I trust that the English speaking readers of this book, will not, for a single moment, suppose that I am actuated by the least ill-feeling against Mr. Bourassa personally, in the severe but just denunciation it was my plain duty to make of his deplorable Nationalist campaign. For many years past, I have ever been delighted in welcoming promising young men to the responsibilities of public life. I remember with a mixed feeling of pleasure and regret the occasion I first heard Mr. Bourassa, then a youth, addressing a very large public meeting held on the nomination day of the candidates to a pending bye-election for the House of Commons of Canada: Pleasure at the recollection of what I considered a fairly successful beginning of a political career; deep regret at the failure to justify the hopes of his compatriots and his friends through an uncontrollable ambition always sure to deter, even the best gifted, from the safe line of duty, well understood, and firmly, but modestly, performed. Passion, aspiring and unbridled, is always a dangerous counsellor. Mr. Bourassa could have had a useful political life, if he had realized that public good cannot be well served by constant appeals to race prejudices, and by persevering efforts to achieve success by stirring up fanaticism. The result of the unpatriotic course he has followed, against the advice of his best friends, has been to sow in our great and happy Dominion the seed of discord, of hatred, of racial conflicts. Unfortunately, for the country, for his French Canadian compatriots, and for himself, he was deluded to the point of believing that the war would be his grand opportunity. Instead of using his influence to promote the national unity so essential under the trying circumstances with which Canada and the whole British Empire was suddenly confronted, he exerted himself to the utmost to prevail on his French Canadian countrymen to assume a decisive hostile stand to the noble cause which Britain had to fight for, in order to avenge the crime of the violation of Belgium's territory, to protect France from German cruel invasion, and to prevent Autocratic power from enslaving Humanity. Such a misconception of a truly loyal man's part was most detrimental to the good of Canada's future, to the destinies of the French Canadians, and to the political standing of the publicist who was its willing victim. And to-day he finds himself in this position that he has no other choice but that of pursuing, at all hazards, his unwholesome campaign against all things British, or, boldly retracing his steps, to go back on all he has said and written to support inadmissible views, vain ideas, and passionate prejudices.