Great Canadian Flag Debate a blue background. Pearson preferred this choice, as the blue bars reflected Canada's motto, "From Sea to Sea". On June 15, 1964, Pearson opened the parliamentary flag debate with a resolution: Pearson sought to produce a flag which embodied history and tradition, but he also wanted to excise the Union Jack as a reminder of Canada's heritage and links to the United Kingdom. Hence, the issue was not whether the maple leaf was pre-eminently Canadian, but rather whether the nation should exclude the British-related component from its identity. Diefenbaker led the opposition to the Maple Leaf flag, arguing for the
The King and Country debate ignored British demands. Martin Ceadel, reviewing the German coverage of the "King and Country Debate", notes that although it was widely covered in Germany, the Nazis did not seem to have made political capital out of it: "indeed, the London correspondent of the "Völkischer Beobachter" was in 1933 stressing rather the militarism of British youth". Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939, the "Völkischer Beobachter" was still "insisting that the Oxford debate was insignificant". Churchill would, after the war, write on how Japan and Germany too took note of the Joad resolution, which altered their way of thinking about