickets from relatives in Canada. The Foreign Ministry responded with unusual briskness to these ap­ peals by dispatching the head of its Russian desk, Consul Dienstmann, to Moscow. On 19 October unofficial negotiations with Boris Shtein, head of the mid-European division of the Foreign Commissariat, led to an extraordinary concession: all colonists in Moscow or in transit to the capital would be let out. To speed their departure the passport require­ ment would be waived and they would emigrate by lists. This accom­ modating Soviet response, as Shtein affirmed, stemmed from the need to maintain cordial relations with the German government at a time when the Soviet Union was facing isolation in Europe. The favourable decision, he added, had been made against strenuous opposition within the govern­ ment. "I was overwhelmed by the news," one of the refugees later wrote. "I hired a taxi and driving slowly through the villages inhabited by our people shouted, 'We can go! Get ready!' Soon all knew that the dreamt-of-day had finally arrived." In dacha villages stretching thirty miles along the Moscow-Yaroslav-Volga rail line, colonists, officials of the State Political 14

15

16

17

18

1 4

1 5 1 6

1 7

1 8

Auhagen to Foreign Ministry, 11 October 1929, in Auhagen, Schicksalswende, 49-54. Braun Collection, B. H. Unruh to the Foreign Ministry, 10 October 1929. German Foreign Ministry, memo, by Trautmann, 25 November 1929, serial 4562/E160405-10; Bethel College Library, Emergency Relief Committee Col­ lection, B. H. Unruh to P. H. Unruh, 21 November 1929. German Foreign Ministry, Twardowski, German charge in Moscow, to the Foreign Ministry re conversation with Shtein, 2 November 1929, serial 4 5 6 2 / E160278-80. Willms, Vor den Toren, 56.

COLLECTIVIZATION, DEPRESSION, A N D I M M I G R A T I O N

149

Police ( G P U ) , and staff of the German embassy worked quickly to com­ plete transport arrangements. They assumed that once the migrants reached Germany the CPR would take responsibility for their further jour­ ney; the German Foreign Ministry expected only to have to issue German identification papers to the refugees (Canada refused to recognize their Soviet ones) and undertake to accept those whom Canada might later deport. After the colonists had hurriedly been organized into eleven groups the first of them departed at night on 27 October by special train for Leningrad. Since GPU officials were determined to liquidate the encamp­ ments before the anniversary celebrations of the October revolution, others were scheduled to follow soon. But on 30 October news arrived that Canada was reluctant to accept any new immigrants and might, at most, admit some only in the spring. Because the German government was un­ willing to assume sole responsibility for the care and settlement of the colonist refugees, Soviet authorities responded by shunting a second train of colonists that had just left Moscow onto a siding and halting all further transports. The Canadian contretemps presented Soviet officials with difficult choices. Their earlier decision to dissolve the colonist groups in co-opera­ tion with Germany was designed to serve their foreign as well as domestic interests. But now further delay had become intolerable. The continued daily arrival of hundreds of refugees at Moscow was keeping the German villages highly agitated thus adding to the serious disorganization of peas­ ant Russia. In the first days of November spokesmen of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs repeatedly pressed the German Foreign Ministry to re­ ceive the refugees at once or bear the odium for their deportation. "There were only [these] two possibilities," Shtein warned: "The Soviet govern­ ment had no interest in what happened to the emigrants later. It was only concerned that the encampments of these unemployed and half-starved individuals in the environs of Moscow be dissolved. The trains are fired and ready to leave; if they do not journey to the west they will be routed to the east." Against a background of such recurring threats, the German govern­ ment worked strenuously to frame a policy that took account of conflicting demands. These related to soaring unemployment, a pinched budget, a wavering diplomatic partnership with Moscow, and a fickle press and 19

20

1 9

2 0

Bethel College Library, P. C. Hiebert Collection, report by B. H. Unruh re devel­ opments from 24 October to 23 November, 23 November 1929; Willms, Vor den Toren, 46-7; German Foreign Ministry, memo, by Trautmann, 13 November 1929, serial 2860/D561114-8. German Foreign Ministry, Twardowski to the Foreign Ministry, 2 November 1929, serial 4562/E160278-80.

