They Were At Ease, Too, Among
Themselves, With That Pleasant Intimacy That Stamps Every Branch Of Our
Family And Every Boat That It Uses On Its Homeward Way.
A Cape liner is
all the sub-Continent from the Equator to Simon's Town; an Orient boat
is Australasian throughout, and a C.P.R. steamer cannot be confused with
anything except Canada.
It is a pity one may not be born in four places
at once, and then one would understand the half-tones and asides, and
the allusions of all our Family life without waste of precious time.
These big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in
their tongues, and strength in their hearts. I used to think miserably
of other boats at the South end of this ocean - a quarter full of people
deprived of these things. A young man kindly explained to me how Canada
had suffered through what he called 'the Imperial connection'; how she
had been diversely bedevilled by English statesmen for political
reasons. He did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when I tried
to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew South Africa)
lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which
astonished the patriotic young mind. The plaid finished his outburst
with the uncontradicted statement that the English were mad. All our
talks ended on that note.
It was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. One
understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch, the hopeless
anger of one's own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but
the Canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always
polite contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that
late unfashionable war[3] was very real to Canada. She sent several men
to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than
a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no
conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it
may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and
resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I
was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of
the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss - on the ship and
elsewhere - whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some
eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would
cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that
she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as
politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that
threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a
steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted - really these
people have viciously long memories! - the five-year campaign of abuse
against South Africans as a precedent and a warning.
[Footnote 3: Boer 'war' of 1899-1902.]
Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if
this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led
to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard. It seemed to be
decided that she might - just might - pull through by the skin of her
teeth as a nation - if (but this was doubtful) England did not help
others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any
of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the
Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics.
Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred
steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a
confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting
ritual. For the fifth time - and four times in just such weather - I heard
the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township
wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the
bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the
poor head that had valued itself so lightly. A boat amid waves can see
nothing. There was nothing to see from the first. We waited and
quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell
and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily
through the escapes. Then we went ahead.
The St. Lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. The
maples along its banks had turned - blood red and splendid as the banners
of lost youth. Even the oak is not more of a national tree than the
maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more
happy. A dry wind brought along all the clean smell of their
Continent-mixed odours of sawn lumber, virgin earth, and wood-smoke; and
they snuffed it, and their eyes softened as they, identified point after
point along their own beloved River - places where they played and fished
and amused themselves in holiday time. It must be pleasant to have a
country of one's very own to show off. Understand, they did not in any
way boast, shout, squeak, or exclaim, these even-voiced returned men and
women. They were simply and unfeignedly glad to see home again, and they
said: 'Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it's beautiful? We love it.'
At Quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a
coal-chute, whence rise the heights that Wolfe's men scaled on their way
to the Plains of Abraham. Perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands
the affair of Quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any
other.
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