n that hill. No other
Parliament stands midway of so vast a country. But there are people
who prefer Hull, P.Q., to Ottawa, Ont. We have had some mild Mephistos
of strategy up there: some prophets of eloquence: some dreamers of
imagination: giants of creative energy scheming how to draw a young,
vast country together into nationhood so that the show-men on
Parliament Hill might have an audience.

But the Ottawa of to-day is a strange spectacle for the prophets. The
great new Opera House is all but finished, when no seer can tell
whether the plays to be put on there by the parties of the future will
be as epical and worthwhile as those staged by the actors of the past.
Imagination was not absent when Ottawa was created. But it needs more
than common imagination to foresee whether these political playboys of
the northern world are going to be worthy of the great audience soon to
arise in the country that converges upon Ottawa.

Sometimes in Parliament you catch the vibration of big momentums in a
nation's progress. Voices now and then arise in speech that reflect
some greatness of vision. More often the actors are sitting
indolently, hearing the clack of worn-out principals whose struts and
grimaces and cadences are those of men whose cues should lead them to
the dressing rooms, or to the wings, or somewhere into the maze of the
back drop where nobody takes part in the show. Or they listen to men
whose big informing idea constantly is that all we need to make
economic happiness for everybody is to turn out the company now in and
get another from the furrows. These latter believe that a nation is a
condition of free trade--mainly on behalf of the farmer whose average
idea of industry is a blacksmith shop on a farm.

One's head inclines to ache by reason of listening to the
three-cornered claque on the Tariff as it was in the beginning, is now
and ever shall be. Now and again we are inclined to study the men who
are elected to Parliament and some of those who gravitate towards
Ottawa without the bother of elections. They stimulate interest and
challenge criticism, not less because the interest and the criticism
come from a seat in the audience rather than from "behind the
scenes"--which is not always a disadvantage. While the
parliamentarians perform "Promises and Pie Crusts", the wives have
their own play--"Petticoats and Power". The stage here is a
triangle--Rideau Hall, Chateau Laurier, the Parliamentary