Casual observers, basing their judgment on the mental attitude of the people, as briefly outlined above, might reasonably have expected a quick return to the previous state of mind, at most a strong sympathy for the mother country, which might manifest itself in substantial contributions of funds, supplies, and perhaps a few battalions of enthusiastic adventurers. For, whatever might have been said at the time as a recruiting argument, Canadians felt no danger of immediate, or even future, invasion by European armies. When it came to that they had every reason to believe that the hundred million population of the United States would stand solidly with them, quite aside from the Monroe Doctrine. There was, of course, the possibility that Canada's trade with Great Britain, totaling half a billion dollars a year, would be destroyed in case of naval disaster to the British navy, but that would be only temporary. Whoever conquered would be willing to pay a stiff price for a portion of Canada's tremendous wheat crops, nearly 140,000,000 bushels in 1913. Economically Canada was in no way dependent on European countries. But such a chain of deductions would have ignored the chief premise--the spirit of the people who made up the Canadian nation. For a hundred years, indeed, the people of Canada had pursued the paths of peace; for three generations they had known no stronger passion than that involved in ordinary political partisan strife. Vice and idleness, not the pursuits of peace, render men soft and flabby in spirit. A pioneer stock does not require the continuous excitement of military warfare to maintain its combativeness; it needs only a just cause to rouse it to furnace heat. And that just cause the Canadians found in the attitude of England that Germany and Austria should not dominate the political destinies of peoples outside their frontiers. Within twenty-four hours all Canada was aflame with the war passion, but it was a passion thoroughly controlled by the reason behind it. "When Great Britain is at war, Canada is at war!" became a popular slogan. Intermingling with that supreme indignation, with the fervent loyalty to the empire, was the sinking dread of the tremendous sacrifices, not only in material interests, but in blood, which would have to be made, and that dread was terrible because of the profound sincerity and determination of the people to enter into the struggle, to stay until the bitter end. There was nothing jubilant in the wave of enthusiasm which swept over Canada in favor of the war during that first week in August; that note would have been out of harmony with the grim determination which was the dominating element in the popular emotion which swept over the land. It was not the sort of emotion which would naturally manifest itself in noisy street demonstrations, especially among people of Anglo-Saxon blood.