The Canadian Forum/Editorial/1920-10

The Canadian Forum Editorial written by Unknown

The Peace Treaty and the Rhine

Three years have passed, since a group of amateurs in journalism decided to produce The Rebel. Born as a flysheet, in time it became a small magazine. The joys of its parents were secret; and so were their griefs and fears. Their rebellion — still in progress — was against the conventions, not against society. Their excursions into politics were neither numerous nor protracted. It was in the field of art and letters, that they flaunted their banners as a rule. Those of our readers, who make their stand upon the ancient way, will remark that the conventions have survived. But they know too that the challenge to doctrines, whose authority springs mainly from their length of days, no longer comes from isolated groups. It is offered in all countries and in all classes. With interests as fresh and wide as her national responsibilities, Canada refuses instinctively to bind herself with formulae. "They that reverence too much old times, are but a scorn to the new."

The Rebel will appear no more. Fortified by their experience, its founders decided some time ago to consolidate their efiforts. They hope that in doing this they may depend on support from all well-wishers of their former venture. The creation of a permanent monthly journal of opinion is a thing not to be undertaken lightly; but the need which it tries to meet is a real one. Too much of our news is coloured and distorted, before ever it reaches the Canadian press. Too often our convictions are borrowed from London, Paris, or New York. Real independence is not the product of tariffs and treaties. It is a spiritual thing. No country has reached its full stature, which makes its goods at home, but not its faith and its philosophy. Such a magazine as "The Canadian Nation", whatever has been said of its activities, is in itself a recognition of this truth. It is just as much a part of the "Made in Canada" movement, as the Canadian Manufacturers Association. So too would "The Canadian Forum" be considered.

"The Canadian Forum" had its origin in a desire to secure a freer and more informed discussion of public questions and, behind the strife of parties, to trace and value those developments of art and letters which are distinctly Canadian. Consequently it invites the expression of opinion on the part of its readers. A page has been set aside in the next and in the following issues for the presenting of readers' opinions on Editorials or articles appearing in the monthly itself or on any other matters of political or artistic interest. Conciseness, point, and good-nature must be asked of correspondents. Within these limits the freest discussion is invited.

The design which appears on the cover of this issue will be recognised as a panel of the Arch of Constantine. For the execution of the drawing, and for the external appearance of the magazine, we wish to acknowledge our great indebtedness to Mr. C. W. Jefferys, A.R.C.A., of Toronto. We are fortunate in securing his ready counsel and assistance, and that of a number of his fellow-craftsmen. It is our intention to make black-and-white illustrations from the pens of Canadian artists a distinctive feature of the magazine.

The Manitoba provincial election, and particularly the contest in Winnipeg, is perhaps the outstanding political event in Canada within the past few months. The Norris Government had a clean record. It was free from the scandals which had disgraced the Province and the Dominion under the previous administration. More than this it had enacted considerable advanced legislation. Its educational policy, while lacking something in sympathy towards the non-English, was just and progressive. During the tense weeks of the Winnipeg strike it had shown no such violent mistrust of the aims of labour as had a nervous Ottawa. To the farmers it had been generous, if not indulgent. Yet an appeal to the people changed a negligible opposition to one which, if invited, could have assumed power. The farmers acting without official endorsation elected a considerable number of candidates. In Winnipeg under proportional representation the government elected four candidates, labour four, three of them political convicts, and the conservatives two, the latter of whom, son of a former Canadian premier, won by a few votes from Russell, an inmate of the; provincial penitentary.

Never in Canada have the devotees of law and order received a ruder shock. At the head of the polls, with nearly three times as many first choices as any other candidate and, it is said, though figures [p.4] are not available, receiving the votes of some eighty per cent of the electors, stood F. J. Dixon. Five years ago a popular hero because of his fearless radicalism, three years later facing single-handed an angry mob who disliked his pacifist views, a few months ago saved only by his eloquence and manifest sincerity from the penitentiary in spite of an adverse charge to the jury by the trial judge, now he resumes his seat in the legislature amidst public acclaim. The lesson is obvious yet it should be stated. Any government which attempts to throttle free men in Canada or elsewhere will fall of its own weight and be fortunate if it does not bring crashing in ruin the structure which with clumsy hands it seeks to buttress.

