; and the fisherman's smack--the dory that rocks
to the waves like a cockleshell, with meal of pork and beans cooking
above a chip fire on stones in the bottom of the boat, and rough grimed
fellows singing chanties to the rhythm of the sea--the fisherman's
smack is the nursery of the world's proudest merchant marines and most
powerful navies. Japan knows this, and encourages her fishermen by
bounties and passage money to spread all over the world, and Japanese
to-day operate practically all the fisheries of the Pacific. England
knows this and in the North Sea and off Newfoundland protects her
fishermen and draws from their ranks her seamen.

Japan dominates seventy-two per cent. of the commerce of the Pacific,
not through chance, but through her merchant marine built up from rough
grimed fellows who quarry the silver mines of the sea. England
dominates the Seven Seas of the world, not through her superiority man
to man against other races, but through her merchant marine, carrying
the commerce of the world, built up from simple fisher folk hauling in
the net or paying out the line through icy salty spray above
tempestuous seas. No power yet dominates the seas of the New World.
The foreign commerce of the New World up to the time of the great war
was carried by British, German and Japanese ships. Canada has the
steel, the coal, the timber, the nursery for seamen. Will she become a
marine power in the New World? It is one of her dreams. It is also
one of England's dreams. No country subsidizes her merchant liners
more heavily than Canada[8]--in striking contrast with the parsimonious
policy of the United States. It is Canada's policy of ship subsidies
that has established regular merchant liners--all liable to service as
Admiralty ships--to Australia, to China, to Japan and to every harbor
on the Atlantic.

Whether heavy subsidies to large liners will effect as much for a
merchant marine for Canada as numerous small subsidies to small lines
remains to be seen. The development of seamen from her fisheries is
one of the dreams she must work out in her destiny, and that leads one
to the one great disadvantage under which Canada rests as a marine
power. She lacks winter harbors on the Atlantic accessible to her
great western domain, whence comes the bulk of her commerce for export.
True, the maritime provinces afford those harbors--Saint John and
Halifax. A dozen other points, if need were, could be utilized in