858  THE  CANADIAN  ANNUAL  REVIEW

It  is  true  that  the  development  of  Canada  could  never  have
reached  its  present  stage  but  for  moneys  borrowed  abroad,  and,
therefore,  Canada  is  grateful,  first,  to  Great  Britain,  and  secondly,
to  the  United  States  for  the  help  they  have  thus  contributed  to  the
remarkable  progress  which  our  country  has  made,  particularly
during  the  past  twenty  years.  It  is,  however,  equally  true  that
our  misuse  of  borrowed  money  is  in  great  measure  responsible  for
some  of  the  chief  evils  that  have  come  upon  us.  I  refer  especially
to  the  inflation  which  before  the  war  started  the  increase  in  the  cost
of  living,  and  to  the  creation  of  debt  unrepresented  by  productive
investment.  Now  that  the  inflow  of  money  is  suspended,  we  must
pull  ourselves  together,  practice  economy,  till  the  soil,  produce  to
a  greater  extent  the  manufactured  foods  we  require  for  our  own  use,
until  in  the  fullness  of  time  we  emerge  a  wiser  and  a  better  people
in  a  sounder  economic  position.  Having  learned  our  lesson,  this
is  clearly  no  time  for  us  to  brood  over  the  errors  of  the  past  score  of
years,  but  rather  to  take  stock  of  our  resources  and  with  stout  hearts
to  set  about  the  work  of  conservation  and  rehabilitation.
At  the  beginning  of  this  Armageddon,  England  admittedly
made  mistakes  that  would  have  demoralized  any  other  nation.
