All of us need to ponder well what our national
capacity is--what our potential may be--for
participating effectively in international affairs. We
shall do more good by doing well what we know to be
within our resources to do, than to pretend either to
ourselves or to others that we can do things clearly
beyond our capacity.

Prime Minister Trudeau, May 1968

No one could call that a clarion cry. There are no visions buried
in the assessment of "Canada and the World", which the Prime
Minister released as his policy statement on external affairs on
May 29, 1968. There is no idle talk of the next century belong-
ing to Canada, no reach that exceeds the grasp. Practicality,
that's the watchword. Pragmatism. Black South Africans are
suffocating? Will it do any good to cut off trade? Biafrans are
starving to death? God, it's a pity, but if you call the cops, there
are all those forms to fill out, all those questions. Canadian mu-
nitions are blowing little Asians to bits? Can anybody prove
they're our bombs? American fighter-bombers scream through
our skies, American nuclear bombs nestle atop our Bomarc
missiles, American anti-ballistic missiles are poised to explode
over our heads to defend U.S. cities? In the words of the state-
ment, "Realism -- that should be the operative word in our

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