Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/18

Rh benefit of any who come to climb in the Canadian Alps.

There is nothing quixotic about the Alpine Club of Canada: it is a sane, sober institution, organized by sane, sober men. As indicated, its mission is manifold. The education of Canadians to an appreciation of their alpine heritage, is of itself a raison d'etre. The Canadian Rocky Mountain system, with its unnumbered and unknown natural sanctuaries for generations yet unborn, is a national asset. In time we ought to become a nation of mountaineers, loving our mountains with the patriot's passion. A great Canadian, who wore himself out for the love he bore to God and Canada, was wont to say that a country which could grow wheat could grow men, by which he meant a race made of the flesh-stuff and the soul-stuff that builds up nations. This is the composite human material out of which mountaineers are made. But the peril is, that men become satiated with wheat, and there follows that effeteness which is worse than the effeteness of an unbalanced culture. Among other correctives none is more effective than this of the exercise of the mountain-craft. No sport is so likely to cure a fool of his foolishness as the steady pull, with a peril or two of another sort attending, of a season's mountain climbing in one of those "thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice" in the wild alpine playground of Canada. The ethical value of mountaineering is a subject upon which our statesmen would do well to ponder; and there is a considerable Canadian Alpine literature from which they may gather data.

Any young man of latent intellectual and moral force, who comes to close grips with the waiting, challenging mountains, and puts one summit after another beneath the soles of his feet, has gained immensely in the Spartan virtues. Moreover, he has,