Suddenly there rang out the shrill boatswain’s whistle, and there ensued a vision of crews swarming up the rigging, the loosening of sails, the hoisting of anchors, and then, in a few moments, the stately fleet steamed majestically down past the city and out to sea. For “war” had been declared, and the fleet which thus went out to meet the enemy, will itself be the “enemy” on its return, and a fierce bombardment be expected unless the pretence that it is blown to fragments by submarines and torpedoes be successful. Meanwhile, the military authorities at the citadel were on the qui vive. The militia was called out, the garrison were at their guns or at the look-out, the submarine and torpedo engineers were busy laying surface mines and inspecting sunken mines and booms. The tension continued through that day and the ensuing night, until at daybreak the booming of cannon on the York Redoubt announces the approach of the enemy and the beginning of the attack. In all this and the attendant military reviews and sham-fights the whole of Halifax participated, and the glory of the manœuvres ended in a ball at Government House.

A change has come over the Imperial aspect of the Province since the Dominion Government took over the naval and military defences of Halifax from the Mother Country. I found Halifax, with its citadel crowned slopes, its wooden houses, its tree-lined avenues bathed in glowing summer sunshine, but Haligonian society with no sunshine in its heart. “Where are the tars of yester-year?” the belles of Halifax seemed to be saying. “Where are the gallant captains, commanders, lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, and middies with whom we waltzed, and flirted, and played tennis, and acted and boated within the North-west arm?” I was prepared for this, but not for a similar complaint with regard to the British Army. For on parade, at church, at the Halifax club, were not the regulation uniforms denoting the British officer as much in evidence as ever? “Oh, those!” was the supercilious rejoinder of one fair damsel, lying back in a canoe on the shores of Bedford Basin; “they don’t count. They’re Canadians.”

To me these officers in their spick-and-span khaki, touched with scarlet, were indistinguishable from the Simon-pure insular breed. But trust a fair Haligonian to know the difference. I was reminded of the saying of a recent Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, who did not seem very effusive in his welcome of one who wore his Majesty’s uniform, just arrived at Government House. “I’m sorry the fellow was offended; but nobody interests me who reaches Nova Scotia by land.”

And, indeed, it is only recently that many Nova Scotians have taken kindly to the term Canadian as applied to themselves, resembling in this respect the British Columbians of the pre-Confederation and ultra-conservative school.

It certainly has made a difference, perhaps only temporary, to the tone of Halifax society this substitution of a Canadian for the old Imperial establishment. Nor is the idea of a Canadian Navy taken seriously in these social circles. One had only to mention the Niobe and the Rainbow to excite a smile. The officers may turn out to be good fellows, but they will need all their tact, good looks, and gallantry to overcome the prejudice the fair Haligonians feel towards them as delegates from Ottawa instead of from the British Admiralty. As for the military, I heard many complaints as to how their men had received their appointments at Ottawa, but none as to how they do their work. And what is better still, they have earned the respect of the British “Tommies,” who still form 90 per cent. of the garrison, better paid and better fed than they were under the Imperial régime. And yet such pay and feeding hardly serves to attract the native-born, very few of whom are ready to enlist, so that the garrison is conspicuously undermanned.

But Halifax is a charming place to live in for all that. It has so long been a naval port and a garrison town, that the family ties between its people and those of England continue to be very numerous. Commercial relations between the two countries have grown to such an extent that the natives have now all that is admirable in English business circles and polite society. A visitor, if given the entrée of the best society, must perforce carry away the most kindly recollections of his visit. Whatever his nationality, few places will make more strenuous efforts to give him the greatest enjoyment. And the attractions for the visitor are many, both in and around the town. A favourite drive is along the Point Pleasant Road and up the North-west Arm. A most attractive place is this North-west Arm, and the drive, especially when continued past Melville Island and as far as the Dingle, is a most enjoyable one.

