The reply to such prophecy or foreboding, or guessing, as one may choose to call it, which has been provided by the government of England, is not apt to take any form different from the ancient policy of England, which after all is military. England is old and is, or presently will be, decadent. Her bigotry is that of age, her unprogressive slowness of change is senile. She has been the great colonizer; and in so far as the development of transportation facilities has brought her colonies closer home to her, it has given England hope—her only hope—that of existing in the future of her robust children. Yet we find the concern of England to-day to be that of securing military touch with all the corners of the world, rather than that of establishing a flexible and durable system of transportation methods that shall make for the individual well-being of all her widely scattered subjects. England, concerned with this American invasion of settlers, is to-day planning a great trans-Canadian road, whose western head shall lie somewhere within striking distance of Asia. “This,” says one commentator, “is England’s answer to Russia and the trans-Siberian railway.” To a humble observer it might seem far safer were England concerned, not so much in answering Russia, as in answering the United States. The best answer to Russia would be multitudes of farms in Western Canada, which one day we may call Western America. She can make that answer only by learning the methods of the United States. Till in some measure she shall have done so, she can not be safe as against the inroads of the American citizens. She can not restore the level of the waters by the building of railroads with military reasons under them. There may be a time in the history of the North American mid-continent when Canada and the United States will agree that it is better to get along comfortably together than it is to aid a far-off and somewhat mythical government to fight its battles somewhere at the end of military roads. Our little Western secessionists, our little frontier republics cleaved to the government at Washington as soon as the pathways thereto made such loyalty a possible thing. It is nearer from Quebec and Ottawa to Washington, than it is to London. Patriotism is much a matter of transportation. The faster the ocean steamships, the better the telegraphic communication, the nearer Canada is to England; yet at the same time relatively she grows still nearer to the United States.[66]