... We were not compelled to do what we did, but if we chose to be generous, to do a little more than we were bound to do, where is a man living who would find fault with us for that action? He dreads the consequences of this action in sending out a military contingent to South Africa. Let me tell him from the bottom of my heart that my heart is full of the hopes I entertain of the beneficial results which will accrue from that action.... When the telegraph brought us the news that such was the good impression made by our volunteers that the Commander-in-Chief had placed them in the post of honour, in the first rank, to share the danger with that famous corps, the Gordon Highlanders; when we heard that they had justified fully the confidence placed in them, that they had charged like veterans, that their conduct was heroic and had won for them the encomiums of the Commander-in-Chief and the unstinted admiration of their comrades, who had faced death upon a hundred battlefields in all parts of the world, is there a man whose bosom did not swell with pride, that noblest of all pride, that pride of pure patriotism, the pride of the consciousness of our rising strength, the pride of the consciousness that on that day it had been revealed to the world that a new power had arisen in the West? Nor is that all. The work of union and harmony between the chief races of this country is not yet complete. We know by the unfortunate occurrences that took place only last week that there is much to do in that way. But there is no bond of union so strong as the bond created by common dangers faced in common. To-day there are men in South Africa representing the two branches of the Canadian family fighting side by side for the honour of Canada. Already some of them have fallen, giving to the country the last full measure of devotion. Their remains have been laid in the same grave, there to remain to the end of time in that last fraternal embrace. Can we not hope, I ask my honourable friend himself, that in that grave shall be buried the last vestiges of our former antagonism? If such shall be the result, if we can indulge that hope, if we can believe that in that grave shall be buried contentions, the sending of the contingents would be the greatest service ever rendered Canada since Confederation. 55. PIONEERS OF THE RAILWAY (1910). =Source.=--_The Making of a Great Canadian Railway_, by Frederick A. Talbot. London, 1912. (The story of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.)