L. G. Desjardins

“ If we are not called upon, as a matter of faith, to pass judgment on the true causes of the war, and to divide the responsibilities respecting the calamity which covers Europe with blood, we are surely allowed to think and to say that all the circumstances actually known sufficiently prove that right is on the side of the peoples who have checked the invasion, and discouraged the overflowing of the enemy from his territory, in order that the sentiment of justice may serve to support the devotion of our soldiers, in this great conflict, called the struggle of Civilization against barbarism. ”

“ Any one conversant with the recent Balkan history knows that Bulgaria has from the start aspired to dominate the Balkan States. When the Berlin Government struck the hour which was to throw not only Europe, but three-fourths of the universe into the worst horrors of war, has Bulgaria rallied to the defence of her weak neighbour, Servia? Has she proved any sympathy for treacherously crushed Belgium?
I emphatically declare that I would oppose Imperialism with all my might, if I thought that it is by nature a necessary producer of absolutism, of autocratic tyranny. ”

“ Any nation aspiring to dominate the world by brute force or by the power of wealth, would be guilty of attempting an achievement just as vain as it would be criminal in its conception.
Any nation is within her undoubted right and duty in aspiring to the legitimate influence of her material progress, of her intellectual culture, of her moral development, of her religious increased perfection. Happy indeed would be the future of Humanity if all the Nations and their Rulers understood well, and did their best efforts to practice Christian precepts in the true spirit of their Divine teaching. ”

“ I have spoken thus only that the whole world may know the true spirit of America—that men everywhere may know that our passion for justice and for self-government is no mere passion of words, but a passion which, once set in act, must be satisfied. The power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It will be never used in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any selfish interest of our own. ”

“ Whatever said to the contrary, by prejudiced and designing writers, imbued with the extravagant notions of a narrow and fanatical "Nationalism", Canada, the most important of the autonomous Colonies of the British Empire, is freer than ever. Like all the other nations, she suffers from disastrous events shaking the whole worldly edifice, but she is none the less the absolute mistress of the initiative of whatever efforts she considers her duty to make under those trying circumstances. England has imposed nothing upon Canada, has asked nothing from Canada, since the beginning of the war. ”

“ Is it possible to suppose that any man aspiring to help moulding the public opinion of his countrymen, ignores that with the relatively small extent of the territory it can devote to agricultural production, Great Britain can never feed her actual population of over forty-five millions, most likely to reach sixty millions in the not very distant future. Consequently how unjust, how extravagant, is it to accuse England of any aspiration to dominate the world by means of the sacrifices she is absolutely bound to make for the only sake of her self-defence, her self-protection. ”

“ Bourassa is very sorry that, in war times like those we have seen since July 1914, British naval supremacy is sufficiently paramount to protect the United Kingdom from starvation, to keep the coasts of France opened to the mercantile ships of the Allies and of all the neutral nations, to "rule the waves" against both the German military and mercantile fleets, chased away from the oceans by the British guns thundering at the Teutonic pirates on land and sea. If he is, he can be sure that he is alone to cry and weep at a fact which rejoices all the true and loyal friends of freedom and justice. ”

“ Where is the sane man who really believes that, dreaming of a domination of the world by brute force, British free men would consent to do away with their Parliamentary system to transform the whole of the Empire into an armed camp? Such a proposition was sheer madness, a most foolish talk, unworthy of the slightest attention from sensible people. Mr. Bourassa was very wrong in giving it publicity, and very unwise, to say the least, in using it to frighten his French-Canadian compatriots by blandishing before their eyes that ridiculous specimen of the phantom of Imperialism. ”

“ I am not unduly enthusiastic, I am only speaking the plain truth, when I affirm that the Republican Imperialism of the United States has been most beneficent, having guaranteed to Mankind the inestimable boon of laying deep and strong in a virgin soil, providentially gifted with the most varied, the most abundant, the richest resources, the destinies of a great Sovereign Nation comprising numerous ethnical groups. This liberal, progressive, peaceful, harmonious Imperialism, it is a duty to approve wishing it to achieve new triumphs for the general good of Humanity. ”

“ Having witnessed, for the last fifty years, the admirable evolution and natural growth of the British constitutional system over a fourth of the globe, developing into the freest Empire that ever existed, my mind was more and more impressed with the conviction that loyalty to the Sovereignty presiding over such a magnificent national heritage could not be of two different kinds. A free British subject, whether living in the United Kingdom, or in any one of the Dependencies of the Crown, cannot be at once loyal to the Empire at large and disloyal to any of its component parts ”

“ Nations, like individuals, are not perfect. To judge equitably, impartially, the government by a Metropolis of the regions under her Sovereignty, one must not only be scandalized at her failings, but must take the broader view of her whole history in appreciating its final good and commendable results. So judging the government of India by England, every impartial mind must conclude that, on the whole—and more especially for the last sixty years—it has been beneficient. ”

“ The great society of nations, instead of gaining anything by it, is only losing, as a whole, the total amount of the financial cost of the military operations, of the squandering of hard earned savings, of diminished labour and production, of the waste of productive capital, of the loss of so many long days which could have been so much better employed. But most deplorable is the loss entailed by the warring nations, and the universe at large, by the sacrifice of the younger generations, of early youth and of strongly developed manhood, for the success of tyrannical and criminal purposes. ”

“ The nations united to withstand the torrent of German cruel and depraved ambition are writing, with the purest of their blood, pages of history which, for all times to come, will offer to posterity unrivalled examples of the sound and unswerving patriotism which has elevated them all to the indomitable determination to bear patiently, perseveringly, all the sacrifices, in lives courageously given, in resources profusely spent, in taxation willingly accepted and paid, in works of all kinds cheerfully performed, which the salvation of human Liberty and Civilization shall require. ”

“ It is impossible that they should triumph the men who, during forty years, have prepared for the greatest war and who, during two years, have torn the world asunder and flooded the earth with blood. Impossible [282] that they should triumph the men who have declared this war without a right to avenge, without a grievance to redress, without being menaced in any way. Impossible that they should triumph those who have torn, like a scrap of paper, a pact upon which the nations relied, having faith in the pledged word. ”

“ I feel the utmost contempt for all kinds of narrow prejudices, of blind fanaticism. Nations, like individuals, all pursue Providential destinies in this human world. There is no more abjection in the colonial status than in any other. Canada is a British colony by the decree of Providence. Every nation—like every individual—has duties to perform in any situation she may occupy in the course of historical events. ”