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68
THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

thoughtful. I believe that of all my friends in Winnipeg the war has slain four out of five.

"In the first-class smoking compartment a Canadian asked: 'What is the compensation to Canada for all her sacrifice?'

"And a British officer growled, 'There is in this world no compensation in sacrifice.":

"Did you refute him?"

"How could I, with eighty per cent of my friends in Winnipeg dead in the war and my own memories of a struggle when as a youth of ten to protect my school-books, snatched from my hand by a little negro girl, I rolled in blood and dirt, for she buried her teeth in my flesh to the cheek-bone, and I carry the scar to-day? What compensation to me or to Canada?"

I had to respond: "I have never forgotten the slow, solemn words of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Old South Meeting-House at Boston, as he drawled forth: 'The Sandwich Islanders have a proverb that the strength of the slain enters into the arm of the conqueror.'

"Was your arm weakened or your fighting soul for right shrunken by your youthful combat? Did I not tell you two years ago that the war had rejuvenated France and raised in her a new soul? Is she not to-day the proud treasure