CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES.
[To TuE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,"] SIR,—The cable report of your comment upon my letter in the Spectator of November 17th protesting against your attitude on international questions affecting Canada shows that the point which I have striven to make clear is still missed. You will not see that Canada's claims and interests must be taken as seriously as are those of the British Isles. "We will never tread the vicious circle," you say, "in which Canada is encouraged to ask for more than if she were an independent nation," and, to promote due humility in Canada, you recite the horrors to her of war with the United States. Now let me say that this bogey of war with the United States seems to nearly every one here a very unreal deus ex machind. It is as unfair to the United States to say that her people will make war on us without just cause as it is insulting to Canada to suggest that, hiding behind the Mother-country's skirts,
she makes claims that she would not dare to make were she standing alone. If the people and Press of England do not see that every utterance of this kind tends to drive Canada and Great Britain farther apart, they are less astute than I have supposed them to be. It would be vain to say more.
—I am, Sir, &c., GEORGE M. WRONG. University of Toronto.
[We do not, and did not, say that Canada as a nation asks for more than she would ask for were she independent, for the Government and the responsible statesmen of Canada have not taken up that position. What we do say is that certain persons both here and in Canada are trying to induce Canada to take up such a position—our correspondent is one of them—and that such a course is inimical to the best interests of the Dominion and of the Empire. We would ask those who have read Professor Wrong's letter to read also that which follows it, and not to imagine that the common-sense and statesmanlike view therein expressed is without support in Canada. We believe it to be much nearer the authentic voice of the Dominion than that set forth by Professor Wrong.—En. Spectator.]
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