This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Feb. 24, 1940.
The seasoned traveller across the aisle was carrying on a lively conversation with a good-looking young man, who appeared to agree with everything she said. She thought Great Britain should not try to force her way of life on Europe.
She should learn to sit back and observe, as the United States is doing. She was foolish to appoint herself to the position of policeman of the world. Europe’s quarrels are too old for settlement — large countries have always gobbled up small countries, and always will. It is the law of life, and the little European countries would be just as well off under German or Russian rule.
Then she turned her attention to Canada, and said Canada was making a big mistake in becoming too civilized with good roads and fine hotels. Too much like the United States. If Canada would remain backward and rustic and primitive, American tourists would come in flocks to get away from the ringing of bells and the whirring of wheels. That would be Canadians’ best cue if they were wise enough to see it.
She had been keenly disappointed in Victoria. It wasn’t nearly as old as she expected. There was nothing remarkable about the stores, they were really quite modern and so were the houses. She had seen quite well-dressed people on the streets, and the hotels were as good as any she had ever seen. She had taken this trip through Canada to get material for a book, but there was simply nothing to write about. Canada was neither one thing nor the other.
This was the discouraging word the seasoned traveller threw off as we travelled through the mountains. The sun shone down in icy splendour on the snowy mountain peaks. Evergreens, slim, tall and straight, in their endless ranks which no man could number, seemed to march beside us hour after hour. And the rivers, in spite of frost and snow, ran clear in places, breaking their fetters in the age-old quest for freedom.
It was a perfect winter day in that magnificent setting. Columns of smoke rose straight into the air from the section houses and every little cabin. Children and dogs were playing on the hillsides, and yet the lady who had been to Finland last year and Honolulu the year before, and talked about Rome and Naples just as you and I would speak of Saskatoon and Regina, saw nothing in Canada that was worthy of her attention.
I wanted to tell her that even if she didn’t write about our country, we would probably be able to get along without her, for Canada has many writers, known and unknown. I wanted to tell her that there are better manuscripts lying in dark places, in attics and bureau drawers, than she would be likely to write, for literature depends on what the writers feel and not altogether on what they say.
The whole theme of literature must be the struggle of the soul of man toward liberty, and that, I judge by her conversation, had escaped her when she saw it face to face. Every living thing struggles upward, writing its own prose and its own poetry.
The river breaks through the ice; the seed that falls on the rock reaches down its roots to find the soil so it can lift the stalk toward the sun. I thought of these things as I listened to her babbling on. She was the perfect apostle of inertia.
I tried not to let her darken my day. Looking up a steep mountainside, covered with trees, I could see, by getting close to the window, the deep blue sky shining through, as blue as a mountain lake. No wonder the astrologists tell us that blue is the colour of healing. I got a Christmas card this year with just this scene on it — lordly evergreens stippled with snow, standing straight and tall, and behind them the blue of the sky.
I would have liked to point this out to the traveller had I thought she could see it, but she was busy with India at that moment and telling the amiable young man just how Great Britain was falling there. She calmly foretold the breaking up of the British Empire and said she could see that Canada was half-hearted about the war. She had not seen a single parade of soldiers on the streets of Victoria, nor heard a band.
It was at that point that the silent young man came to life and began to defend his country. He told her about the war loan that was 25 per cent oversubscribed in the first three days. He told her this was not a war of flag-waving or band-playing. It was a grim business, a heartbreaking business, but it had not been undertaken lightly and was not carried on to impress anyone, even visitors.
He spoke with the merest trace of an accent, and as his voice grew louder some of the people in the car came closer to listen.
“You’re wrong about Europe,” he said, “and the little countries. They value their liberty more than you think. Life to them is not just eating and drinking and making a living. They love their country because they and their fathers and grandfathers have worked for it, fought for it, and many of them have died for it.”
“You wouldn’t understand this. You probably have never done anything for your country. My father and mother came from Finland when I was three years old and I know exactly how the Finns feel. Germany and Russia want to enslave the smaller countries, kill their leaders, take away all their liberties, crush their independence and make serfs of the people who are left.
“Great Britain and France and Canada understand this, and that is why we are fighting. This is everybody’s war but some people have not found that out yet. Evidently, you haven’t.”
He got up suddenly and walked out of the car. No one spoke when he was gone. The air crackled with something tense and terrible — something that made me proud and yet indefinitely sad. She was face to face with a new power, a power she had denied, but I do not know whether she recognized it or not.
There is no more to tell. There they were, two well-defined elements in the revolution which is going on today all around us. The selfish, indolent, shallow observer, repeating parrot-phrases and spreading defeatism; the gallant young Finn on his way to fight for his country and for civilization. She, one of the causes of this disease from which the world is suffering; he, one of its victims.
When will this law of the jungle end? It will end when men and women in all countries will begin, as some are already doing, to take responsibility for causes instead of symptoms.
Human nature must be changed. When people tell us that can’t be done, what they mean is that they are not ready to change their part of it.