It is because the existing arrangements between London and the several Dominion capitals don't suit logicians that they do suit experienced statesmen pretty well. Because these institutions can be patched as occasion may require, they are retained for patching on occasion. Because the loose, go-as-you-please organization of the so-called "empire" has revealed almost incredible unity of sentiment and purpose, practiced statesmen regard it as a prodigious success. They are mighty shy of affiliating with any of the well-meaning doctrinaires who have been explaining any time within the last century that the system is essentially incoherent and absurd and urgently needs profound change with doctrinaire improvements.
Sir Robert Borden, for instance. Some days ago he most amiably gave me a little private talk on these matters, of course on the tacit understanding that he was not to be "interviewed" as for close reporting of his informal sentences. He was, by the way, apparently in robust health, as if, like Mr. Asquith, of a temperament to flourish under the heaviest responsibilities ever laid on a Prime Minister in his own country. No statesman could be of aspect and utterance less hurried, nor more pleasant, lucid, cautious, disposed to give a friendly caller large and accurate information briefly, while disclosing nothing at variance with or unfindable in his published speeches. Of some of them he repeated apposite slices; to others he referred for further enlightenment as to his views on imperial federation. Really he was neither secretive nor newly informative. The Premier of Canada at any time is governed, much as I have endeavored to show how the electors are, by that natural, instinctive course of the general loyal Canadian mind, which constitutes "the situation" and controls Governmental proceedings on behalf of the public.
Well meaning persons who allege Sir Robert to have either favored or disfavored imperial federation have been inaccurate. Precisely what imperial federation may be nobody knows, for the simple and sufficient reason that nobody has ever sketched or elaborated a scheme in that regard which appeared or appears desirable as a change from the all-compelling situation. What has never been adopted as desirable cannot be termed practicable in statesmen's language. To declare an untried scheme impracticable might be an error of rashness.