“By closing your markets to us, through high tariffs, you sometimes make things a bit difficult for some of our people. On the other hand, we have erected some tariff barriers of our own. Our fisheries, fruit industries, and manufactures now demand protection, just as your farmers and others insist on having tariffs against some Canadian products. Our people are divided by sectional interests, just as yours are, and both governments have difficulty, at times, in reconciling conflicting desires. But I think Washington and Ottawa will always understand one another, and will work out successfully their mutual problems of the future.” [Illustration: Canada’s half million acres of timber contain fifty per cent. of the forest resources of the entire British Empire. The revenue from lumber and wood pulp ranks next in value to that from agricultural products.] [Illustration: It takes a woodpile as big as a large apartment house to carry one of Ottawa’s pulp mills through the winter. These logs will make enough news print to paper two roads reaching around the world.] [Illustration: With the United States as a “horrible example”, Canada is trying to safeguard her forest from destruction by fire or wasteful cutting. Airplanes are frequently used by some of the provincial forest patrols.] Few Americans realize how independent Canada is. She pays not a dollar in taxes to the British, nor does she receive any funds from the Imperial Treasury. The relations between the Dominion and the Empire are not fixed by law, but, like the British constitution, are unwritten and constantly changing. Canada maintains a High Commissioner in London, concedes certain tariff preferences to Great Britain and the other dominions, and her premier takes part in the imperial conferences in London. In all other respects she goes along in her own way and does exactly as she pleases. She played a great part in the World War, and would undoubtedly fight again, but only of her own free will. The people regard the Dominion as a member of a “Commonwealth of Nations” united under the British flag, and care little for talk of empire. They have even passed a law putting an end to the system whereby the Crown conferred titles on distinguished Canadians. CHAPTER XII THE LUMBER YARD OF AN EMPIRE I am in the heart of one of the great timber producing districts of Canada. Every year millions of feet of logs are floated down the Ottawa River. This stream is eight hundred miles long, and, with its tributaries, taps a vast area of forests that feed the maws of the paper and the saw mills of the city of Ottawa. I have watched the latter at their greedy work, which they carry on at such a pace that the cry is being raised that the woodlands of the Dominion are being denuded, and that conservation measures must be adopted.