always upon certain things. The whole department tends to take on this special colouring. The student, quick to save himself time and trouble, learns only the professor's views, knowing that he will be examined along these lines. If on the other hand a teacher from a totally different school is introduced the student finds it necessary to broaden his reading. The junior teaching staff sees evidence of this because when a new extern examiner is appointed the candidates, always on the outlook for saving time and trouble, at once make enquiries as to the special fads and foibles of the new man. This may be taken as "giving the show away," only a few more facts having to be added to the stock in trade of the examinee; but in the end it certainly results in the man getting a broader view of his subject.

However, the main arguments to my mind for the adoption of the colleague examiner are to be found not in the increased efficiency and fairness of the examining but in the indirect results which it has on the university itself and on university politics. When the extern examiner, commonly the head of a department in another school, comes up to fulfil his duties, as a rule he stays as guest with his co-examiner; in any case the two spend a number of hours, possibly days, together. In the case of the scientific subjects they go over the laboratories and museums, selecting material for the practical examinations, and they chat over methods of teaching, preparation of specimens, etc., etc. I may frankly say that I have never gone away from a department in which I have been examiner (and I have examined in some six or eight centres outside my own school) without taking with me some piece of useful information which has been of value in my teaching or other work.

But colleague examining has a wider importance—it cements the friendship of the various universities. Not only are the corresponding departments linked by friendship and co-operation, but owing to opportunities of meeting men working in other lines the staffs of the universities come to know each other well. Thus the way is prepared for a common policy when great matters have to be decided upon.

Colleague examining has been in existence for many

decades in the old country. It is there that the author's experience has been obtained. To a certain extent it exists in Canada, e.g. in the case of the Dominion Medical Examining Board. But as far as Canadian Universities are concerned it is non-existent and there is no valid reason why this should be so. To be sure the distance between the various educational centres is considerable; but it is not too great and the author in the short time he has been in Canada has realized that the Universities of the Dominion need all the cementing they can get. Much more might be done for higher education if there was more co-operation and collaboration. Colleague examining would go a long way to secure this.

Pathological Laboratory,
Queen's University.

J. MILLER.

ANXIOUS MOMENTS IN FRONTIER HISTORY*

I

HAVE gladly accepted the invitation of the New York State Historical Society to take part in its proceedings. Any Canadian in a public position to-day who should refuse an invitation to say something regarding the co-operative spirit between Canada and the United States, as promoted by historical study, would fail in a duty. The story of the relationship for a century past between the United States and Canada is one of which both countries may well be proud. These three thousand miles of frontier, unguarded by soldier or war vessel, are themselves the best of all witnesses to the determination on each side that international complications shall be avoided. The association between Canada and the United States has, however, been even more intimate since the outbreak of the Great War than it was before. Canada now stands more or less in the position of being the interpreter of the Old World to the New. It would be foolish to deny that the possibilities of trouble between Great Britain and the United States are always present. We know that these two great Powers hold the peace of the world in their hands. But, for international purposes, it is no advantage that we talk the same language. We understand too quickly each what the other is saying. Where there is such swiftness of apprehension the interpreter, who may likewise be the diplomat, has no time in which to work. There are journalists on either side who are only too anxious to fish in troubled waters. Not for many days has anything more significant with regard to the difference between the two peoples been written than the letters of the late Mr. Page to President Wilson. Mr. Page may be ranked high in that great succession which has occupied the Embassy in London. He was "one hundred per cent. American," but he understood the Englishman, and he knew the situation well enough to appreciate elements in it which, without sympathy, might only have been the objects of criticism.

In Canada we stand, so to speak, midway between the United States and Great Britain. We are passionately loyal

*An address delivered before the New York State Historical Society, 3rd October, 1921.

to our flag, but that does not mean that we refrain occasionally from having our laugh at the standard-bearer. And on the other hand, while our business and our educational interests may be increasingly affected by your Republican influence, we claim the right of being dispassionate critics of your institutions, a position which is not unfitting to those upon whom there blow the chilling winds from Hudson Bay. To us in Canada the Englishman is often almost as great a problem as he is to you. We wonder at his self-possession, and we are sometimes estranged by the relationship which he takes for granted must exist between the Canadian citizen and the manners and customs of the Red Indian. But we knew him in war to be a very gallant gentleman, "buxom, blythe, and debonair." We loved his quietness and lack of self-assertiveness. As Canadians, we were embarrassed by the amount of attention that our military affairs received, while we thought of English county battalions, which never found their name in a newspaper report. At the same time, we, as your neighbours, are able to appreciate you in a way that can hardly be expected of an older civilization. Our manufacturing enterprises are in method closely related to your own. On a great Continent, such as this, education must always be more or less of a unity. We are striving as you are to form a native art, a thing that shall not be merely French and derivative. We hope eventually to develope a native music. You are no more foreigners to us than we are to the citizens of Great Britain. For these reasons then a Canadian may be allowed to speak to the New York State Historical Association of relationships existing between the Dominion and the Republic with a directness that you might be prepared to resent in one but lately come across the seas.

To-day, therefore, I should like to address myself to certain aspects of the frontier problem. The commonplace that a frontier always is a potential danger is illustrated afresh by the different attitudes taken up by France and Great Britain in relation to Germany. You can see, in British diplomacy, willingness to allow Germany again to get upon her feet. Great Britain is convinced that the world can never again recover itself so long as the Central Powers of Europe are bound in insolvency. But France, with her long frontier bordering

upon Germany, has a different accent in her speech. She has the memory of 1870. She has the ruined North-East. She has her stationary population over against the prolific Teuton. Above all things, she has the fear that the next generation may suffer another leap on the part of the Germanic peoples. The strip of water that we call the English Channel makes all the difference to the national attitude. Mark Pattison's cynical view is that a man's worst vexations come from his own relations, but even relations are tolerable if they live far enough away. And so it is with countries, however deep be the essential goodwill that they bear one to another. Near neighborhood is the parent of strife. The most creditable thing in the relationship of the United States and Canada has been the century of unbroken peace, but the lessons to be drawn from that long period may be useful when we think of the prospects of to-morrow.

In the final delimitation of boundaries one great source of trouble has been removed, but that delimitation has not been reached without the gravest anxiety on both sides. In the debates regarding the Maine boundary and the Territory of Oregon the result was distinctly to the benefit of the United States. I do not say that in these discussions we were out-generaled. I do say, however, that the Old Country view of its colonies eighty years ago was not one likely to put Canada in a favourable position when a bargain had to be made. In the 'thirties and the 'forties of last century it had come to be accepted almost as an axiom that the Canadas would eventually be absorbed in the United States. What had happened in 1776 was likely again to happen some decades later, only it was felt that the change would come about without any armed struggle. Canada, too, in these boundary discussions, suffered from an ignorance, without boundary, on the part of English administrators of colonial affairs. Even now the Ashburton Treaty is a sore subject in Canada. And yet Canadians ought to remind themselves that in 1835 Palmerston was offered and refused a settlement by President Jackson, a settlement infinitely more favourable than that which was arrived at only a few years later through the Ashburton Treaty. The issue, as an historical issue, is now dead and buried. The question that will keep that dispute alive with those