in clearness of vision far above these other powers, and Dean Swift has taught us how hard it is to be even an inch higher than our contemporaries. In less than a century France, Spain, Russia were extruded. After a century and a quarter of British diplomacy, Canada is larger in area than the United States. Our southern border is south of the latitude of Rome. To northward we are lost amid the frozen snows. On the east we look out to the old world of Europe, on the west to the still older civilization of the Orient. Fair is our lot; yea, goodly is our heritage. Five minutes' study of an historical Atlas of North America is sufficient to show that in its rigorous form Mr. Ewart's thesis will not hold water.

For an example of Mr. Ewart's method in dealing with these international relations, let us look at a case with which he deals at length in his earlier volume, the Alaska Boundary Award. With great forensic skill he proves conclusively that one of the British Commissioners, Lord Alverstone, the Chief Justice of Great Britain, was guilty of gross bad manners to his Canadian colleagues, bad manners amounting indeed to treachery.. This is an undoubted fact, but a few other facts would also be borne in mind by the impartial historian. The question cannot be profitably discussed without some knowledge of a series of international events going back to the early nineteenth century.

The Alaska Boundary was delimited in 1824-5 by the United States, Great Britain and Russia. There was at the time no thought by any of them of colonization, the only inter

The boundary disputes between Great Britain and the United States have recently been discussed at some length in an article in The Round Table for December, 1913. With much of the article I agree, but it is unfortunate that the author weakens his case by some rather banal praise of Lord Alverstone. "Laborious research and meticulous attention," which in Canada are the attributes of every Railway Mail Clerk, can hardly be so rare in Great Britain that a Chief Justice must be singled out for commendation for possessing them. The author goes on to say "that Lord Alverstone himself had special reasons for acting as he did can hardly admit of doubt," a defence which has been made with equal propriety of every eminent traitor in history. That Lord Alverstone may have found his Canadian colleagues not wholly satisfactory is not unlikely. After his experiences at the Hague Mr. Ewart himself had something to say anent Sir Allen Aylesworth. But their possible breaches of les bienséances are no excuse for Lord Alverstone.

ests involved being those of fur-traders. Russian traders had been gradually creeping down the coast, and as early as 1799 had established a post at Sitka, whence they dealt with the various Indian tribes of the coast. Meanwhile enterprising American traders were coming round the Horn on the same errand. British trade on the other hand centred at Montreal, to which the hardy voyageurs of the N. W. Co. brought their furs by many a winding river and rough portage. At the time of the union of the H. B. C. and the N. W. Co. in 1820-1, there were already posts west of the Rockies, and the outposts of Russia and of Great Britain were coming into unpleasant proximity. In 1821 the question was rendered acute by an overbearing Ukase of the Czar, claiming the whole Pacific coast as far south as 51 N. Lat. and all the ocean for an hundred miles to seaward as territorial waters. The latter claim was especially obnoxious, and for some years complicated negotiations went on at St. Petersburg between the three powers involved. At length the Czar quietly withdrew his claim to sovereignty over the high seas. and no more is heard of this after 1823. In 1824 Russia and the U.S.A. agreed that Russia should claim nothing south of 54.40 and the U.S.A. nothing north of that line. In 1825 Great Britain and Russia came to the same agreement. With regard to all territory north of this and west of the Rockies, it was agreed that south of the point where the 141st degree of W. Long. reached the coast, Russia should have a strip of territory, the inland boundary of which "shall be formed by a line parallel to the windings of the coast" (les sinuosités de la côte), and should follow the crests of the mountains. Should more accurate surveys prove that no mountains could be found corresponding to the words of the treaty, the line was to run not farther inland than ten marine leagues."

For many years it was assumed that these words gave Russia a continuous strip along the Pacific. All British maps subsequent to 1825, such as that drawn up by a Committee of the House of Commons which in 1857 investigated the

This stipulation was inserted at the express desire of George Canning, at the time Foreign Minister, in order to prevent the disputes which were at the time going on about the "highlands" on the border between Quebec, New Brunswick and Maine.

claims of the H. B. C., so represent it. It is so plotted in a Canadian map of the same year. When in 1867 the U. S. A. bought Alaska she published a map of her new possession, giving to herself a continental strip, and no protest was made. by Great Britain, Canada, or British Columbia. In official British Columbia maps of 1884 and 1893, the strip is assigned to the United States. Gradually, however, a feeling grew up in B. C. that a case could be made for giving to Great Britain some of the heads of inlets. The question became urgent when in 1896 gold was discovered in the Yukon, and Canadian miners had to bring in their stores through Dyea and Skagway, American ports at the head of the Lynn Canal. Canada therefore demanded a settlement by arbitration. The U.S. A. was naturally in no hurry but polite pressure on the part of Great Britain finally brought her to accede. In 1903 an agreement was made to submit the question to six international jurists of repute, three chosen by either party. this submission to arbitration of territory which had for thirty years been in her undisputed possession and to which it was thought Russia had given her a valid title, the newspapers of the United States raised a howl, with the result that their government appointed as negotiators three gentlemen, eminent indeed, but with about as much claim to be called impartial as to be called kangaroos. Canada under protest went on with the negotiation, but in a mood of not unnatural suspicion.

At

The question of chief interest to Canada was that of the possession of the heads of inlets, especially of the Lynn Canal. As the case proceeded before the tribunal, it became evident that it was just here that her case was weakest. What had been the evident intention of the negotiators of 1825? To give to Russia the coastal trade north of 54.40 and to Great Britain the inland trade, especially in valley of Mackenzie and its tributaries. The Indian method of trading with the Russians was to go down to the heads of inlets and there await the coming of the white man. One of the chief tribes was the Chilcats, who lived at and about the head of the Lynn Canal. The desire of the negotiators in 1825 could hardly be denied. The Canadian case was based on legal ingenuity, the American on the facts of the time. Thus our negotiators in 1903 were on the point of having to acknowledge defeat on the main issue when the bêtise of Lord Alverstone enabled them to return

But Mr. Ewart's defects of temper and of historical imagination must not blind us to the great service which he is rendering. He rightly and wisely insists that as yet our main business is to unify Canada, still terribly disunited. With the Easterner as often a capitalist as a Canadian, and the Westerner seldom more than a real estate broker or a grain grower, our main business is at home. To the up-building of a sturdy spirit of Canadianism, wide enough to stretch from Atlantic to Pacific, Mr. Ewart is giving of his best without thought of recompense. To a man who has no axe to grind, who neither fears nor flatters in his efforts to sting us into thought, our final word must be a word of praise.

W. L. GRANT.