EMPIRE CITIZENSHIP

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 49, 26 August 1925, Page 4

EMPIRE CITIZENSHIP

CANADIAN POINT OF VIEW > DEVELOPING NATIONAL SENTIMENT. Mr. J. W. Dafoe, of the .'Tree Press," Winnipeg! a member of tha Empire Press delegation, • was approached by "The PoBt" on the subject of Canadian national ideals. He pointed to the difference—he would not call it the divergence—between Canadian and other Dominions' points of view of British Imperial citizenship. Ho subscribed to recent public utterances of Mr. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada, when Mr. King said: "As Canada is true to herself and Canadians are true to Canada's highest interests, "so will Canadian citizenship mean the most ,for Empire citizenship." "You see (continued Mr. Dafoe), an I said, there is a marked difference, between Canada and some of the other Dominions in that we, I think, have gone, a little farther on the road towards nationalism. There is in Canada a very strong and growing sense of Canadian nationality—and we in Cauada realise, and recognise the need for •it, because wo feel we must have some common denominator for all the peoples who go to make up the population of Canada. New Zealand is in a Very different position. You are one people. I should say that Canada in this respect is without parallel among the. Dominions, except that I am inclined to think we are rather like South Africa in our need for development of the national sense. "You see there are nearly 60 per cent. of 'our people who are not of British origin, and 30 per cent, of them are definitely French. The balance' represents every European race you can mention, excepting, possibly, Spanish and Portuguese, and there may be some of them among us, .too, for all I know to the contrary. Then there is a very strong element—of pure British origin, certainly—but Canadian for five generations back. They, as do all other Canadians, realise that we have to "have a bond to unify all the various elements, and so we seek it in a Canadian national feeling. "That does not at all preclude our willingness and power to co-operate with every other British Dominion in matters of common concern. "In my Judgment, what Mr. Mackenzie King said about Canada being in the'position of interpreter between two most formidable bodies of opinion in the world—American end British— was perfectly true. That is our particular role in tha world. And I think we are doing it very welL"