themselves creative. They must be supported by such practical
efforts as will assure an economic reserve adequate in the hour
of testing. France failed partly because she did not know how to
lay sound industrial foundations which should give substance to
the brilliant planning of her leaders.

To French influence of this kind the English opposed forces that
were the outcome of their national character and institutions.
They were keener traders than the French and had cheaper and
better goods, with the exception perhaps of French gunpowder and
of French brandy, which the Indians preferred to English rum.
Though the English were less alert and less brilliant than the
French, the work that they did was more enduring. Their
settlements encroached ever more and more upon the forest. They
found and tilled the good lands, traded and saved and gradually
built up populous communities. The British colonies had twenty
times the population of Canada. The tide of their power crept in
slowly but it moved with the relentless force that has
subsequently made nearly the whole of North America English in
speech and modes of thought.

When, in 1744, open war between the two nations came at last in
Europe, each prepared to spring at the other in America--and
France sprang first. In Nova Scotia, on the narrow strait which
separates the mainland from the island of Cape Breton, the
British had a weak little fishing settlement called Canseau.
Suddenly in May, 1744, when the British at Canseau had heard
nothing of war, two armed vessels from Louisbourg with six or
seven hundred soldiers and sailors appeared before the poor
little place and demanded its surrender. To this the eighty