Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 142, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1918 — “FEW ACRES OF SNOW’’ IS NOW GREAT NATION. [ARTICLE]

“FEW ACRES OF SNOW’’ IS NOW GREAT NATION.

French King’s Estimate of Canada Was Contemptuous. It is now more than a century and a half since Louis XV of France signed over to Great Britain the Dominion of Canada with the light remark: “Oh, well; it’s only a few acres of snow.” One cannot help wondering what his thoughts would have been could he have had a vision of the Canada of today and the part she is playing as an alley of his countrymen of the twentieth century. Out of a population of some seven and a half millions Canada has given 440,000 fighting men to the war. At the end of last year war orders totalling $1,095,000,000*had been placed with her, while this year’s munitions orders are pxpected to exceed $700,000,000—0r about SIOO for every man, woman and child. At the beginning of this year 630 factories were working on munition contracts, the country’s output being now more than that of any European nation except Germany before the war. Wooden ships, steel ships and submarines are being turned out, and on this account and that the imperial munitions' board is spending annually more than two and a- half times as much as the federal government Spends in a normal year. Anxious European allies await the grain and flour of the Canadian prairies as eagerly as ever the populace of ancient Rome looked for the corn ships from Sicily and Egypt. And if the province of Alberta alone were cultivated on the same intensive scale prevailing in pre-war Belgium it would support an agricultural population of fifty million —or half the entire population of the United States.—From “Canada's Troubles and Triumphs,” by Harry C. Douglas, in the American Review of Reviews.