may well dread war—dread—not with a coward's fear—that she never felt and cannot feel—but with a well-grounded anticipation of loss in treasure and in blood. War cannot increase, it may diminish, her prestige—and every possible motive exists why she should do all in her power to avoid war.
I need not speak of the horrors of war—the word itself is enough.
I hesitate to say what now presses to my lips—and am emboldened to say it only by the fact that in two gatherings within this Union in which I was the only Canadian, I said it in almost the words I shall now employ—and without rebuke.
The cynical philosopher said, "The finest nations in the world—the English and the American—are going all away into wind and tongue." In the first part of this saying, Carlyle showed himself the philosopher; in the latter, but the dyspeptic cynic. Since that saying, the world has witnessed the Cuban expedition and that up the Nile; the old blood is still regnant; "noblesse oblige" still the motto of the two peoples.
No man and no nation can venture to advise this mighty Union. What the United States will or should do, is to be determined by the United States alone—and any advice would be sheer impertinence. But many a heart, not American, was glad when this nation acquired territory not on the North American Continent—knowing that this of necessity meant that the United States with or without her desire must now take some greater part in world-politics—take her share of "the white man's burden." And when she began to build a navy commensurate with her great-
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