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The Canadian Forum/Editorial/1920-12
| The Canadian Forum/Editorial 1920-12 written by [[|]] |
French in the Schools of Ontario |
Christmas time has come again, but the approaching festival arouses far different reflections from those which it suggested before the war. The memory of four war Christmases is with us still. The guns have disappeared from Flanders fields, but the crosses, white and black, remain; the nations have ratified their treaties, but they are not at peace: most of our children will have food, clothes and good cheer in spite of the present depression in business, but millions of children throughout Central Europe and Russia, innocent victims of the catastrophe, will suffer and perhaps die from hunger and cold. Nor is their suffering due to the destruction of the world's productive powers. The forgiving earth has been bountiful: the granaries of North America are full and running over: and for hunger in Europe the acts of men alone are responsible. How immensely remote and unreal seem the days when Christmas bells chimnig through frosty air suggested only thoughts of peace on earth, good will towards men: when each revolving year strengthened the bonds of international friendship: and when most men still believed, in their inmost hearts, the wisdom of the splendid, daring advice, "Loye your enemies: do good to them that hate you . . . If thine enemy hunger, feed him!" — But did we really believe that?
This is an appeal for children — for the children of Central Europe. Time will restore their countries, but if we leave all to the work of time and economic forces, many will perish in the meantime and only a weakened and embittered generation will survive. Nowhere in the world can we find a more urgent duty to our neighbour: common humanity calls for our help. The spread of tuberculosis, rickets and starvation over the former European belligerent countries can be arrested by gifts from this continent, which is, of all parts of the world, the most able to offer them. For a year or more already, relief agencies have been at work with magnificent results in the saving of life. Nothing has done so much to lessen the bitterness caused by the war as the aid thus freely given to the children of our former enemies. We cannot ignore the present appeal for our contributions. The man or woman who lives without care, unmindful of the undeserved misery which he or she could relieve, who lives comfortably with the superfluities of life but does nothing to help the children who are suffering for lack of its necessities, is not a good citizen of the world. So far as international relations come within the ordinary person's sphere of action, such a one has failed in duty to his or her own country. Our table may be piled with Chiistmas delicacies: our children's stockings may be filled with the gifts of Santa Claus: the fire may sparkle cheerfully upon the hearth, while sleighbells jingle without: but unless we have given generously to relieve the need of the hungry children across the seas, there is a skeleton at the feast.
The Federal Minister of Labour has committed another amazing indiscretion. But Senator Gideon Robertson is seldom regular. In the first place he accepted a Cabinet position without an appeal to the people. An undemocratic proceeding in any case, access to the treasury benches by the easy route of the Senate for a Minister of Labour is a device as absurd as it is pusillanimous. Then we had the famous pamphlet inserted in the Labour Gazette. A previously scientific publication thus was dragged into the slough of propaganda, and propaganda of a particularly silly kind. More recently, the Senator has returned to the paths of science. With the tariff commission he has been touring the country in order to discover what a scientific tariff really is. The commission had not yet completed its inquiry when the bye-election(sic!) occurred in East Elgin. Important industries in Oatario were waiting for investigation. But Senator Robertson turned aside from the path of his enquiry, and stayed long enough to give an emphatic verdict at St. Thomas in favour of protection. Now that the verdict is given he is at leisure to consider the evidence in the case. The ease with which the part of judge was laid aside and resumed discredits alike the man and the commission.
East Elgin leaves the riddle of Canadian public opinion still unanswered. It is rash to conclude that the doom of the fledgling National Liberal and Conservative Government has been sealed. While winning by a majority of 256 in a three-cornered contest the candidate of the United Farmers received only thirty per cent of the total possible vote and thirty-nine per cent of the actual [68] vote polled. Yet very tew constituencies in Eastern Canada have a larger proportion of rural voters. Even in the townships the combined Liberal and Conservative vote (we shall be pardoned for simplifying, the name) exceeded that of the farmer candidate, while in the town of Aylmer and the village of Port Stanley, Mr. McDermand's vote was 107 to 1,482 for his opponents. The result would seem to indicate, — if a close three cornered contest, pending a system of transferable votes, can indicate anything, — that a farmer government in Ottawa is hardly possible. The best that Mr. Crerar can hope for is to lead a hyphenated administration unless a wider appeal is made to urban voters or unless something happens in Quebec. But if East Elgin fails to justify elation among the farmers, it can bring only gloom to government circles. The presence in the riding of four cabinet ministers, a dozen members and a hoat of agents and speakers, even the second coming of the Premier himself, failed to instil fear of imminent national disruption into the breasts of more than twenty-seven per cent of the electors. The effect of frantic appeals from platform, bill-boards and press must be discouraging to these saviours of the social and political order. The largest section of the electors preferred to be numbeied with the wreckers, while an even 2,000 chose the more innocent policies of the Liberals. With the tariff as the main issue, a riding which in 1911 rejected reciprocity by a majority of 394 has now given a verdict in favour of tariff reduction by a majority of 2,261. This is the significant fact of the election.
