The advocates of reciprocity denounced these arguments as the sheerest buncombe. Annexation sentiment in the United States {266} they declared to be rapidly disappearing, and in any case it was Canada's views, not those of the United States, that mattered. Reciprocity from 1854 to 1866 had killed, not fostered, annexation sentiment in Canada. And, if the doubling and trebling of imports from the United States in recent years had not kept national and imperial sentiment from rising to flood-tide, why now should an increase of exports breed disloyalty? Canadian financiers and railway operators were entering into ever closer relations with the United States; why should the farmer be denied the same right? The reciprocity proposed in 1911, unlike the programme of twenty years earlier, did not involve discrimination against Great Britain, but in fact went along with a still greater preference to the mother country. The claim that reciprocity would kill imperial preference was meaningless in face of this actual fact. Moreover, the British tariff reformers proclaimed their intention, if Mr Chamberlain's policy prevailed, of making reciprocity treaties with foreign countries as well as preferential arrangements with the Dominions, so why should not Canada exercise the same freedom? But elections are not won merely by such {267} debate. The energy with which they are fought, or the weight of the interests vitally concerned, may prove more decisive than argument. And in this contest the Opposition had the far more effective fighting force and made the far stronger appeal. Mr Borden's followers fought with the eager enthusiasm which is bred of long exclusion from office, while the ministerialists--save only the veteran prime minister himself and a small band of his supporters--fought feebly, as if dulled by the satiety which comes of long possession of the loaves and fishes. Outside the party bounds the situation was the same. The western farmers were the only organized and articulate body on the side of reciprocity, while opposed to it were the powerful and well-equipped forces of the manufacturers and the closely allied transportation and financial interests. Through the press and from a thousand platforms these forces appealed to the dominant beliefs and feelings of the people. Quite effective was the appeal founded on the doctrine of protection. In twenty years Canada had become a city-dominated land, and the average city-dweller had come to believe that his interests were bound up with protection--a belief not unnatural in the {268} absence for a decade of any radical discussion of the issue, and not to be overcome at the eleventh hour. But the patriotic appeal was still more effective. Here was a chance to express the accumulated resentment of half a century against the unneighbourly policy of the United States, now suddenly reversed. The chance could safely be seized, for Canada was prosperous beyond all precedent. 'Let well