GOOD WILL IN FIELDS OF PEACE
By Louis BLAKE DUFF
We hear in these September days the
clock of destiny click,
the clock of your destiny, the clock of
Canadian destiny, the
clock of world destiny. A momentous
month draws to a close.
In it your role and ours has been
changed. By one stroke there
has been made a new relationship and may
no evil fate ever dis-
turb it. There sprang up, overnight
almost, a new doctrine that
the defense of the North American
continent is one single defense,
and cannot be divided into a defense of
Canada, and a defense
of the United States. Of the immediate
practical value of fifty
destroyers to Great Britain (by the way
we Canadians peeled
off half a dozen of them as they passed
through), it is not
necessary to say anything. It is so
self-evident. It is more
profitable to assess the moral gain. It
was no mere bargaining
of bases for bottoms. It was a new, a
most powerful, a most
striking symbol of the essential unity
of the English-speaking
peoples. Proof again that though we
travel each in our own way
it is to the same goal, guided by the
same eternal stars of liberty,
of human freedom, of truth, of justice.
The greatest of all Britishers the other
day made comment
on this new relationship of ours and
yours. He did not view
the process with any misgivings. He had
no wish to stop it.
"No one," he said, "can
stop it." Like the Mississippi it "just
keeps rolling along." Let it roll. Let it roll on in full flood,
inexorable, irresistible, to broader
lands and better days. In those
words speaking for every son of Britain,
for every Canadian, for
every citizen of the wide Empire he put
the seal upon our new
relationship. We are all on the note.
Long ago when he was
a young man the prime minister wrote a
motto for his country.
It is so like him and so like his
country! "In war--resolution;
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