The war also brought changes in the relations between Canada and her great neighbor.For a time there was danger that it would erect a barrier of differing ideals and contrary experience.When month after month went by with the United States still clinging to its policy of neutrality, while long lists of wounded and dead and missing were filling Canadian newspapers, a quiet but deep resentment, not without a touch of conscious superiority, developed in many quarters in the Dominion.Yet there were others who realized how difficult and how necessary it was for the United States to attain complete unity of purpose before entering the war, and how different its position was from that.of Canada, where the political tie with Britain had brought immediate action more instinctive than reasoned.It was remembered, too, that in the first 360,000 Canadians who went overseas, there were 12,000men of American birth, including both residents in Canada and men who had crossed the border to enlist.When the patience of the United States was at last exhausted and it took its place in the ranks of the nations fighting for freedom, the joy of Canadians was unbounded.The entrance of the United States into the war assured not only the triumph of democracy in Europe but the continuance and extension of frank and friendly relations between the democracies of North America.As the war went on and Canada and the United States were led more and more to pool their united resources, to cooperate in finance and in the supply of coal, iron, steel, wheat, and other war essentials, countless new strands were woven into the bond that held the two countries together.Nor was it material unity alone that was attained; in the utterances of the head of the Republic the highest aspirations of Canadians for the future ordering of the world found incomparable expression.
Canada had done what she could to assure the triumph of right in the war.Not less did she believe that she had a contribution to make toward that new ordering of the world after the war which alone could compensate her for the blood and treasure she had spent.It would be her mission to bind together in friendship and common aspirations the two larger English-speaking states, with one of which she was linked by history and with the other by geography.To the world in general Canada had to offer that achievement of difference in unity, that reconciliation of liberty with peace and order, which the British Empire was struggling to attain along paths in which the Dominion had been the chief pioneer."In the British Commonwealth of Nations,"declared General Smuts, "this transition from the old legalistic idea of political sovereignty based on force to the new social idea of constitutional freedom based on consent, has been gradually evolving for more than a century.And the elements of the future world government, which will no longer rest on the imperial ideas adopted from the Roman law, are already in operation in our Commonwealth of Nations and will rapidly develop in the near future." This may seem an idealistic aim; yet, as Canada's Prime Minister asked a New York audience in 1916, "What great and enduring achievement has the world ever accomplished that was not based on idealism?"
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
For the whole period since 1760 the most comprehensive and thorough work is "Canada and its Provinces", edited by A.Shortt and A.G.Doughty, 23 vols.(1914).W.Kingsford's "History of Canada", 10 vols.(1887-1898), is badly written but is an ample storehouse of material.The "Chronicles of Canada" series (1914-1916) covers the whole field in a number of popular volumes, of which several are listed below.F.X.Garneau's "Histoire du Canada" (1845-1848; new edition, edited by Hector Garneau, 1913-), the classical French-Canadian record of the development of Canada down to 1840, is able and moderate in tone, though considered by some critics not sufficiently appreciative of the Church.
Of brief surveys of Canada's history the best are W.L.Grant's "History of Canada" (1914) and H.E.Egerton's "Canada" (1908).
The primary sources are abundant.The Dominion Archives have made a remarkable collection of original official and private papers and of transcripts of documents from London and Paris.See D.W.
Parker, "A Guide to the Documents in the Manuscript Room at the Public Archives of Canada" (1914).Many of these documents are calendared in the "Report on Canadian Archives" (1882 to date), and complete reprints, systematically arranged and competently annotated, are being issued by the Archives Branch, of which A.
Shortt and A.G.Doughty, "Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada", 1759-1791, and Doughty and McArthur, "Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada", 1791-1818, have already appeared.A useful collection of speeches and dispatches is found in H.E.Egerton and W.L.
Grant, "Canadian Constitutional Development" (1907), and W.P.M.
