Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/50

40. . . intimately connected with us by language, literature, and habits of thought, have spontaneously arranged to take part. . . . Here on the frontier between the two great English-speaking nations of the world, who is there that does not inwardly feel that anything which conduces to an intimacy between representatives of two countries, both of them actively engaged in the pursuit of science, may also, through such an intimacy, react on the affairs of daily life, and aid in preserving those cordial relations that have now for so many years existed between the great American Republic and the British Islands, with which her early foundations are indissolubly connected?" President Evans then referred very gracefully to the recent incident of the "log of the Mayflower" as "an interchange of courtesies which has excited the warmest feelings of approbation oh both sides of the Atlantic—the return to its proper custodians of one of the most interesting of the relics of the Pilgrim Fathers"; and added the hope that this circumstance might be both an augury and a testimony of mutual regard and esteem between the nations.

This friendly and courteous tone toward Americans was indeed a marked and truly pleasing feature throughout the entire series of meetings; but, at the same time, no one could be misled. It was the tone of well-disposed neighbors, desiring to live in kind relations with us—the two peoples working out their problems and their destiny side by side, but separate. On the other hand, very striking and impressive were the tokens of Canadian national feeling, and Canadian love and loyalty to the empire and to the Queen. Every allusion to the sovereign, to the new ideal of the "Greater Britain," to the closer relationship between the mother land and the worldwide colonies, was received with outbursts of applause that betokened intense patriotic sentiment. The writer was much confirmed in the view, gained in previous visits to that region, that our people generally have no idea of the Canadians—of their resources and their spirit, of their national feeling and national pride, of their attachment to the empire of which they are a part. Joined to these there is more or less indicated a radical distrust of our methods and ideas, as compared with their own. Union or absorption with "the States" is as far as possible from the Canadian heart; and to one who considers impartially, it seems that a very long time must pass, and great changes be wrought in both countries, ere such an event can be other than a dream.

Nor is this a matter for regret; both peoples have their problems to solve and their work to accomplish; both have free institutions; both have energy, courage, and faith in themselves and their mission. As friends and brothers, each for itself, they can best develop this