Growth of Canadian policies in external affairs

IT IS DIFFICULT to generalize accurately about any country, though as a witty Frenchman once said, "All generalizations are untrue, in cluding this one." In contemporary life in the United States for example, illustrations can be found to contradict almost any state ment no matter how moderate or how extreme, whether of good or bad. But it is even more difficult to generalize justly about Canada. Its population is more varied than that of the United States; its pro portion of new arrivals is larger. Its religious divisions are more extensive-although, on the whole, they seem to cause less concern.

Canadians as a people-to generalize-are less single minded than their southern neighbors. They do not so readily see everything in black or white or red. Their own historical figures are not sharply divided, as are the Americans', between the Good Guys and the Bad. They have no George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; no Benedict Arnold or Aaron Burr. Neither do Canadians view the contemporary world in these simple terms of absolute contrast. With regard to the United States, for instance, they admire that country and usually like the individual American, but tend to look askance at some aspects of the public policies of the Republic. Recently they have sometimes been almost terrified by the way in which those policies have been expressed by some of the more bellicose American admirals, generals, and politicians, and by the brink-balancing of the late Mr. Secretary Dulles. (In this fondness for the individual combined with dislike for official policy Canadians are perhaps, so very different from the Americans themselves, who almost unanimously like Ike, but vote robustly against his party and his policies.