Nor was it material unity alone that was attained; in
the utterances of the head of the Republic the highest
aspirations of Canadians for the future ordering of the world
found incomparable expression.
Canada had done what she could to assure the triumph of right in
the war. Not less did she believe that she had a contribution to
make toward that new ordering of the world after the war which
alone could compensate her for the blood and treasure she had
spent. It would be her mission to bind together in friendship and
common aspirations the two larger English-speaking states, with
one of which she was linked by history and with the other by
geography. To the world in general Canada had to offer that
achievement of difference in unity, that reconciliation of
liberty with peace and order, which the British Empire was
struggling to attain along paths in which the Dominion had been
the chief pioneer. "In the British Commonwealth of Nations,"
declared General Smuts, "this transition from the old legalistic
idea of political sovereignty based on force to the new social
idea of constitutional freedom based on consent, has been
gradually evolving for more than a century. And the elements of
the future world government, which will no longer rest on the
imperial ideas adopted from the Roman law, are already in
operation in our Commonwealth of Nations and will rapidly develop
in the near future.
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