59 to
1859, what reason has she to anticipate a progress as swift and
world-embracing as that which forced the United States to the very
forefront of world powers? It takes something more than high hopes to
build empire. Has Canada a foundation beneath her high hopes? No
nation ever had a more passionate patriotism than Ireland. Yet Ireland
has lost her population and retrogressed.[2] Why will the same fate
not halt and impede Canada?

It may be acknowledged here that Canadians have no answers for such
questions and short shift for the questioner. They are too busy making
history to talk about it. It is only the woman insecure of her social
position who prates about it. It is only the nation uncertain of
herself that bolsters a fact with an argument. Canada is too busy with
facts for any flamboyant arguments. It is an even wager that if you
ask the average well-informed business man in Canada how many miles of
railways the Dominion has, he will answer on the dot "almost thirty
thousand." But if you ask if he knows that Germany, for instance, with
nine times denser population has barely twice as much trackage--no,
your Canadian business man doesn't know it. He is too busy building
his own railroads to care much what other nations are doing with
theirs. Likewise of the country's trade increasing faster almost than
the Dominion can handle it. He knows that imports have increased one
hundred and sixty-three per cent. in ten years, and that exports have
increased almost fifty per cent.; but he doesn't realize in the least
that the Dominion with seven million people has one-fourth as large a
foreign trade as the United States with a hundred million people.[3]
He knows that immigration has in ten years jumped from 49,000 a year to
402,000; but does he take in what it means that his country with only
five million native born is being called on to absorb yearly a third as
many immigrants as the United States with eighty million native
born?[4] He has been so busy handling the rush of prosperity that has
come in on him like a tidal wave that he has not had time to pause over
the problems of this new destiny--the fact, for instance, that in two
more decades the newcomers will outnumber the native born.

II

Unless the edifice be top heavy, beneath it all must be the rock bottom
of fact. Beneath the tide is the pull of some eternal law. What facts
is Canada building her future on? What pull is beneath the tid