Mostly they call themselves Imperialists, which is just their harmless
way of expressing their satisfaction with things as they are. In
practice their Imperialism resolves itself into a vigorous resistance to
taxation and an ill-concealed hostility to education. It matters nothing
to them that the whole next generation of Canadians has drawn its ideas
mainly from American publications, that India and Egypt, in despite of
sounder mental nourishment, have developed their own vernacular Press,
that Australia and New Zealand even now gravitate to America for books
and thought. It matters nothing to them that the poverty and insularity
of our intellectual life has turned American art to France and Italy,
and the American universities towards Germany. The slow starvation and
decline of our philosophy and science, the decadence of British
invention and enterprise, troubles them not at all, because they fail to
connect these things with the tangible facts of empire. "The world
cannot wait for the English." ... And the sands of our Imperial
opportunity twirl through the neck of the hour-glass.
THE LABOUR UNREST
(_May, 1912_.)
Sec. 1
Our country is, I think, in a dangerous state of social disturbance. The
discontent of the labouring mass of the community is deep and
increasing.
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