Page:Canadian Appeal for the Widows and Orphans of the South African War.djvu/3

 I have fought for Queen and faith like a valiant man and true: I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die; And he fell upon the deck and he died. Yes, our boys did their duty “as a man is bound to do,” and their names will be remembered with tender and loving regard as long as the national life of Canada shall endure. The flight of ages will not obscure their glory, nor dim the pure lustre that is the concemitant of heroic actions nobly performed. Passing years will but add to the splendour of their achievement. Future generations will be told by the historian's pen of their remarkable valor and signal bravery in the midst of frightful peril, at a time when the destiny of the Empire trembled in the balance, and a monument more lasting than brass, and more aluding than the Pyramids of Egypt, will be erected to their memory in the hearts and affections of those for whom, and for whose descendants, they offered up, at the altar of liberty, the sacrifice of their lives.

What does all of this portend for Canada and the Empire? What significance spring from the fact that this Dominion has been an auxiliary to the glory, and a contributor to the celebrity of the old land? What means it that Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Australasians, Cape Colonists and Canadians, met the onset of a formidable foe together, that their blood flowed in the same stream, upon the same field, and that in the same deep pit their bodies where deposited, there to await the universal call that sooner or later will issue from the Omnipotent Ruler of the human race? What means this concord in the grave?

Plastic fancy may assert her constructive power, and present to the eye of the mind an edifice for the future to be erected upon the foundation that devotion and self sacrifice have raised, but it is difficult, if not impossible, for the finite understanding to grasp the import of the occurrences of these eventful days, or form any conclusion of value as to the ultimate effect.

But we are not in total darkness. There are some matters respecting which we pray speak with confidence as to the probable consequences. For instance, is it possible for the mind to conceive of a clearer representation of the solidarity of the Empire than this struggle furnishes? Not long ago the statement was made that Britain stood alone—that she occupied a position of splendid isolation. What is her present situation? The resort to the arbitrament of force has disclosed to the view a marked and striking illustration, not of splendid isolation, but on the contrary, such an example of magnificent cohesion and consolidation, a staggered Europe, and revealed the unparalleled majesty and power of the greatest Empire the world has ever seen.

Further, I think we may safely make a definite pronouncement as to this, that the resolution is more powerful now that perhaps it ever was before to strengthen those ties which “light as air though strong as iron” bind the colonies to the mother land, and it may be that the lapse of time will but intensify this determination and ultimately result in the formation of such a connection as will defy the power of mortal to dissolve. Even now Canada is regarded as much a part of the Empire as England, Ireland or Scotland, and she has become an important factor in the management and direction of concerns coextensive with Imperial Rule.

This is of vast moment, and a most desirable consummation. The colonial “soldiers of the Queen”, stained the soil of Africa with their blood for Britain's sake, but the sacrifice of life and treasure will not have been in vain, it with the cement of a brotherhood in death, it knits together irrevocably, the noble fabric of the British Empire.

Our participation in this combat brings us closer to each other, increases our love for this fair Canadian land, and imparts a clearer and broader knowledge of the true meaning of patriotism, the noblest passion that stimulates a man in the character of a citizen. It suggests to the mind that we must love our country as the place of our birth or adoption, and where our more important duties are to be performed, as the play ground of our children, the land where our father's rest, and the tomb of the courageous and learned of our own blood and race departed. That we must love it for the unremitting toil of those who reclaimed and adorned its natural scenery; who converted it from a wilderness into a beautiful garden, from a trackless forest into fertile fields. That we must love it