ence to move in the midst of a new contempt. One
understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch, the hopeless
anger of one's own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but
the Canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always
polite contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that
late unfashionable war[3] was very real to Canada. She sent several men
to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than
a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no
conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it
may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and
resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I
was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of
the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss--on the ship and
elsewhere--whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some
eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would
cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that
she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as
politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that
threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a
steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted--really these
people have viciously long memories!--the five-year campaign of abuse
against South Africans as a precedent and a warning.

[Footnote 3: Boer 'war' of 1899-1902.]

Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if
this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led
to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard. It seemed to be
decided that she might--just might--pull through by the skin of her
teeth as a nation--if (but this was doubtful) England did not help
others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any
of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the
Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics.

Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred
steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a
confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting
ritual. For the fifth time--and four times in just such weather--I heard
the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township
wrenched herself r