THE PERSONAL TOUCH

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 29, 3 August 1927, Page 8

THE PERSONAL TOUCH

A delightful contrast to the coolness which the representatives of Canada sometimes display at the Imperial Conference ib the enthusiasm with which the Prince of Wales and Mr. Baldwin have been welcomed in the Big Dominion. At Montreal on Sunday night the whistle of every vessel in one of the great harbours of the world greeted them as they landed. They "proceeded along brilliantly illuminated streets, lined with cheering thousands, to their hotel." Next.morning they drove to the formal reception at the City Hall, through "a cheering crowd of 150,000." The pomp of the official ceremonies might have been arranged for any guest, but neither the numbers nor the enthusiasm could have been made to order. The significance of the reception is, moreover, greatly enhanced by the fact that Montreal is in the Province of Quebec, which, owing to the immense preponderance of itsFrench Canadian population, has always been accustomed to regard any Imperial movement with suspicion and j still nurses vindictive memories of the

conscription forced upon it in a war in which Britain, Franco, and Canada were fighting side by side. It is to the fears and suspicions of this Province, and to its frequent command of ! the balance/of power in Dominion politics, that the timidity of Mr. Mackenzie King and so many of his predecesspTs is in large meajsure due. But the enthusiasm which the commercial metropolis of the French Province has greeted the Prince of Wales and the British Prime Minister is a striking testimony at once to the accuracy of tho contention of the late Sir John Willison and other Canadian Imperialists that the heart of Canada is sounder than the aloofness of her politicians might lead one to suppose and to the supreme importance of the personal touch. Eegarding the matter from the opposite angle, one roust surely admit that with the Prince of Wales and Mr. Baldwin sharing in this important mis* sion to the nearest and largest of the Dominions, and with the Secretary of State for the Dominions on his way to the remotest and one of the smallest of them, Britain is supplying convincing proof that she is taking her Imperial responsibilities seriously. •In spite of the immense load of her war debts and her industrial troubles, her statesmen can. still find time for those I personal visits to the Dominions in which everybody recognises an invaluable supplement to the ties of Empire and an invaluable antidote to those clisintegratory tendencies which came into operation immediately after the Armistice and reached, let us hope, their climax at the last Imperial Conference. The slenderer the constitutional bonds become, and the weaker the sense of obligation to the common cause on the part of the Dominions, the more urgent the need for strengthening every informal bond that remains. It is on a genuine mission of Imperial consolidation that the Prince and the Prime Minister are engaged, though, even while they are there, it might not be tactful to say so in Canada. It may be long before any other Dominion can have the advantage of such a remarkable combination, but the development of the airship and the aeroplano may bring it faster than most, people think.

There is a special personal ground on which Mr. Baldwin's shnre in the mission may be welcomed. Officially, the visit of.a British Prime Minister to a

Dominion is a precedent of very hapxjy augury; personally, it is pleasant to think that Mr. Baldwin, who, especially during the last two years, has had an almost crushing burden to carry, is now engaged in an Imperial service which, in spite of its immense importance, is almost a' holiday-task in comparison. While he strengthens Canada's Imperial faith and his own, he may be expected to renew his physical strength at the same time. Not that he is posing before his Canadian audiences as a valotuclinarian, or as a man in need of rest. Neither personally nor in his

representative capacity is there tho faintest suggestion of a "weary Titan" note about his speeches. There has never been a time he says, when the Mother Country shouldered her burdens more manfully or was more determined to progress and go forward than at present. r And, quite apart from the oppressive heat, there was a propriety in the fact that, when he said this to the Canadian Club at Montreal, he was sotting a new fashion—new for the Club apparently, and certainly for a British Prime Minister—by addressing the meeting in his shirt-sleeves. It helped to show that he is a 'fighting man and means business. The habit of self-de-preciation which is congenial to the British temperament does not appear to thrive in the air of tho American Continent. The result is that this British foible has been seriously misunderstood in the United States and even in Canada, and has confirmed the delusion that Britain's troubles are sapping her powers and that she is played out. Mr. Baldwin's note of quiet confidence and strength was therefore just what* was needed. Neither Britain nor her Prime Minister is prepared to "bate a jot of heart or hope." Both were determined to "still bear up and steer right onward." And Mr. Baldwin's Canadian speeches will help some of. them whom it most concerns to a due appreciation cf the fact.