Even the great and disastrous war that began in August, 1914, will not be wholly disastrous, or even antagonistic, to the future of Canada. Great trade facilities will be opened between Russia and Canada. Vast numbers of British soldiers who have left their industrial occupations for the front will have so accustomed and acclimatised themselves to open air and exposure that they will look for life in the open rather than to any return to shops or manufactories. Canada confidently anticipates at least a million settlers from among these ranks. They would be particularly qualified for the order of life required for the hardy pioneer of that North-West defined by Mr. Watson Griffin as lying north of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, and stretching eastward to Hudson Bay and northward to the Arctic Ocean. They would be prepared to bring to this rigorous and exacting part of the country a hardy vigour and invincible courage in the conquering of nature in a degree quite in excess of that now demanded in the more settled regions. The young and eminently enterprising western Provinces have already made the establishment of { 312} Winnipeg as one of the greatest wheat markets in the world an accomplished fact. "In 1904," asserts a New York financial journal, "they raised fifty-eight million bushels of wheat in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta; five years later the yield was one hundred and fifty million bushels, and in 1913 the crop approximated to two hundred millions of bushels of wheat. At this rate of progress," continued this journal, "Canada must soon pass France and India, and stand third in the line of wheat producers. Ultimately she will dispute with Russia and the United States for the first position. Wheat has been the pioneer of our development, and undoubtedly it will prove the same with Canada.... No vivid imagination is needed to see what the future development of Canada means to the people of the United States."
That the great problem of food for the people of Europe will largely devolve on Canada and the States for many years after the end of the war is quite evident.
The Minister of Public Works, the Honourable Robert Rogers, in an interview with a press representative, said not long ago: