Chapter 2

WILFRID Laurier was Prime Minister of Canada from July 9, 1896, to October 6, 1911, fifteen years and three months, which, for the Dominion, is a record. Sir John Macdonald was Premier of the Dominion of Canada for over nineteen years, but this covered two terms separated by five years of Liberal rule.

The theory of government by party is that the two parties are complementary instruments of government; by periodic interchanges of position they keep the administration of the country efficient and progressive. The complete acceptance of this view would imply a readiness upon the part of a party growing stale to facilitate the incoming of the required alternative administration, but no such phenomenon in politics has ever been observed. Parties, in reality, are organized states within the state. They have their own dynasties and hierarchies; and their reason for existence is to clothe themselves with the powers, functions and glory of the state which they control. Their desire is for absolute and continuing control to which they come to think they have a prescriptive right; and they never leave office without a sense of outrage. There never yet was a party ejected from office which did not feel pretty much as the Stuarts did when they lost the throne of England; the incoming administration is invariably regarded by them in the light of usurpers. This was very much the case with the Conservatives after 1896; and the Liberals had the same feeling after 1911, that they had been robbed, as they deemed, of their rightful heritage. Parties are not, as their philosophers claim, servants of the state co-operating in its service; their real desire is the mastery of the state and the brooking of no opposition or rivalship. Nevertheless the people by a sure instinct compel a change in administration every now and then; but they move so slowly that a government well entrenched in office can usually outstay its welcome by one term of office. The Laurier administration covering a full period of fifteen years illustrates the operation of this political tendency. The government came in with the good wishes of the people and for nearly ten years went on from strength to strength, carrying out an extensive and well-considered domestic programme; then its strength began to wane and its vigor to relax. Its last few years were given up to a struggle against the inevitable fate that was visibly rising like a tide; and the great stroke of reciprocity which was attempted in 1911 was not nearly so much a belated attempt to give effect to a party principle as it was a desperate expedient by an ageing administration to stave off dissolution. The Laurier government died in 1911, not so much from the assaults of its enemies as from hardening of its arteries and from old age. Its hour had struck in keeping with the law of political change. Upon any reasonable survey of the circumstances it would be held that Laurier was fortunate beyond most party leaders in his premiership--in its length, in the measure of public confidence which he held over so long a period, in the affection which he inspired in his immediate following, and for the opportunities it gave him for putting his policies into operation.

Viewed in retrospect most of the domestic occurrences of the Laurier regime lose their importance as the years recede; it will owe its place in Canadian political history to one or two achievements of note. Laurier's chief claim to an enduring personal fame will rest less upon his domestic performances than upon the contribution he made towards the solution of the problem of imperial relations. The examination of his record as a party leader in the prime minister's chair can be postponed while consideration is given to the great services he rendered the cause of imperial and international Liberalism as Canada's spokesman in the series of imperial conferences held during his premiership.

Laurier, up to the moment of his accession to the Liberal leadership, had probably given little thought to the question of Canada's relationship to the empire. Blake knew something about the intricacies of the question. His Aurora speech showed that as early as 1874 he was beginning to regard critically our status of colonialism as something which could not last; and while he was minister of justice in the Mackenzie ministration he won two notable victories over the centralizing tendencies of the colonial office. But Laurier had never been brought into touch with the issue; and when, after assuming the Liberal leadership, he found it necessary to deal with it, he spoke what was probably the belief latent in most of the minds of his compatriots: acceptance of colonial status with the theoretical belief that some time, so far distant as not to be a matter of political concern, this status would give way to one of independence. "The day is coming," he said in Montreal in 1890, "when this country will have to take its place among the nations of the earth. ... I want my country's independence to be reached through the normal and regular progress of all the elements of its populations toward the realization of a common aspiration." Looking forward to the issues about which it would be necessary for him to have policies, it is not probable that he put the question of imperial relationships very high. Certainly he had no idea that it would be in dealing with this matter that he would reveal his qualities at their highest and lay the surest foundation for his fame.

