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Canada sent Sir Alexander Campbell, lieutenant-governor of Ontario, and Mr, later Sir Sandford, Fleming, the apostle of an All-Red Pacific cable. Lord Salisbury, in opening the proceedings, referred to the three lines upon which progress might be made. The German Empire evidently suggested the ideas which he and others had in mind.
All-red routes of round-the-globe steam ships were established; all-red round-the-world cables were laid. The quickened pulse was Canada's passing from hobble-de-hoy adolescence with a chip on the shoulder and a tremor in the throat to big strong, silent, self-confident manhood. John Bull is a curious and dour foster father in some of his moods.
Cape Town and Durban must have been for these Canadian lads a new world only previously envisaged by them, in the big all-red map that hangs on the walls of Canadian schools, A little difficult at first, apt to chafe at the restrictions that, though perhaps not necessary for themselves in particular, were yet essential in preserving discipline in the whole mixed unit, rather inclined to resent certain phases of soldier life.
The glitter and parade of the Jubilee festivities soon gave way to a sterner phase of empire. For years South Africa had been in ferment owing to the conflicting interests of narrow, fanatical, often corrupt Boer leaders, greedy Anglo-Jewish mining magnates, and British statesmen-Rhodes, Milner, Chamberlain dominated by the imperial idea and eager for an "all-red" South Africa.
Sir Wilfrid laid more stress upon the proposal for an All-Red line of steamers for faster and better service on the Atlantic and on the Pacific, with joint subsidies, urging that the best way to bind the Empire together was to facilitate intercourse.
Dr Ambrose was also the author of a measure empowering the County Councils to acquire waste lands for reclamation. He was one of the pioneers of the Industrial Development Movement and wrote and lectured largely on the subject. He was, with the late Bishop Clancy, prominent in promoting "the All-Red Route," which would have given Ireland a great terminal port on its western coast at Blacksod Bay.
But more was needed than patriotic sentiment. All-red speeches might adorn a banquet or win an election, but facts or fictions as to freight and dividends were needed to beguile the capital from investors' pockets. The hope of securing for the Canadian provinces the trade and traffic of the golden West was, in early years as in late, much the strongest factor in railway policy.
A flying machine with a safe non-stop range of 1500 miles is still a long way off. It may indeed be permanently impracticable because there seems to be an upward limit to the size of an aeroplane engine. And now will the reader take the map of the world and study the air routes from London to the rest of the empire? He will find them perplexing if he wants them to be "All-Red."
So in spite of the funny man's jokes about a Hudson Bay route being "iron tonic for the cows," Canada launched on another all-red, to-the-sea railroad project. What of the road itself? I camped in the region a few years ago when the venture was still in air.
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