He still smiled, with an aloofness in which there was a beam of sweetness. "I had no idea that you were such a little rebel."
"I'm not a rebel. I'm loyal to the King. That is, I'm loyal to the great Anglo-Saxon ideal of which the King is the symbol--and I suppose he's as good a symbol as any other, especially as he's already there. The English are only partly Anglo-Saxon. 'Saxon and Norman and Dane are they'--didn't Tennyson say that? Well, there's a lot that's Norman, and a lot that's Dane, and a lot that's Scotch and Irish and rag-tag in them. But they're saved by the pure Anglo-Saxon ideal in so far as they hold to it--just as you'll be, with all your mixed bloods--and just as we shall be ourselves. It's like salt in the meat, it's like grace in the Christian religion--it's the thing that saves, and I'm loyal to that. My father used to say that it's the fact that English and Canadians and Australians are all devoted to the same principle that holds us together as an Empire, and not the subservience of distant lands to a Parliament sitting at Westminster. And so it is. We don't always like each other; but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that we should betray the fact that we don't like each other to outsiders--and so give them a handle against us."
"You mean that J. Howard should be in a position to side with the English in looking down on you as a Canadian?"
"Yes, and that the English should give him that position. He's an American and an enemy--every American is an enemy to England _au fond_. Oh yes, he is! You needn't deny it! It's something fundamental, deeper down than anything you understand. Even those of you who like England are hostile to her at heart and would be glad to see her in trouble. So, I say, he's an American and an enemy, and yet they hand me, their child and their friend, over to him to be trampled on. He's had opportunities of judging how Canadians are regarded in England, he says--and he assures me it's nothing to be proud of. That's it. I've had opportunities too--and I have to admit that he's right. Don't you see? That's what enrages me. As far as their liking us and our not liking them is concerned, why, it's all in the family. So long as it's kept in the family it's like the pick that Louise and Vic have always had on me. I'm the youngest and the plainest--"