British Columbia has some interests and ideas which are not shared by the Prairie Provinces; the desires of the western and eastern ends of the prairie are not always the same; the West as a whole has many discussions with the East as a whole, just as various parts of the East have still great differences among themselves. For that matter, two cities or two districts in the same Province, either East or West, often have differences, sometimes petty and sometimes grave. But every difference between district and district, Province and Province, East and West, however great it seems when we think of our individual interests alone, is small in comparison with the greater interests, the nobler duties, which unite us all. No difference can be allowed to interfere for a moment with the supreme and sacred duty of Union. And every difference can be settled, with difficulty or with ease according as we are careless or enthusiastic in the devotion of thought, study, ingenuity and unselfish good-will, to perfecting ourselves in the essential art of living together.
A greater union is ours to-day, greater even than the union of all our Provinces in one Dominion. We may be a long way yet from “the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World”; but we must set our faces steadily in that direction, for the nations of the world cannot go on jostling and “daring” each other without disaster. No nation can ever again be absolutely “independent” of the rest, even if that were a high ideal, and not, as it is, a low one. The nations must learn the art of living and working together. Recognizing others’ interests as well as their own, they must join to study and perfect arrangements which will make the idea of war between them as absurd as it would be to-day between England and Scotland, Kansas and Iowa, Alberta and Saskatchewan, or Canada and Australia.
We have our feet securely now on the first well-tested step of the ladder. We have the priceless possession of a united commonwealth of self-governing nations which we call the British Empire; and what we have we shall hold. No force of reaction and dissension can rob us of that firm footing and separate us from our sister-nations, unless we fall asleep. We are trying a second step, the League of Nations, and hope it will bear; we must do our best to strengthen it; but meanwhile we have our own British league of nations, and that has stood the test of the hardest knocks in history.