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public opinion - extending the full spectrum from Social Democrats to National Socialists - which insisted, in an increasingly shrill campaign, that the colonists at Moscow be rescued. Uncertainty over the scope of the peasant movement complicated decision-making. As one minister sug­ gested, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans were probably, at that very moment, in transit in central Russia. Could Germany alone assume the heavy burden of transporting and settling them at a time of cata­ strophic financial crisis? While this debate continued within the German government the German Foreign Ministry was trying to buy time and mobilize foreign aid: in Moscow it pleaded for a postponement of the threatened deportations; and in Canada it bombarded officials with ap­ peals for the admission of the refugees as immigrants. Representations in Ottawa on behalf of the Mennonite colonists came at a time of great flux in Canada's immigration policy. Yet neither the colonists and their co-religionists in Canada and Europe, nor the German and Soviet governments, were aware of this: they assumed that the earlier conditions favouring immigration still existed. To be sure, Canada's policy since the First World War had not officially favoured "continentals" as immigrants. Unlike the pre-1914 "permissive" approach of settling the west by admitting all comers, except a few in defined categories, the post1914 "selective" policy forbade entry to all persons except those in speci­ fied categories. This policy, which included the listing of countries of origin as "preferred, non-preferred, and excluded" was intended to favour immigrants from Britain and northwestern Europe. Countries of eastern Europe were listed as non-preferred. Yet the desire to attract easily as­ similable immigrants from the largely industrialized north Atlantic region (whose population surplus was an urban proletariat) conflicted with the equally explicit goal of attracting agriculturalists as settlers. After 1922 the contradictory objectives of settling new prairie lands and yet closing off the continental reservoir of agricultural workers were gradually modified. Under conditions of rising prosperity overt and stri­ dent wartime anti-foreigner sentiment waned and pressure from the trans­ portation interests for a change in policy focused on decision-making. In briefs and letters to the Canadian cabinet the rail companies persistently argued that Canada's national interests called for the full use of existing passenger ship and railroad capacity to colonize undeveloped lands along rail lines. Therefore, their agents in Europe should have a freer hand in attracting settlers. In 1925 the slow relaxation of government policy cul21

2 1

Joseph Kage, With Faith and Thanksgiving (Montreal, 1962) and William Peter­ sen, Planned Migration (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1955).

COLLECTIVIZATION, DEPRESSION, A N D I M M I G R A T I O N

151

minated in an agreement between the Department of Immigration and Colonization and the rail companies; according to its terms the companies were freed of the restrictive practices of the department if they could demonstrate that prospective immigrants were genuine farmers and could find work for them. In the mid-1920s the Russian Mennonites benefitted directly from this development. The stage was set by the summer of 1922: on the initiative of Mackenzie King, the Canadian cabinet lifted Orders-in-Council of 1919 barring the entry of Mennonites; the CPR signed a contract with the re­ cently formed Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization extending transportation credits to the Russian Mennonites; and Soviet authorities agreed to permit limited emigration as a means of lessening pressures and hastening the postwar and postrevolution economic recovery of the Men­ nonite colonies. As a consequence, between 1923 and 1927, the hey­ days of the New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union and economic buoy­ ancy in Canada, some twenty thousand Mennonite colonists were able to leave their homeland by legal, though labyrinthine, means, and enter the prairie provinces as settlers. After 1927 the stiffening of Soviet barriers to legal exit coincided with the revival in Canada of opposition to the entry of large numbers of im­ migrants from southern and eastern Europe. The government's attitude, to be sure, was still guided by unexamined populationist assumptions of the past - that Canada needed more people from abroad and that they should be farmers. But it was also strongly conditioned by Mackenzie King's electoral strategy: a Liberal parliamentary majority was to be per­ petuated by tailoring policies regarding tariffs, freight rates, natural re­ sources, and immigration to prairie interests. In 1928 and 1929 King was forced to recognize that on the question of entry of continentals, dis­ parate prairie groups were coming to speak with a single strident AngloSaxon voice. Officials of western labour and the provincial governments charged that the railways were bringing in many poor immigrants who were unable to buy farms and so gorged the urban labour market. A large part of the prairie press and many platform speakers accused the Immi­ gration Department of flooding the west with unassimilable "foreigners" 22

23

24

25

26

2 2

2 3

2 4

2 5 2 6

H. Blair Neatby, William Lyon Mackenzie King: The Lonely Heights, 1924-1932 (Toronto, 1963), 240-1. Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus: The Rescue and Resettlement of the Russian Mennonites since the Communist Revolution (Altona, 1962), 101-18. John B. Toews, Lost Fatherland: The Story of the Mennonite Emigration from Soviet Russia, 1921-1927 (Scottdale, Penn., 1967), 91-3. Epp, Exodus, 51-217; Toews, Lost Fatherland. Neatby, King, 162-5.

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at the expense of desirable British stock. Then, following difficulties in marketing a bumper crop in 1928, even farmer groups in western Canada raised strenuous objections to mass immigration. Sensitivity to western feelings and changing economic conditions therefore compelled the government gradually to curb the freedom given the railroads for recruiting immigrants widely on the European continent. In October 1927 Ottawa renewed its agreement with the rail lines for the bringing in of farm settlers from non-preferred countries; but it attached a new condition that the Minister of Immigration could suspend the agree­ ment any time the companies violated its terms or serious unemployment dictated such action. In the winter of 1828-9 the department used this right by ordering the railroads to limit their immigration of continentals to one-third the number brought in the previous year. The grounds were mixed: "a strong feeling against the unduly large proportion of foreign as compared with British immigrants"; and information from the provin­ cial governments that "thousands of non-preferred country immigrants had drifted into non-agricultural work almost immediately upon arrival, contributing to the displacement of Canadians and otherwise filling posi­ tions that might have been filled by immigrants from the Mother Coun­ try." Although unemployment in the spring and summer of 1929 was not yet a critical problem the further venting of nativist, trade union, and farmer sentiments prompted the Minister of Immigration, Robert Forke, to confer on the matter with the governments of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The upshot was a federal commitment in August 1929 that in future they would be consulted continuously about their immigration requirements. This was the picture in late October when news reached Ottawa of the mass movement of Mennonites to Moscow and of their wish to come to Canada. The CPR in London, which, as in previous movements, had already been asked to handle transportation, sounded out the government about its attitude; the German Consul in Montreal, Kempff, promised that the refugees would receive German identity papers and be brought to Germany if they could then be moved to Canada; and the Canadian 27

28

29

30

31

32

33

Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs, 1927-28, pp. 185-7; Canadian An­ nual Review, 1928-29, pp. 152-4. 28 Keatby, King, 213-14. Canadian Annual Review, 1927-28, pp. 177. Canadian Annual Review, 1928-29, pp. 159-60. Canadian Annual Review, 1929-30, pp. 179-80. Canadian Department of Immigration and Colonization, excerpt from internal memo, dated 25 October 1930, quoted in letter to author from F. Sauve, Execu­ tive assistant to the assistant deputy minister (immigration), 2 October 1967. German Foreign Ministry, memo, by Trautmann, 25 November 1929, serial 4562/E160405-10.

2 7

2 9 8 0

3 1

8 2

3 3

COLLECTIVIZATION, DEPRESSION, AND IMMIGRATION

153

Mennonite Board of Colonization offered to accept and care for all Men­ nonites brought in. The first response of the Ministry of Immigration was unpromising: it recognized no obligation to the refugees and could offer hope only to persons with funds or a job. This information, cabled to Ber­ lin and from there to Moscow, halted the colonist trains on 30 October. In the weeks thereafter Canada's policy on the issue evolved largely in the public arena. The setting was provided by the press which carried daily reports of developments in Moscow and Berlin and of lively debates between interest groups and levels of government in Canada. For Macken­ zie King the incident was an unwelcome intrusion on his efforts to solidify the Liberals' electoral chances in the prairie provinces. Indeed, it was there, while on a pre-election speaking tour, that he first heard of the matter; a cable from the Immigration Ministry was followed on 6 No­ vember, in Rosthera, by a conversation with Bishop David Toews, head of the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization, who pleaded that the colonists be admitted on humanitarian grounds. The Prime Minister's equivocal reaction was implicit in his electoral strategy and the direction of recent developments in immigration policy. As a long-time friend of the Mennonites he expressed sympathy for the luckless refugees' desperate plight and instructed his Minister of Immigration to do what he could for them. But at the same time he realized that before any Mennonites were brought to Canada he would have to gain the consent of the provinces. Following this conversation between King and Toews, officials of the Department of Immigration - seconded by the railroads, Mennonite spokesmen, and the German Consul - tried to overcome rising prairie opposition to a rescue operation. The first canvassing of the three prairie governments on 7 November had a typically fruitless outcome. In a long telegram outlining the deteriorating picture at Moscow and the promised support of the railways, Mennonites, and German government, Gordon Forke assured the premiers: "We will not expect Province or Municipali­ ties to assume any responsibility and will endeavour to arrange movement so as not to aggravate employment situation." The first reply, two days later, from the recently elected Conservative Premier of Saskatchewan, J. T. M. Anderson, was none the less a qualified "no." He wired that he would consider admitting only close relatives of Saskatchewan Mennonites who undertook in writing that the newcomers would not become public 34

35

38

37

8 4 3 5

3 8

3 7

Hiebert Collection, report by B. H. Unruh, 23 November 1929. German Foreign Ministry, memo, by Trautmann, 25 November 1929, serial 4562/E160405-10. German Foreign Ministry, Kempff to Foreign Ministry re telephone call from Department of Immigration, 5 November 1929, serial 4562/E160281. German Foreign Ministry, Kempff to Foreign Ministry, 6 November 1929, serial 4562/E160289; Epp, Exodus, 245.

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HARVEY L. DYCK

charges for two years. As for the others, "this was a most inopportune time to admit destitute immigrants," particularly when Ottawa disclaimed responsibility for relief support. Manitoba and Alberta likewise listed crop failures, high unemployment, and heavy financial burdens for relief and works programmes as barring a major influx of immigrants. To try to soften this unyielding stand the Mennonite organizations, German government, and the department offered iron-clad guarantees that the immigrants would not burden the provinces, but without success. Bishop Toews, for example, was coolly received on a tour of the provincial capitals during which he promised that the Mennonite community of Can­ ada would care for its own. Repeated warnings of imminent deportations received from the German Foreign Ministry and forwarded to the prov­ inces, such as one of 19 November, were equally without effect. ("These thousands of people are in such great distress that we are not in a position to save them from certain ruin without help from abroad. Again we ap­ peal to the sympathies of your government and ask you to support us in this action.") On 20 November, following news of the beginning of the feared mass roundup of the colonists by the GPU, Acting Deputy Minister F. C. Blair again begged the provinces to reconsider their decisions and offered them a further inducement for doing so. In the presence of Consul Kempff and an agitated Bishop Toews he telegraphed that the German government was ready to give Mennonite organizations in Canada funds to care for any refugees who might later become public charges until they could be deported to Germany. But since the provincial replies were this time even more discouraging than before, Forke had no alternative but to announce on 26 November, that the question of bringing the Mennonite refugees to Canada would be shelved until the spring of 1930. The provincial premiers were so adamant in their stand because it was nurtured by a medley of provincial group sentiments. In the first weeks of November these had solidified against the colonists in a widespread pub­ lic discussion that was touched off by the regular newspaper reporting of the exchanges of messages between Regina and Ottawa. Premier Ander­ son, among others, found that his icy response to Ottawa's appeals was 38

39

40

41

42

43

3 8

3 9

4 0 4 1

4 2

4 3

Department of Immigration, quoted in letter to author from F. Sauve, 2 October 1967; see also Canadian Annual Review, 1929-30, pp. 181-2. Department of Immigration, Sauve to author, outlining contents of department files re Mennonite incident, 2 October 1967. Epp, Exodus, 247-9. German Foreign Ministry, Trautmann to Kempff, 19 November 1929, serial 4562/E160367. German Foreign Ministry, Kempff to Foreign Ministry re conversation with Blair, 20 November 1929, serial 2860/D560862-3. Department of Immigration, Sauve to author, 2 October 1967; Canadian Annual Review, 1929-30, p. 183.

155

COLLECTIVIZATION, DEPRESSION, AND IMMIGRATION

politically popular. Many messages of support came to his office from Conservative party associations, municipal and town councils, veterans' organizations, and farmers' associations. Invariably they cited recent crop failures and mounting unemployment as grounds for barring immi­ gration; but not infrequently they also reflected older and deeper concerns that the "Britishness" and integrity of prairie society was jeopardized by the inflow of east European immigrants. This convergence of rational economic fears and irrational ethnocen­ tric anxieties - in addition to touching the fate of the colonists - had an important sequel: it also suggested the need for basic changes in Canadian immigration policy. The question "Who makes policy?" had been clouded by the refugee entanglement. The public dispute over it had transformed the question of immigration policy into a contentious issue in the 1930 federal election, and needed to be defused. This King finally decided to do by following his prairie election strategy of the preceding years to its logical end. First, in January, he appointed his tarnished and ineffectual Minister of Immigration to the Senate; then, in March, on the eve of the campaign, the new Acting Minister announced that henceforth initiatives in immigration matters would come only from the provinces. The federal government would act solely at their bidding. This shift in policy accur­ ately reflected public opinion about the economic crisis and also, as the Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs for the year observed, "the attitude taken by the Governments of the Prairie Provinces in regard to the bringing into the country of a large number of Mennonite refugees from Russia, which question was very much to the front during the latter part of the year 1929. 44

45

46

The massed gathering of colonists at Moscow triggered a dramatically different response in Germany. For at the very time that Canadian public opinion was foiling Ottawa's efforts to aid the refugees a volcanic procolonist press and party campaign in Germany was demanding that Berlin not abandon them to a Siberian fate. The episode came to arouse such popular attention in Germany after Canada's refusal, late in October, to open her frontiers had placed the lives of the colonists in jeopardy. Throughout November, stories about the Mennonites at Moscow daily occupied a prominent place on the front page of every German paper. As 47

4 4 4 5 4 6 4 7

Canadian Annual Review, 1929-30, pp. 181-4; Epp, Exodus, 244-52. Canadian Annual Review, 1929-1930, pp. 181-3. Ibid., pp. 181. 183. For discussion of the incident's impact on German-Soviet relations see Harvey L. Dyck, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, 1926-1933 (New York and Lon­ don, 1966), 174-80.

156

HARVEY L. DYCK

the German Communist party organ, Rote Fahne (9 November), bitterly commented, the entire German bourgeois press had become totally pre­ occupied with the fate of "Russian kulaks of German origin" and was de­ manding that the German government save them at any cost. These de­ mands, it bears noting, were supported by a nation-wide fund appeal, sponsored by almost all German charitable associations and suggestively captioned "Briider in Not." The appeal was warmly acclaimed by the aged President Hindenburg, who described contributions by government offices and private organizations as a "duty of honour," and personally contributed a gift of 200,000 marks from a special fund. In addition, the German postal service was authorized to accept money for the colonists, private banks volunteered to do the same, and the state rail lines were empowered to carry gifts of clothing and food for the refugees without charge. Bourgeois and Social Democratic Germany's extraordinary preoccu­ pation with the fate of the colonists stemmed both from humanitarianethnic concerns and from a disintegrating social and political order in which communism was perceived as the paramount threat to stability. Hence German parties and the press were strongly tempted to picture the colonists' mass flight as the logical end of a political system favoured by German communism. Germans interpreted the misery of the colonists as evidence of the tyranny on which Soviet-type systems rested; they experi­ enced vicariously the wounds of the Soviet class struggle. Insular Cana­ dians saw the colonists as "foreigners" threatening their jobs and identi­ ties; an increasingly nationalistic German press, however, saw them as Landsleute at the door resisting communism: "The fate of every German is the concern of every other German." Within this heightened psychological atmosphere a number of German cabinet meetings in early November explored the question at issue: Should Germany bring the refugees out even if Canada would later admit none? The first on 9 November heard a spirited brief from the Foreign Minister, Curtius, that answered "yes." He recommended that three million marks be appropriated for aid to the colonists, on two grounds: "Germany's public opinion is very interested and would not understand if peasants of German origin who had decided to leave the Soviet Union because of the strain of unbearable physical and mental distress, were to be left in the lurch and exposed to certain death." Moreover, if Germany dallied the 48

49

50

4 8 4 9 5 0

Berliner Tageblatt, 19 and 20 November 1929. Dyck, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, 175. From a highly emotional appeal of the organization Briider in Not, printed in most German papers on 13 November 1929.

