riotic and humanly powerful that can
resist the inroad of "big interests".

Bigger interests arise. In a storm of newly patented virtue they declaim
against the "big" ones. They fail to admit that they merely want to
usurp instead of to magnify Government. The political machine of the
country is regarded as a part of the machine by which special interests
prosper. In its efforts to repudiate such a connection Governments
resort to the trick of clamouring on behalf of "the people".

Presently even the people lose faith in Government. They come to believe
only in class-conscious groups. No nation can be big whose parties are
small. No parties can be great whose platforms are for the good of a
class or the veneration of what "my grandfather" used to think.

Elections are eternally war. A general election has for a sure sign the
prediction on the part of the Opposition that the Government intend to
"put one over" in order to grab another lease of power. Experience has
taught us that the prediction is too often true. It does not teach us
that it is time to abandon the expectation or the practice. Men who in
party bondage have helped to win elections by redistribution after a
census, and to award patronage to the victors, arise years later in
Opposition to denounce such practices when carried on by the present
Government. The pot usually succeeds in calling the kettle black. Hence
a bad black eye to political sincerity.

The average parliamentarian knows very little about Canada; much about
his own Province, or his own constituency, or his own group. Politicians
do not even travel except on business. A country of vast and variegated
human interest, of wonderful charm even for scenery, without considering
people at all, is the home of a large number of people burning to do
national work who know little or nothing about the life of the nation,
historically or otherwise.

President Harding solemnly predicts that the United States will produce a
race of supermen. He does not say how. He merely observes the need. He
knows that his country has gone the pace that will take generations of
coming back before any superman nation can begin to be. In Canada we
have not gone so far that we cannot easily come back. But we have no
vision of any future for this nation except a larger instalment of what
we have been.

We talk about being a nation when we ignore the very disadvantages that
militate against true nation