Attending divine service on the day following my arrival, I tried to listen to the reverend gentleman expatiating in a patriarchal, and, I thought, somewhat ungallant way on the duties of women. My eye roved over the interior of the sacred edifice, which is, in many ways, the most interesting in Canada. One of the very first undertakings of the infant colony a century and a half ago was to provide themselves with a place of worship, and in the original plan of the town one square was reserved for a site. They applied to the British Government, who referred it to Lord Halifax, who attended service at St. Peter’s, Vere Street, Piccadilly. His lordship sought out the architect of St. Peter’s, got the plans, and sent them out to Nova Scotia. There the frame and other materials were imported from Boston, and in less than a year the colonists were attending service within an exact replica of the London church, which they named St. Paul’s. For many years it was used by successive bishops as a cathedral, including both the Inglises, father and grandfather of Sir John Inglis of Lucknow. Richer than any other church in Canada is St. Paul’s in mural tablets, and as our eye sweeps the four walls it encounters many historic names. One of these is that of Governor John Parr, the friend and comrade of Wolfe.

I wish I could speak in praise of Halifax’s new cathedral, to which reference will be found elsewhere in these pages. I wish I could plead that as I saw it, merely in process of construction, it would be impossible to render judgment upon it. For to me the whole principle upon which such structures are built is a wrong one. Even the architects have been impelled to issue a kind of manifesto, in which the following interesting statement occurs:—

“Perhaps the greatest disadvantage we of the western world are compelled to undergo in our buildings, in the vast majority of cases at any rate, is the sordid meanness or cheap tawdriness of the surroundings. This condition is so marked in certain portions of America as to quite dishearten the conscientious architect at the very inception of his task. Many noble buildings there are such as would become beautiful situations abroad that here seem contemptible, at odds with their environment.”

It is true they hasten to disclaim such surroundings for Halifax, but go on to say—

“Amid such surroundings any attempt at such glittering splendours as are gathered in, say, the Basilica of Saint Mark at Venice, or such sombre glories of carving and metal as are everywhere present in the cathedral of the debonair city of Seville, would be wholly out of place. Even the unruffled sunlit calm of the English cathedrals may hardly be attempted, much less attained. The city is a northern one, the land one of long winters and deep snows, and over all blows the keen air of the salt sea, that singles out each unprotected bit of masonry, every weak cranny of construction, for attack. Only the hardest and most enduring of materials can undergo such a searching test as the old builders of the town well knew, and much that gives charm to similar buildings of the old world must be frankly dispensed with; the parapets for one, that in every period of the Gothic style as built abroad, heavy and castellated in early work, pieced and lace-like in later times, are almost an integral feature, for these would form pockets for great piles of drifted snow that melting in the spring would surely creep up and into the slates and woodwork of the roof. And the heavy floors of irregular flags that so charm the traveller abroad, must perforce be abandoned, for these should rest upon solid earth, and only in a land where the forces of frost are but puny can this be done, while the same force it is that forbids the employment well, of other architectural details that involve care, labour, and expense. I have never heard a more ingenious and disingenuous defence of flimsiness, the whole truth being that Halifax would have liked a first-rate cathedral, but did not like to spend the requisite sum upon it. If these architects had gone to Russia and Northern Germany, not to mention Old Scotland, I dare say they would find that a cold climate is not altogether antagonistic to sound and even elaborate masonry and even to permanence. The whole point is contained in their conclusion, in which it is confessed:

“The cost of the mediæval cathedrals was lightly met by the people of the past, but the funds which would be incurred in erecting even such a lifeless and soulless replica as we are only capable of to-day, would be far beyond the capacity of any diocese to gather together.”

So much for the great cathedral of Halifax!

Our fellow-citizens in the densely-settled heart of the Empire, you are just beginning to realise the century-old ideals of those in the outer marches. You are just beginning to see the significance of Canadian loyalty—regarded as loyalty to the race, “Because,” as Mr. Kipling once wrote to a friend of mine, a Newfoundlander, “the Empire is Us—We ourselves: and for the white man to explain that he is loyal is almost as unnecessary as for a respectable woman to volunteer the fact that she is chaste.”