1914-01-05 Khan Book review

In his column in the Hamilton Herald, mailed in from his home just outside of Rockton, the Khan occasionally wrote book reviews and commented on political issues of the day. 

Following is a book review that deals with the international arms race, Canada's contribution to that and the shadow of war which lingered at the edge of consciousness among many people as the year 1914 began.

“Chronicles by the Khan”

Herald  January 5, 1914

“CANADA AND SEA POWER”

        The public has not got the right reason why the naval contribution hangs fire. Most folk think that in some subtle way politics has to do with it. Those who have preached and written against war and exposed the folly of it during the past fifty years in this land are coming into their own. The trees of life which they planted are beginning to fruit. Their branches are beginning to interlock and they are smothering the nettles and the briers and the poison ivy which grow below.

        There hath arisen a king who knows not Joseph. That’s the brutal truth. A king who fails to see why his people should build useless battleships either on shares or for hire. A generation hath arisen to which the very idea of war is repugnant. Now is their chance to get it into the schools. You’ve heard of the little old red schoolhouse? Very well : the only reforms in this country that ever amounted to anything began there.

        I know of no better text book for the common schools than “Canada and Sea Power” by Christopher Wren. This is his pen name. His right name is E. B. Biggar, of the noted family of that ilk, and he was born at Winona, a district which has furnished more than its share of brilliant and useful men and women to our national life. The book is in the best English, and is made luminous by a beautiful enthusiasm.

        Mr. Biggar considers his subject from three aspects : first, the economic or industrial; second, the political or international; and third, the moral and spiritual. Much that he says has been said before by Norman Angell and the noble host of peace evangels in the old days before him. But Mr. Biggar puts it freshly, sometimes, quaintly, but always convincingly. Here is a quotation taken at random :

        “The situation between Canada and Great Britain may be likened to a daughter and mother. If you, a daughter, find that your mother has yielded to the appetite for drink and has become a dissolute woman, are you going to mend matters by joining carousals and becoming a drunkard too ? Would not this double the woes of the family and curse the neighborhood with two drunkards instead of one? Yes; but you reply that no matter how besotted your mother has become, are you to stand by and see her assaulted and beaten? That question may be raised when the assault is made, or afterwards, but not before.”

        In this last sentence, Mr. Biggar unconsciously gives the whole argument for the $35,000,000 naval contribution. If war should break out – should, mark you – and Canada had failed to furnish either ships or money, and the motherland was beaten, it would be altogether too late to consider the question.

        Canadian literature is not made up wholly of our annual crop of Christmas poetry books, good, bad and indifferent. There be Canadians who write well on all the great questions of the day, but few of them are in the same class as the author of “Canada As a Sea Power” a book worth reading.