By starving her industries and overworking her miners, Germany has succeeded in maintaining the coal deliveries agreed to at Spa. France however still manages to postpone the conference on indemnities that should have assembled at Geneva weeks ago; and meanwhile the situation in Germany grows worse. The miners demand nationalization and threaten a general strike; the military party dreams of another putsch; and from Bavaria, where General Ludendorff lives in by no means innocuous retirement, come persistent rumours of a plot to form an independent monarchy with Prince Rupprecht on the throne. That the French government, still hopeful of dismembering Germany, approves this movement is evidenced by the fact that, while all the rest of the population is being disarmed, the Bavarian Einwohnerwehr (the reactionary police formation whose demobilization was insisted on at Spa) is permitted to retain its rifles. It has been suggested that the French government seeks ultimately to unite Bavaria and the Rhine provinces under the same monarchy, and it is even said that Austria may be included. Such a proposal might indeed appeal to the clerical government now in power at Vienna, but it would certainly arouse the passionate opposition of the Austrian socialists who have already declared for union with republican Germany. None of these schemes seems likely to succeed; the worst of them is that they postpone the day of resettlement.
In Hungary also the government of the French Republic reveals itself as the upholder of the legitimist principle, as witness the recurring proposals to restore the Habsburgs, or failing them some other unemployed royalty, to the throne of St. Stephen. Hungary is now so completely under French influence (her railways are in French hands, and her army, which exceeds by four times the figure permitted in the treaty, is equipped by France) that the Hungarian government would not dare to play so dangerous a game without the approval of its French masters. And here there seems to be a fair prospect of success. For many months Hungary has been in the grip of an atrocious reaction. White Guards composed, like the Black and Tans, of ex-officers, commit outrages in the streets of Budapest of the type that is becoming usual, and the government, probably secretly sympathizing, makes no attempt to control them. Only a few weeks ago Adolf Landau, a wholesale wine merchant, was kidnapped and held for ransom. His family appealed to the minister of justice, who replied "These cases are daily occurrences. I cannot interfere". A few days later it was announced that Landau had committed suicide. Subsequently it was proved that he had been beaten to death in his cell in the Kelenfoeld Barracks. In face of this terror the liberals of Hungary have become so disorganized that in all probability no body of public opinion would rally to oppose a restoration.
In the hour of his downfall M. Venizelos has shown dignity and equanimity. That was to be ex- pected; for M. Venizelos is a great man and his career has at least been cast in the mould of a great tradition. And because to-day it is nothing more than a tradition, he has chosen like his prototype Themistocles to seek sanctuary in a strange land. M. Venizelos calls himself a liberal; he is in fact the product of nineteenth century nationalism. His ideals are the ideals of Cavour; his methods, the methods of Bismarck. For him the voice of God is the voice, not of the people, but of that metaphysical abstraction, the nation-state; Greece, not the Greeks, has inspired his dreams. In other days M. Venizelos would have been hailed by his fellow-countrymen as one of the makers of the nation; to-day he is an exile. It is childish to talk of ingratitude; we are no longer living in the nineteenth century. The old gods are falling one by one; the last great survivor of the priestly caste is buried in the ruins; only the acolytes remain. In power M. Venizelos was at best a splendid anachronism: in defeat he is one of the really significant figures of our time.
