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I have little to add to this discussion for the simple reason that my colleague, Dr. Coats, has said much of what I wanted to say, said it more interestingly, with a Dorothy Dix touch which I, in my academic restraint, cannot give, and also said it with more authority because of his long and distinguished public service. I can do little more than underscore a few broad propositions.My first proposition is an emphasis upon the basic fact that public administration is the administration of the state, and not simply the administration of individual departments of government. It has to deal with the management of the state in its aggregated activities, and hence broadly with the whole subtle art of government. The tone of that management never depends simply upon what industrious and zealous civil servants in their offices may do, or how they may do it, but, among other things, upon the effective organization of parliamentary committees, the conscience and intelligence of their members, the modes of planning parliamentary work, and even the quality of discussion within the conclaves of parties, or the antics and verbal orgies of the demagogue in public debate. The genuine and profitable study of public administration in a democratic state cannot be narrower than the broad frame of government, if we are to appreciate duly the ultimate end sought—the competent management of the state. One phase of national government, designated by text-book writers as the administrative, cannot logically or wisely be isolated from other phases which in turn determine its character. To the institutions of general government must be applied those principles and axioms concerning organization which Henri Fayol, Major Urwick, Mary Follett, and many others, with varying wisdom and clarity, have done much to elaborate.

The life of the overseas Dominions in the past generation has been dominated by the related movements of democracy and nationalism. Here my concern is with a general and comparative treatment of the nature of Dominion nationalism and its influence on the relations of the Dominions to the outer world.In some important and obvious respects nationality within all the Dominions has common features: it is a growth among immigrant peoples not politically severed entirely from the parent state, and not devoid of loyalty to the parent stock; it is mainly rooted in a culture derived from an older land, and draws inspiration from no wells of a past distinctive only to itself; it cannot in the nature of things nurture the sentiment of "we alone," and it has not attempted to do so; it is expressed principally in a language common to two powerful world states, one of which has had a great literature for many centuries, and hence it has to be content only with such idioms of speech as local environment slowly brings. In all cases this Dominion nationality has a short history with the emotional shallowness of such. Its spirit is not steeped in the legendary glories of country and town. Unlike the small and intense nationalities of Europe, including the Irish, it rests its claims upon present achievements and future hopes rather than on reference to an epic past, or the tale of oppression suffered at the hands of another. In every Dominion it was both inspired by and expressed in the struggle of people for self-government and democracy, and the political institutions arid ideologies to which it is wedded have a common ancestry. It has arisen within Communities which grew big and prosperous quickly, thanks to a conjuncture of highly favourable world circumstances, notably the rapid industrialization which brought speedy benefit to frontier countries with rich natural resources and abundant land, countries linked to the heart of industrialism and world trade in the period, the British Islands. Related intimately to this circumstance was the Pax Britannica, or long era of relative peace secured by British sea power, which controlled the exits and entrances to the strategic seas and enabled the flow of people and capital, the unhampered occupation of wide territories, and the pursuit of the arts of peace to absorb these frontier communities, and thus achieve that sense of community expressed in their nationality.

This brief article is concerned with the steps taken by the Dominion government to re-establish in civil life those who enter the armed forces of Canada, and to prepare economic and social policies for the post-war period. Provinces and municipalities also have obviously a role to play in reconstruction. I make no attempt here to examine that role, or to evaluate such extremely fragmentary schemes as may already be formulated.The first responsibility of the Dominion government regarding reconstruction is to re-establish in civil life members of the armed forces, and already plans for this phase of reconstruction are well advanced. In December, 1939, a special committee of the Cabinet was constituted by Order in Council to examine "the problems which will arise from the demobilization and the discharge from time to time of members of the forces during and after the conclusion of the present war, and the rehabilitation of such members into civil life." This committee duly formed an advisory interdepartmental committee, known as the General Advisory Committee on Demobilization and Rehabilitation, and sub-committees were organized to cope with specific portions of the subject. The net result of this varied committee activity was the formulation of specific policies which successively became implemented by Orders in Council or by Acts of parliament. An extensive and on the whole generous system for the wel-fare of the veteran emerged, with provision for pensions, hospitalization of the disabled, post-discharge allowances and treatment, vocational training, transitional re-establishment benefits, re-establishment in civil employment, allowances for resumption of interrupted education, allowances while await-ing returns from private enterprise or awaiting employment, and settlement on the land. Lessons have been gleaned from the experience of the last post-war period, and a praiseworthy attempt is made to avoid former mistakes.

The economic activity of the state in the British Dominions conforms throughout to a common pattern, which might be described as neo-mercantilist, conditioned by the geographic and peculiar socio-economic forces of frontier countries. That activity issues in a complex of policies concerned with tariffs, bounties, quotas, marketing controls, and varied forms of financial assistance, or outright public ownership, in order to establish fresh industries, or to aid those existing, in the face of intense competition from more mature industrial competitors; to facilitate the exploitation of natural resources, and to increase populations. These policies broadly resemble the older mercantilism in that their end, where rationalized in terms of the state, is the achievement of national power and prosperity by the development of the ill-balanced economic life of sparsely settled colonies into economies integrated and diversified.The interpretation of what contributes to national prosperity is determined by the contemporary interests politically powerful, and ordinarily it is a composite product of the many interests with free play under the parliamentary regime. Sometimes there is agreement among the chief interest-groups in recognizing that the claim of a small population to an extensive territory is precarious unless it furthers settlement and development. Such a recognition underlay the generous bonusing of the Canadian Pacific syndicate in the eighties in order to ensure a transcontinental railway, tariffs to develop in Canada east-west traffic, the numerous controls of Commonwealth and state respecting Queensland sugar to guarantee a white population in the Australian tropics, and the aggressive efforts made at some time in every Dominion to increase immigration.

The development of a form of collective management of hydro power in Ontario must be viewed as a part of the National Policy; Ontario's own positive part; her peculiar sector of the line wherein she attempts through collective action to further the use of her major and almost sole source of power in order to ensure a stable industrialism and a healthy urban life. This development was begun by the municipalities and the government of Ontario in the first quarter of the present century when the federal government was pursuing the main lines of the National Policy—constructing railways, subsidizing the rails of private corporations, providing tariff protection or bonuses to manufacturers.At the outset the drive for collective action in providing power came from the same class which supported the National Policy of the federal government; viz., the small manufacturers and traders in Toronto and those congregated in the Boards of Trade or represented in the Municipal Councils of Western Ontario. The inland towns were specially interested in power because they paid higher prices for coal than those on the lakes. But all the major municipalities soon became concerned in the collective action, and their initial activity determined in part certain salient features of the Ontario hydro as an administrative system. At first it was assumed, as is reflected in the Ross Act of 1903, that the enterprise might be entirely municipal; an organization whereby any group of municipalities through a Commission, without the financial aid of the government, might generate, transmit, and distribute electrical energy, meeting the cost through the issue of bonds secured by a mortgage on the works. But serious difficulties arose, and the overwhelming advantages of obtaining the financial support of the provincial government led to the scrapping of the scheme. A collective experiment designed to affect greatly the whole economy of Ontario obviously required the backing of provincial credit and provincial supervision. Hence the statute of 1906 which laid the legal foundation for the Ontario Hydro-Electric System.