COLLECTIVIZATION,

DEPRESSION,

157

AND IMMIGRATION

Soviets would "saddle us with the blame for the fate of these people in the eyes of all of Europe."" (A third reason, mentioned in a Foreign Ministry memorandum somewhat later, was that an abandonment of "deutschstammige Landsleute" in such desperate circumstances would irreparably dam­ age Germany's minority policy in central Europe. ) But the cabinet, weighed down at the time by problems arising from the pinched state of the budget, temporized. The Finance Minister, Hilferding, found ready acceptance for his view that Germany could not assume the possibly limit­ less obligations that support for the colonist movement in the USSR en­ tailed: "Eighty thousand people of German origin are in transit in Central Russia." A decision was therefore put over until the leaders of the govern­ ment coalition and the Budgetary Committee of the Reichstag could be consulted. By 14 November, when the Chancellor met with his coalition leaders, mounting pro-colonist public and party pressure pointed clearly in one direction. As Professor Unruh recorded, all papers except the communist were demanding that the government adopt energetic measures to save the peasants. President Hindenburg had also intervened in the government discussions with the words: "The German public will not understand why these people should be abandoned to certain starvation when we admitted to Germany after the war many thousands of aliens, often of very un­ desirable quality." The party leaders succumbed to these pressures and agreed, subject to the approval of the Reichstag's Budgetary Committee (which was not scheduled to meet for at least a week), that six million marks be provided for the transportation and care of the thirteen thousand colonists "then in Moscow." But when Litvinov again warned the follow­ ing day that deportations were imminent, a second cabinet meeting was called for 18 November; it voted the use of state funds independently of the Budgetary Committee. But tragically its action was one day too late 1

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

5 1

5 2

5 3

5 4 5 5

5 6

5 7

5 8

Reichs Chancellery, extract from minutes of cabinet meeting, 9 November 1929, serial L617/L196168-9. German Foreign Ministry, Twardowski to the Foreign Ministry, 11 November 1929, serial 2860/D561105-6. German Foreign Ministry, extract from minutes of cabinet meeting, 9 November 1929, serial L617/L196168-9. Hiebert Collection, report by B. H. Unruh, 23 November 1929. Reichs Chancellery, Otto Meissner to Punder, state secretary in the Reichs Chan­ cellery, 12 November 1929, serial L617/L196165-6. Reichs Chancellery, extract from minutes of a cabinet meeting, 14 November 1929, serial L617/L196192-6. German Foreign Ministry, memo, by Curtius, 15 November 1929, serial 4 5 6 2 / E160333-6. Reichs Chancellery, extract from minutes of cabinet meeting, 18 November 1929, L617/L196228.

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HARVEY L. DYCK

for most of the colonists. On the previous evening the deportations had begun. During the preceding three weeks hundreds had already been arrested. In overheated cells, under threat of banishment to the Arctic prison island of Solovetsky or execution, a number had signed statements "volunteer­ ing" to return to their villages, and had been freed. Now "suasion" gave way to worse and within a week all but fifty-five hundred were forcibly re­ moved from their dachas, loaded onto freight cars, and returned to their villages or sent into a northern exile. The sorry narrative of their deporta­ tion is hardly a strange one to our generation: the whirr of truck engines, the glare of spotlights, boot sounds on frozen ground, a knock on the door. Fathers were often arrested first and loaded onto waiting freight cars, to be joined later by their families. There were instances of resistance; there were some dead. The freight cars into which the refugees were herded bore markings "settlers in transit." "There is a mood of the deepest de­ spair among the deported," the German agricultural attache in Moscow informed his government on 23 November. "They feel that nothing awaits them other than arrest, exile, starvation or execution." International press correspondents reported the deportations with feeling and in great detail, and amid a storm of public protest the German government intervened. It called for a halt in the arrests and offered to issue a thousand entry visas at once. When the roundup nevertheless continued Foreign Minister Curtius entered a sharper caveat; terming the deportations an "unfriendly act" he warned: "If the Russian government is seriously interested in maintaining normal relations which are free of the polemics of a hostile press, then emigration may not be refused. The Ger­ man government is no longer in a position to control the press." Foreign Commissariat officials persuasively argued that Germany's unconscion­ able delay in acting had forced the Interior Commissariat to dissolve the camps of hungry and half-frozen peasants who constituted a threat to the health of the capital. Yet they also recognized that the refugee entangle­ ment had combined explosively with Germany's domestic instability to the 59

60

61

62

63

64

5 9 6 0

6 1 6 2

6 3

6 4

Willms, Vor den Toren, 64-5. Ibid., 14-6, 119-22; Auhagen, Schicksalswende, 79-80; German Foreign Minis­ try, Twardowski to the Foreign Ministry, 18 November 1929, serial 4 5 6 2 / E160358-60. Auhagen, Schicksalswende, 79-80. German Foreign Ministry, Twardowski to the Foreign Ministry, 18 November 1929, serial 4562/E160361. German Foreign Ministry, memo by Curtius re conversation with Soviet Ambas­ sador Krestinskii, 22 November 1929, serial 4562/E 160387-8. German Foreign Ministry, Twardowski to the Foreign Ministry, 19 November 1929, serial 4562/E160362-6.