[69]The peace that has been signed between Poland and Russia realizes many of the extravagant dreams of the Polish imperialists. The Soviet government in its anxiety to reach an agreement has relinquished thousands of square miles of territory to which Poland has no shadow of an ethnographic claim; and many hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Russian men and women thus become the unwilling subjects of the Polish state. Such an arrangement is worse than temporary; it is another obstacle to the ultimate pacification of Europe. But the situation in Russia demanded peace, even an illusive peace, at any price. The shadow of a famine, at least as terrible as the Chinese famine (of which for political reasons we hear far more) hangs over the land; and the scanty transport, now for many months monopolized by the army, had to be made available for the distribution of food. Moreover a trade agreement with England seemed to be out of the question as long as Poland chose to continue the war, and Wrangel, too, remained to be disposed of. So the Bolsheviks, who long ago discarded sentiment in favour of a genuine real polilik, have paid Poland's price; and a second Brest Litovsk, with our Polish allies in the role of the sabre-rattling Prussian, is the result.
In spite of recognition by France, in spite of re-inforcements and munitions, the much eulogized General Wrangel has at last gone the way of his predecessors. Generals Judenitch and Denikine, not to speak of Admiral Kotlchak. One would think that the group of English and French financiers and their Tsarist friends (including Mr. Winston Churchill) who have devised this very costly and very bloody method of destroying Bolshevism, would be somewhat discouraged. Apparently they are not; for a recent despatch announces that a new strong man (really more of a democrat after all, it appears, than General Baron von Wrangel) is even now engaged in rallying the scattered white forces. His name? That is prudently witheld; for the moment we must content ourselves with the assurance that the sacred cause is in capable hands. Surely it is high time that a stop was put to this sort of nonsense. The experience of the last eighteen months should have taught us that there are only two ways of destroying Bolshevism; one is by fighting it, not vicariously, but directly and with all the power at our command; the other is by leaving it to destroy itself. For certain obvious reasons the first course is out of the question; the second, if Bolshevism is really the incompetent tyranny of a minority that our newspapers tell us it is, should be perfectly efficacious. The simple truth is that the Soviet government as a government has thrived on Wrangel and his kind; each reactionary intrigue has served only to unite the wrteched people in its support. There is a story that Lenin, who, for an ogre, seems to be fond of his little joke, sent a message a few months ago to Mr. Winston Churchill expressing a desire to decorate him for his services in consolidating Bolshevik rule. Probably by this time he would be willing to add a clasp to the ribbon.
The Conservation Committee of the City of Sarnia acquired valuable funds for the Red Cross during the war by the collection and sale of waste paper. At the close of the war the committee by an extremely happy inspiration decided to devote these funds to the cause of Canadian art. Accordingly about a year ago they invited an exhibition from Toronto which was held in the City Library and aroused considerable interest, Canadian pictures being a complete novelty in this as in practically all other Canadian cities. Not only was the exhibition a success, attended by individual purchases; the Committee further decided to commence buying for a permanent Canadian collection. They bought canvases by J. W. Beatty, H. S. Palmer, and A. Y. Jackson, all representative and the Jackson an unusually fine example.[*] Their second annual exhibition is now being held. The people of Sarnia, adults and children, are enjoying the direct impact of Tom Thomson's masterpiece, "Chill November", and of a well chosen group of smaller pictures. Judging by appearances there can be nothing for it but an art gallery for Sarnia in the not distant future with a predominantly, perhaps exclusively, Canadian collection. If the Committee continues its good work in the spirit in which it has begun, art-lovers — and all tourists ask for art galleries whatever they ask for at home — will go to Sarnia to see the best Canadians as they go in Switzerland to Davos to see the Segantinis. The importance of what is happening in Sarnia is hard to exaggerate for those who care for things of the Canadian mind. As our reviewer in this issue says, "We seem to have the painters", and yet they have remained unknown hitherto to the country at large. Sarnia is the breach in the line. If it is followed, as it can hardly fail to be, by other small cities the credit of solving the problem of Canadian art for Canadians will go to the small cities and not to the big ones. Sarnia has been the first city to show that civic pride can be enlisted in this admirable cause. We can only say, "Go on and prosper".
Ānnotation
- *. ↑ Herbert Sidney Palmer’s “Sawing Logs,” J.W. Beatty’s “Winter Scene (Near Toronto)” and A.Y. Jackson’s “Fall in Lower Canada.” from http://www.theobserver.ca/2012/08/03/new-art-gallery-culmination-of-a-dream