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Canada, a British Dominion, is much closer to the U. S. than to England in culture. As social criteria, Canadians rather prefer dollars to titles. Canadians use U. S. toothpaste, read U. S. comic strips, massacre the King's English with U. S. slang, drink pop, join Greek-letter societies, eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day.
Canada has borrowed baseball from and lent hockey to the U. S. Furthermore, Canada nurtures a U. S. capital investment of $3,990,000,000 (out of total foreign investment in Canada of $6,889,000,000); and Canadian investors have put $1,311,000,000 into U. S. ventures (out of total Canadian investment abroad of $2,083,000,000). The U. S. is Canada's best and biggest market.
Nevertheless, Canadians regard U. S. citizens with much the same defensive suspicion as U. S. citizens feel in the presence of Englishmen. They deplore the U. S. ignorance about Canada which populates Canada exclusively with the Mounted Police, bears, nickel miners, angry French-Canadians and Quintuplets. They cannot forget that armies from south of the border invaded Canada for the purpose of annexation (in 1775 and 1812). In other times they had no craving for stronger ties with the U. S. Neighbors can make friends but only enemies can make allies.
Toward the mother country Canada's attitude is extremely difficult to define. The three most interesting bodies of opinion are: 1) the French-Canadians, who are scrupulously and loyally Canadian (not French or English); 2) those English-speaking citizens who want a free Canada for Canadians; 3) the Empire-loving "Toronto Imperialists," who are vaguely regarded in the way that "Wall Street" is in the U. S. If a norm were taken of these three opinions, it would probably be safe to say that: 1) the interests of Canada have gradually drifted from the British Empire toward the U. S.; 2) the loyalties of individual Canadians have drifted away from the Empire towards Canada.
This is not to say that the bonds of Empire are not strong, or that Canada is not in the war down to the last button. But the bonds of Empire are almost entirely emotional. In peacetime, Canada fought to stay out of Empire foreign affairs — remained, for instance, outside the sphere of the Lausanne and Locarno Pacts; sat independently at Versailles and in the League of Nations; insisted consistently on "limited liability." Canadians no longer sing the version of their national anthem with the words: By Britain's side whate'er betide. But every time there has been a pinch — as in the Boer War and World Wars I and II — Canada has rushed to the support of British policies which she had no part in framing. This time, after searching the national soul, Canadians were in within a week of the mother country.