COLLECTIVIZATION, DEPRESSION, AND IMMIGRATION

159

point of threatening the German-Soviet diplomatic partnership with dis­ solution. To forestall such a development Maxim Litvinov, deputy com­ missar of foreign affairs, asked the Council of People's Commissars to re­ verse its decision. Finally, on 25 November, it did, announcing that the remaining refugees, whose numbers had by then dwindled to fifty-six hundred, might leave for Germany. This time there was no delay in ar­ ranging transport and within two weeks the last of nine crowded trains brought them to refugee camps in Germany. From there during the follow­ ing months the majority left for new settlements and a pioneering life in Brazil and Paraguay. The remainder, some 1,200, quietly, with little pub­ licity, joined close relatives in Canada. 65

66

67

6 5

0 0

German Foreign Ministry, Twardowski to the Foreign Ministry, 23 November 1929, serial 4562/E160402. German Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Dirksen to the Foreign Ministry, 25 November 1929, serial 4562/E160413-15. Epp, Exodus, 250-1; Willms, Vor den Toren, 77-95, 125-34.

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NATIONALISM AND EMPIRE IN ASIA A N D A F R I C A

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Imperialism and Free Trade: Lancashire and India in the 1860s PETER HARNETTY

"The decade 1861-70 may fairly be called a critical period in British Imperial history," the American scholar R. S. Schuyler wrote in 1945, "for it was during these years that tendencies in Britain towards the dis­ ruption of the Empire reached their climax." The ideology behind these disruptive tendencies was said to be that of the Manchester School, the chief characteristics of which were described by the Danish scholar, C. A. Bodelsen, as "distrust of the influence of the State in economic matters and the advocacy of a policy of laissez-faire." These exponents of the classic view of mid-Victorian attitudes to empire argued that the victory of free trade in 1846 and the following years undermined the old colonial system and the principles of mercantilism on which it was based. Ac­ cording to this view it was not until the decline of free trade beliefs after 1870 that enthusiasm for the empire rekindled and the great age of im­ perialism began. Recently this interpretation has been challenged by two British his­ torians, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson. In a brilliant article en­ titled "The Imperialism of Free Trade," they suggest that the mid-nine­ teenth century was not a period of indifference to empire; rather it was one of large-scale expansion and the successful exploitation of empire both formal and informal - in such places as India, Latin America, and Canada. In particular, they point to the "mercantilist techniques of for­ mal empire which were being employed to develop India in the midVictorian age. ..." These techniques included manipulation of the Indian tariff in order to preserve India as a market for British cotton manufac­ turers, and sustained pressure on both the home government and the gov­ ernment of India to adopt policies that would turn India into a major supplier of raw cotton for the Lancashire textile industry. 1

2

3

4

5

1 The Fall of the Old Colonial System (New York, 1945), 245. Studies in Mid-Victorian Imperialism (Copenhagen, 1924), 32. 3 Ibid., 6. Economic History Review, 2nd series, vi (1953), 1-15. s Ibid., 6. 2

4

164

peter

harnetty

There is much evidence to support this hypothesis, at least in its ap­ plication to India. The Indian tariff was in fact manipulated between 1859 and 1862 to suit the interests of the Lancashire cotton manufacturers, and during the 1860s the government of India was obliged to adopt many policies that were designed to stimulate cotton cultivation in India. Indeed there were further applications of these policies during this so-called "critical period" in British imperial history: India's internal communica­ tions were developed to facilitate the export of cotton to Great Britain; and Lancashire pressed for the abolition of the Indian cotton duties to stimulate the export of cotton goods to India and reduce competition from the infant Indian textile industry. All of this suggests that the hypothesis of "The Imperialism of Free Trade" presents an explanation of midVictorian attitudes to empire more plausible than the classic one of Bodelsen and Schuyler. 6

