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Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3549, 13 June 1912, Page 4

ine unpleasantness that lias arisen between Mr Taft

“We Will Never Forget!”

and Mr Roosevelt has, it appears,

been responsible for startling revelations as to the real intention behind the proposal for reciprocity which the United States made to Canada last year. It will be recalled that, just before the general elections in Canada, it came to be firmly believed in that country that it would be found that if it agreed to the suggested treaty it would be the sorry party ultimately. What tended in some measure to put the people of Canada on their guard was a-.state-ment by Mr Taft in a message to Congress as follows: “Canadians are coming to the parting of the ways. They must soon decide whether they are to regard themselves as isolated permanently from onr markets by a perpetual wall or whether we are to be commercial friends.” But it was Mr Champ-Clark, Speaker-elect of the House of Representatives, who set the people of Canada thinking right hard. “I hope,” he said (in the course of an extraordinary speech just on the eve of th.e Canadian elections) “to see the day when the American flag will float over every square foot of the British -North American possessions clear to the North Pole. . . I have no don'st whatever that the day is not far distant when Great Britain will joyfully see all her North American possessions become part of this Republic.” It is now a matter of history how Canada killed the scheme when it was put to the test of an election by returning a great majority of members pledged against reciprocity! What lias just been so sensationally revealed on the matter is, it will be agreed, particularly interesting in the light of past events. *. Early last year, it seems, Mr Taft wrote to Mr Roosevelt claiming the latter’s support for reciprocity, and explaining why the U.S. Government was advocating it. This is what was said: “It might at first have a tendency to reduce the cost of food somewhat, but it would certainly make our supply-reservoir much greater, and would prevent fluctuations- In the meatime the amount of Canadian products that we would take could produce a current of business between Western Canada and the United States that would make Canada only an adjunct of the United States. It would transfer all Canada’s important business to Chicago and New York, with their bank credits and everything else, and would greatly increase the demand in Canada for our manufactures. I see that this is an argument against Reciprocity used in Canada, and I think it is a good one.” Prom Canadian files just to hand it is evident that the people of Canada are boiling over with indignation over what has come to light. “It furnishes,” says Mr. Foster, the Canadian Minister for Trade, “a remarkable vindication of the course adopted in Canada at the elections. The veiled meaning in the President’s phrase 'the parting of the ways’ has been illuminated beyond all doubt. There can after this be no cavil as to the purpose underlying the Reciprocity .proposals or the reasons for them. Canada was to become only ‘an adjunct of the United States.’ Her business was to go to Chicago and New Fork, with her bank credits and everything else, and lier manufacturing was to be done by that country, and all this for the best of economic and political reasons. The majority of Canadians. either knew or suspected this last September. Now the Empire and the wide world know it. Certainly by this latest full revelation President Taft has added to the obligations which the Canadians are under to him for his nartial revelation

last year. Reciprocity with the United States was dead before, and is noiv for ever buried.” As for the future, it is added, the people of Canada will never forget, but will think Imperially.