he Canadians to me
when I commented to him upon this influx into the Old Country of her
Colonial sons; "and I reckon we can most of us spare time to see things
through a bit at Home. The way our folk look at it on the other side is
this: They reckon we've got to worry through this German business
somehow and come out the right way up on the other side, and a good deal
more solid than we went in. We don't reckon there's going to be any more
'Little Englandism' or Cobdenism after this job's once put through; and
that's a proposition we're mighty keenly interested in, you see. We put
most of our eggs into the Empire basket, away back, while you people
were still busy giving Africa to the Boers, and your Navy to the dogs,
and your markets to Germany, and your trade and esteem to any old
foreigner that happened along with a nest to feather. I reckon that's
why we're most of us here; and maybe that's why we mostly bring our
cartridge-belts along. A New South Wales chap told me last night you
couldn't get up a cricket match aboard a P. and O. or Orient boat, not
for a wager--nothing but shooting competitions and the gentle art of
drill. You say 'Shun!' to the next Colonial you meet, and listen for the
click of his heels! Not that we set much store by that business
ourselves, but we learned about the Old Country taste for it in South
Africa, and it's all good practice, anyhow, and good discipline."

But, whatever the motives and causes behind their coming, it is certain
that an astonishingly large number of our oversea kinsmen were arriving
in England each week; and I believe every one of them joined _The
Citizens_. Their presence and the part they played in affairs had a
marked effect upon the spirit of the time. All sorts and conditions of
people, whose thoughts in the past had never strayed far from their own
parishes, now talked familiarly of people, things, and places Colonial.
The idea of our race being one big tribe, though our homes might be
hemispheres apart, seemed to me to take root for the first time in the
minds of the general public at about this period. I spoke of it to John
Crondall, and reminded him how he had urged this idea upon us years
before in Westminster with but indifferent success.

"Ah, well," he said, "they have come to it of their own accord now; and
that means they'll get a better grip of it than any one could ever have
given them. That's part of our national character, and not a bad part."

We w