7

Lancashire began its campaign for the development of India as a source of cotton supply after the "cotton famine" and commercial crisis of 1846-7. The possible advantages were obvious: the opening up of vast new areas capable of exporting cotton would enable India to pay for the import of British manufactured goods as well as lower the price of the raw material by providing a competitor for Lancashire's principal supplier, America. Through the 1850s Lancashire urged without ceasing a course that would develop India internally by promoting communications and public works. The main obstacle to such a programme was financial. The wars and an­ nexations of Dalhousie, the governor general of India (1848-56), were cosdy and his successor, Lord Canning, inherited large budget deficits when he assumed office in 1856. The outbreak of the Mutiny a year later 8

9

6

7

8

9

P. Harnetty, "The Imperialism of Free Trade: Lancashire and the Indian Cotton Duties, 1859-1862," Economic History Review, 2nd series, X V I I I (1965), 333-49. P. Harnetty, "The Imperialism of Free Trade: Lancashire, India, and the Cotton Supply Question, 1861-1865," Journal of British Studies, vi ( 1 9 6 6 - 7 ) , 70-96. R. J. Moore, "Imperialism and Tree Trade' Policy in India, 1853-54," Economic History Review, 2nd series, xvii (1964), 135-45; Arthur W. Silver, Manchester Men and Indian Cotton (Manchester, 1966), chap. iv. For the motives behind railway construction in India in this period see W. J. Macpherson, "Investment in Indian Railways, 1845-1875," Economic History Review, 2nd series, vm ( 1 9 5 5 ) , 333-49. Dalhousie's annexations are noted by Gallagher and Robinson as part of the gen­ eral expansion of the British Empire in the period of "indifference." It is worth emphasizing that Dalhousie himself stressed the bearing of the acquisition of Nagpur and Berar on the cotton supply question. See Moore, "Imperialism and Tree Trade' Policy in India," 143, n. 11.

IMPERIALISM AND FREE TRADE

165

threw India's finances into chaos; to a debt of £ 5 9 million on the eve of the rebellion were added deficits of more than £ 9 million in 1857-8 and nearly £ 1 5 million in 1858-9. To cope with its financial difficulties, the government of India resorted to drastic measures: higher import duties, an income tax, and an embargo on all but essential public works. These policies caused dismay in Lanca­ shire. Higher import duties threatened to decrease sharply the volume of British exports of cotton piece goods and yarns to India. And retrenchment in expenditures on public works would dim the hopes of turning India into a major source of raw material for the Lancashire cotton industry by de­ laying the development of India's internal communications. Moreover, Lancashire's need for an alternative source of cotton became more urgent with the growing threat of civil war in America. For these reasons the Lancashire interests in February 1861 proposed to the government of India that it raise a development loan of from £ 30 million to £ 4 0 million for internal public works. The request, made in the form of a memorial from the President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to the Sec­ retary of State for India, Sir Charles Wood, noted that India could not emerge as a major source of cotton supply without good roads and effec­ tive means of transport; moreover, it was the duty of government to carry out such works. The memorial also emphasized the danger to Lanca­ shire's cotton supply posed by the threat of war in America. The response to this appeal was not encouraging at first. Wood had just raised a loan of £ 3 million for railway construction and was un­ willing to add further to India's public debt in a period of financial crisis. In India, the government was prepared to admit that the improvement of communications was within its "legitimate functions" and that it should adopt measures to facilitate the anticipated increase in the export of cotton in 1861-2. But only limited measures were taken. They excluded rail­ ways, canals, and metalled roads, which were major projects requiring much money and time, and were restricted to the improvement of country cart and bullock tracks, works that could be done cheaply and would open up hitherto inaccessible areas of the country. Finally, the government of 10

11

12

1 0

1 1

1 2

Manchester Central Reference Library, Proceedings of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 27 February 1861. India Office Library (I.O. Lib.), London, Halifax Collection (MSS. Eur. F. 7 8 ) , India Office, Letter Books, vol. vi, pp. 182 and 232, Sir Charles Wood to Lord Canning, 26 February and 4 March 1861. Resolution of the Governor General in Council in the Home Department, 28 February 1861. The full text is reproduced in Silver, Manchester Men and Indian Cotton, appendix E.

166

PETER HARNETTY

India promised limited financial aid for projects recommended by provin­ cial governments which would help in extending the cultivation of, or trade in, cotton. Thus, at the opening of the 1860s - Schuyler's "critical period in British imperial history" - a paradoxical situation existed in which Lanca­ shire, the citadel of laissez faire, was pressing on a reluctant government what today would be called a policy of national economic development. Gradually, the government of India was forced to give some ground. It had allocated a sum only slightly exceeding