"Or, if soldiers had been sent!" Parkman, approaching the great valley in
imagination with Celoron, from the north, exclaims, "the most momentous
and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was:
'Shall France remain here or shall she not?' If by diplomacy or war she
had preserved but the half or less than half of her American possessions,
then a barrier would have been set to the spread of the English-speaking
races, there would have been no Revolutionary War and, for a long time at
least, no independence." [Footnote: Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe," p. 5.]
(Which but emphasizes what I have said as to the part, the negative part
as well as the positive, France conspicuously and unconsciously played in
the making of a new nation.)
If "the French soldiers left dead on inglorious continental battle-fields
could," as Parkman says, "have saved Canada, and perhaps made good her
claim to the vast territories of the West," [Footnote: Parkman, "Montcalm
and Wolfe," p. 41.] could they after all have done more for the world than
those who, in effect, sacrificed their lives on glorious western battle-
fields for the United States?
A little way back I spoke of the first expedition looking toward that
valley from the Atlantic side of the Alleghanies--the expedition of the
"Knights of the Golden Horseshoe"--and of its vain threats.
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