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Essays and addresses

It is of splendid augury that a great State thinks it fitting to ask to help in the celebration of the Centenary of a battle, citizens of a neighbouring state whose flag suffered there a reverse; and it is of even grander sig- nificance that these citizens accept that invitation with pleasure and, indeed, with eagerness.

You of the State of New York see nothing extraordinary, much less im- proper, in inviting us to rejoice with you in the gladness of your nation; and we, Canadians to the finger-tips, Britons to the last drop of our blood, cordially unite with you in the glory of your inheritance.

For the true significance of this occasion is not the victory and the defeat, but the adumbration of a hun- dred years of peace.

We Canadians naturally and necessarily look at the war of 1 81 2 from a different point of view from that of the AmeriCan Patriotism is cruel, and cannot be expected to be other than unjust.

We probably would not agree as to the real causes of the war, its necessity, the propriety of the means adopted on either side; but we can all agree that those engaged in it proved themselves not unworthy of their high descent, their fighting stock; that on neither side did the actual combatants wish to leave off, but both longed to avenge defeat and to enhance victory, and that it was the sound common sense of the nations at large and their sense of fundamental unity which compelled a cessation of the fratricidal slaughter, useless as it was terrible.