The Book of the West: The story of western Canada, its birth and early adventures, its youthful combats, its peaceful settlement, its great transformation, and its present waysKennedy, Howard Angus
History
The Book of the West: The story of western Canada, its birth and early adventures, its youthful combats, its peaceful settlement, its great transformation, and its present ways
Kennedy, Howard Angus
Northwest, Canadian
British Columbia has some interests and ideas which are not shared by
the Prairie Provinces; the desires of the western and eastern ends of
the prairie are not always the same; the West as a whole has many
discussions with the East as a whole, just as various parts of the East
have still great differences among themselves. For that matter, two
cities or two districts in the same Province, either East or West, often
have differences, sometimes petty and sometimes grave. But every
difference between district and district, Province and Province, East
and West, however great it seems when we think of our individual
interests alone, is small in comparison with the greater interests, the
nobler duties, which unite us all. No difference can be allowed to
interfere for a moment with the supreme and sacred duty of Union. And
every difference can be settled, with difficulty or with ease according
as we are careless or enthusiastic in the devotion of thought, study,
ingenuity and unselfish good-will, to perfecting ourselves in the
essential art of living together.
A greater union is ours to-day, greater even than the union of all our
Provinces in one Dominion. We may be a long way yet from “the Parliament
of Man, the Federation of the World”; but we must set our faces steadily
in that direction, for the nations of the world cannot go on jostling
and “daring” each other without disaster. No nation can ever again be
absolutely “independent” of the rest, even if that were a high ideal,
and not, as it is, a low one. The nations must learn the art of living
and working together. Recognizing others’ interests as well as their
own, they must join to study and perfect arrangements which will make
the idea of war between them as absurd as it would be to-day between
England and Scotland, Kansas and Iowa, Alberta and Saskatchewan, or
Canada and Australia.
We have our feet securely now on the first well-tested step of the
ladder. We have the priceless possession of a united commonwealth of
self-governing nations which we call the British Empire; and what we
have we shall hold. No force of reaction and dissension can rob us of
that firm footing and separate us from our sister-nations, unless we
fall asleep. We are trying a second step, the League of Nations, and
hope it will bear; we must do our best to strengthen it; but meanwhile
we have our own British league of nations, and that has stood the test
of the hardest knocks in history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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