[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—I do not know what inside experience of Canadian life your correspondent, Mr. Evelyn Wrench, may possess, but my own, which has been considerable since 1878, has convinced me of the rooted antipathy to the U.S. (not to its individuals) of almost the whole British element in the country. An English visitor would probably not grasp it, and if he did would not easily understand, for it would seem illogical. That any conceivable circumstances will ever induce them to consider annexation favourably I do not believe—though, materially, there are so many plausible reasons for it that outsiders come to grief in their estimates. English writers, too, seem to forget (if they ever knew) that the French Canadians virtually refused, till conscription, to
fight in the Great War either for their suzerain country, which had treated them since the conquest of 1768 with unexampled liberality, or for their mother-country in its desperate straits. I possess the official figures of volunteering from the two million and odd French Canadians. They are almost negligible. This was never realised in England and, in any case, as is our curious way, would have been forgotten. But I will undertake to say that the British Canadians will never forget it. Nor should they, for it is the unforgivable sin. The old legend about the French Canadians " lining the last ditch" in case of an American invasion exploded in the Great War, even for those who had not closely followed Canadian history (I do not mean its legends) since the conquest and thought there might be some truth in it.
Incidentally, it might be well to remember that an inde- pendent Canada would exist on sufferance, and that is not a position for a proud people like the British Canadians to
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