England, Canada and the Great WarDesjardins, L. G. (Louis Georges)
History
England, Canada and the Great War
Desjardins, L. G. (Louis Georges)
Great Britain -- Colonies -- Canada; Imperialism; World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Canada
1--I will surely be allowed to say that for nearly the last fifty years,
I have done my best efforts to keep myself well informed with the
opinions expressed by the most authorized political men of the Mother
Country--of all parties--by the most renowned publicists, by the most
distinguished writers of the great English press. I have yet to read one
sentence leading me to suppose that the mind of any one of them was
haunted by the foolish hope of Great Britain's domination of the world.
Many of them have spoken and written to persuade their countrymen of the
growing urgency to consider the most effective measures to be adopted to
defend the Empire, in view of the efforts of other nations--notably
Germany--to strengthen their military organizations. No one advised them
to incur the most heavy sacrifices _in order to dominate the world_.
They had too much political sense to believe that such a ridiculous
scheme could ever be carried out.
2--What the "Nationalist" leader calls British Imperialism never had for
its objective _the gradual suppression, or at least the enslaving of the
divers nationalities constituting the British Empire_.
Such an assertion is nothing less than a stroke of the imagination which
recent history utterly refutes, proving, as it does, the very reverse,
as follows:--
A--The creation, by Imperial Charters, of the great autonomous federal
Canadian, Australian, South African Dominions.
B--The federal system adopted for the Dominion of Canada purposely for
the protection of the French Canadians whose special interests are
entrusted to the Legislature of the Province of Quebec.
C--The South African Union Charter is the guarantee of the Boers'
control of the future of that vast stretch of country, by means of the
two fundamental principles of the British constitutional
system:--government by the majority combined with ministerial
responsibility.
No Empire in the world grants as large a measure of freedom as the
British Empire does, to the various national groups living under the
protection of her flag.
3--British Imperialism, contrary to Mr. Bourassa's assertion, was never
deluded by the wild dream _of a world wide supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon
race, of her thoughts, of her language, of her political conceptions, of
her commerce and her wealth_.
Surely, I have yet to learn that Great Britain has dreamt, and is
dreaming, to impose _by Force_ her "mentality," her language, her
political institutions to China, to Japan, to Russia, to France, to all
the South American Republics, to Italy, to Spain, to Germany, to
Austria-Hungary, to Turkey, &c., which, considered as a whole,
represent, any one must admit, a pretty large part of the universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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