As everybody else, living with their eyes not closed to the light of day, I clearly saw, principally during the last twenty years, that important developments were taking place under the sun; that European equilibrium upon the maintenance of which universal peace so much depended, was rapidly breaking asunder; that the German Empire was more and more unmasking her guilty ambition to dominate an enslaved universe; that, to reach that goal, she was organizing an army formidable by its millions of warriors, their superior training, their ironed discipline and their unrivalled armament. I knew that the sadly famous Kaiser Wilhelm II. was determined, at all cost, to increase the power of his Empire by the addition of a military fleet in such proportions as to be able, in a successful naval battle, to conquer the supremacy of the seas. Under such circumstances, was it to be supposed that the Statesmen responsible for the government of Great Britain would be so careless and so blind as not to see the dark spots crowding on the horizon! The problem of Imperial defence was then once more raised, not by a mere caprice of vain glory on the part of England, but by the inevitable outcome of the initiative of would-be opponents, if not actually declared enemies. The overseas colonies being more and more likely to be attacked, in a general conflict, was it surprising that the British Government was induced to confer with them for their common defence under the new conditions which were surely not of their own metropolitan or colonial creation. All the representatives of Great Britain, of Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, at the London conferences, took part in those solemn deliberations with the full sense of their responsibility. None of them was so mistaken as to consider the question, of paramount importance, of the DEFENSIVE organization of the Empire, as futile, merely to be used by the astuteness of some and the guilty complicity of others, joining together to sacrifice the future of their common country. The odious imputation, the shameless charge, were equally unjust and calumnious for the British ministers and the colonial public men who, in their turn, went to London to deliberate on subjects so vitally interesting all the component parts of the Empire. CHAPTER XXI. THE SITUATIONS OF 1865 AND 1900-14 COMPARED. Our "Nationalist" opponents of all colonial participation in the Imperial wars, affirm that Canada should have abided with the convention of 1865. Are they not aware that, since that year, a great deal of water has run along the rivers; that the world, although perhaps not wiser, has at least grown half a century older; that so many ancient conditions have radically changed; that nations, like individuals, to be progressive, cannot go on marking time on the same small hardened spot?