The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-09-02
BY JOHN w. DAFoE.

BY JOHN w. DAFoE. -.
The most vivid and most lasting i'm
preston that brought back from Paris
Is that the North American continent
is good place In which to live. 1 am,
after my observations In Paris more
than ever content to live In North Amer
lea, separated from Europe by the At
lantic Ocean, which is a wide jump.
and from Asia by the Pacific Ocean,
which is jump wider still. The
trouble with Europe lie that II has too
much past and not enough future.
The negotiations at Paris did not
take the hoped for course, and the result
has been disappointing. The belief was
general in our countries that the world,
AFTER the carnival of blood. passion and
destruction of the preceding four years,
would be willing to turn its back upon
the past and open a new era, foregoing
the racial hatreds. the commercial
1ealousies and the imperalistic ambitions
which brought about the unimaginable
disaster of the great war. The course
OF events at Paris belied this hope.
In the secret councils of the Peace
Conference ideallsm and what the Ger.
mans call real politik fought out their
duels, and each won something from
the struggle.
Big Contrasts in Continents.
As against the twenty-five warning,
jealous peoples Of Europe, divided by in
herited feuds and by conflicting ambi-
tons Tor the future. we have on this
continent north OF the Rio Grande but
two nations. Between these countries
stretches boundary line unmarked by
fortress or by armed sentry or by ves-
sci with frowning guns When you
crossed our boundary you encountered
no allen speech, no strange garb, no
unusual customs to tell you that you
were in foreign land.
You found yourself not among
strangers but among kinsmen-kin not
only by the tie of blood but as well
by the bonds of common purposes, be-
liefs and idealss No inherited feud
separates us. In our histories we
can find tales of "old unhappy far off
days and battles long ago." but these
memories have been lost in an age long
peace which has brought US the occasion
for common sacrifices In a great cause.
We have here none of the springs which
feed the international hatreds Of Europe.
One out of every six Canadians born
IN this country is now resident in the
United States, but there Is no Canada
dream Of capturing in order to free our
brethren from oppression. When Cana
dams cross the line they take the place
to which their talents At them. There Is
no position not open to them except the
Presidency.
You make Cabinet Ministers Of them.
like Franklin Lane, or principals of uni
versities, like Schurman of Cornell, or
leading journalists, like the late Joseph
7
Hill. These men were never strangers
to you--they were from the beginning
part of your community and were ac-
cepted by you on their merits. And you
have paid US in kind. You will find
Americans in our Legislatures, In our
Parliament. among our railway execu-
tives, in our great business enterprises.
Nor is this interchange matter of
only the last generation or so. 1t has
been going on since there was an English
Canada at all We are not simply kim
dred peoples through descent by parallel
channels from a common ancestral stock,
with a joint inheritance of language and
of moral and political ideas.
The foundations OF English Canada
social, business and political-were laid
by men who were of British American
stock This is a fact whose significance
and implications are not fully realized
on either side of the line.
What is known as the American Revo-
luton was not a war between the Amer
lean colonies and the English mother
land-it was a clash between two schools
of English thought an English civil war
which CHANGED to be fought on this side
of the Atlantic. The victors won not
only territorial independence for them
selves but they put the whole English
race back on the road of liberty from
which 1t had been 'lured by influences
which in their origin were not British
but German.
The American minority in this civil
war, the defenders Of the lost cause, the
people who figure in your histories as
Tories, after the issue Of the war had
gone against them. moved north into the
wilderness by tens OF thousands and
founded the British communities which