The news that a revolution has broken out in Italy can have surprised no one who closely follows developments in Europe. The sources of trouble are not far to seek. Italy, like Upper Canada, depends on imported coal for the livelihood of her industrial workers. The shocks of the last five years have rendered her coal supplies exceedingly precarious. From the workers' standpoint, those who are responsible for the control of Italian industry have been on trial. Each breakdown in the coal supply condemns them. Add to this an inflation of money which has increased prices nearly fourfold, and the reasons for bitter discontent are obvious. Mere repression of the symptoms of trouble can do nothing to cure a deep-rooted industrial malady. Signor Giolitti seems to have decided wisely that diagnosis and not repression is his business. Every country suffers, in its degree, from causes not dissimilar, and those of us who are more fortunately situated may study his wise forbearance. Instead of denouncing every voice of discontent as an offence against the State, we shall do well soberly to recognise that discontent has deep foundations. Though we drive underground or completely make an end of propaganda, discontent will last and grow more bitter, so long as the cause of discontent is there. It is by finding remedies for the coal shortage, and by refraining from any policy which is calculated to keep high the cost of living, that we shall disarm the radicals of Canada.

The love child of a Union Government, conceived and born in the virtuous atmosphere of war enthusiasm, now unwanted by its surviving parent and left to die on the doorstep of the Privy Council, detested: alike by farmers and manufacturers and tradesmen, the Board of Commerce has had a sad life. Early in the year came the resignation of the chief commissioner, Judge Robson, under circumstances so unfortunate as to cause serious doubt of his sincerity as a guardian of the consumer's purse. Not long after came the reference to the Supreme Court of Canada, on the newsprint question, which had thrown some doubt on the Board's jurisdiction to regulate prices of any sort. For good or ill, the Supreme Court decided exactly nothing—as Supreme Courts may—and the Board entered upon a period of rapid decline.

Attacked in unmeasured fashion by counsel for the Province of Ontario, compelled to listen, in his own Court, to insinuations of personal dishonesty, Mr. W. F. O'Connor decided to resume his practice of law. It is safe to say that the fiasco of the investigation of an alleged illegal grocers' combine at Hamilton did more to wreck the Board than any single event of its career.

The dying convulsion of the Board seems to have come when Mr. Murdoch resigned. It is hard to imagine any more vigorous, energetic, and convincing protest than that of a member, once a labouring man, who refused any longer to draw a substantial salary for lending his name to give dignity to a piece of flummery.

The shade of the Board is behaving circumspectly. Far from allowing the consumer to recoup himself from the distributors for some of the excess profits he was unwillingly forced to create, the Board seems to have lessened the shock of readjustment to lower prices and to be showing far greater tenderness to business interests than to the consuming public. Its intervention in the milk question has produced the ridiculous spectacle of a restricting order issued and revoked in the space of a few hours. It is worth noting that the weight of the Provincial Government was thrown into the scales for the farmer. There was even a broad hint of a milk producers' strike. And now the Board has heard all the evidence and there is once more the silence of consent.

Elsewhere in these columns there appears an article on the Lambeth Conference proposals for the reunion of Christendom. The Anglican position has not always been very easy to fix, especially with reference to Christian bodies which do not possess episcopal order. Nor has the attitude of Anglican thought towards the other episcopal bodies hitherto been defined with anything like unanimity. Whatever may be the response from the other episcopal bodies, that from the Free Churches and other Protestant Communions, both in England and in Canada, is on the whole, very sympathetic and assuring. Both the theory and the practice of episcopacy have, of course, been challenged in various pronouncements by leaders of these bodies, but there is at the same time a recognition that a great change has come over Anglicanism, which has gone so far as to admit how great a share it must bear in the guilt of a separated Christendom, and has put forward concrete proposals for making an amende honorable.