In 1890 Laurier, as we have seen, believed the Canadian future was to be that of colonialism for an indefinite period and then independence. In 1911, the year he left office, in a letter to a friend he said: "We are making for a harbor which was not the harbor I foresaw twenty-five years ago, but it is a good harbor. It will not be the end. Exactly what the course will be I cannot tell, but I think I know the general bearing and I am content." The change in view indicated by these words is thus expounded by Professor Skelton: "The conception of Canada's status which Sir Wilfrid developed in his later years of office was that of a nation within the empire." But between the two quoted declarations there lay twenty-one years of time, fifteen years of prime ministership and the experiences derived from attendance at four imperial conferences in succession--another record set by Laurier not likely ever to be repeated.

THE IMPERIALIST DRIVE

Laurier's imperial policies were forged in the fire. He took to London upon the occasion of each conference a fairly just appreciation of what was politically achievable and what was not, and there he was put to the test of refusing to be stampeded into practicable courses. Professor Skelton records two enlightening conversations with Laurier dealing with the difficulties in which the colonial representatives in attendance at these gatherings found themselves. Said Sir Wilfrid:

"One felt the incessant and unrelenting organization of an imperialist campaign. We were looked upon, not so much as individual men, but abstractly as colonial statesmen, to be impressed and hobbled. The Englishman is as businesslike in his politics, particularly his external politics, as in business, even if he covers his purposefulness with an air of polite indifference. Once convinced that the colonies were worth keeping, he bent to the work of drawing them closer within the orbit of London with marvelous skill and persistence. In this campaign, which no one could appreciate until he had been in the thick of it, social pressure is the subtlest and most effective force. In 1897 and 1902 it was Mr. Chamberlain's personal insistence that was strongest, but in 1907 and after, society pressure was the chief force. It is hard to stand up against the flattery of a gracious duchess. Weak men's heads are turned in an evening, and there are few who can resist long. We were dined and wined by royalty and aristocracy and plutocracy and always the talk was of empire, empire, empire. I said to Deakin in 1907 that this was one reason why we could not have a parliament or council in London; we can talk cabinet to cabinet, but cannot send Canadians or Australians as permanent residents to London, to debate and act on their own discretion."

Still more enlightening is this observation:

"Sir Joseph Ward was given prominence in 1911 through the exigencies of imperialist politics. At each imperial conference some colonial leader was put forward by the imperialists to champion their cause. In 1897 it was obvious that they looked to me to act the bell-wether, but I fear they were disappointed. In 1902 it was Seddon; in 1907, Deakin; in 1911, Ward. He had not Deakin's ability or Seddon's force. His London friends stuffed him for his conference speeches; he came each day with a carefully typewritten speech, but when once off that, he was at sea."

What was the intention of this "unrelenting imperialist campaign"? It took many forms, wore many disguises, but in its secret purposes it was unchangeable and unwearying. It was a conscious, determined attempt to recover what Disraeli lamented that Great Britain had thrown away. Twenty years after Disraeli had referred to the colonies as "wretched millstones hung about our neck," he changed his mind and in 1872 he made an address as to the proper relations between the Mother Land and the colonies which is the very corner-stone of imperialistic doctrine. His declaration was in these words:

"Self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by an imperial tariff; by securities for the people of England for the enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their trustee; and by a military code which should have precisely defined the means, and the responsibilities, by which the colonies should be defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It ought, further, to have been accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the metropolis, which would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations with the home government."

From the day Disraeli uttered these words down to this present time there has been a persistent, continuous, well-financed and resourceful movement looking towards the establishment in London of some kind of a central governing body--parliament, council, cabinet, call it what you will--which will determine the foreign policies of the British Empire and command in their support the military and naval potentialities of all the dominions and dependencies. It fell to Laurier to hold the pass against this movement; and this he did for fifteen years with patience, sagacity and imperturbable firmness against the enraged and embattled imperialists, both of England and Canada. Laurier, in the comment quoted above, said that in 1897 the imperialists had looked to him to act as the bell-wether. They had good reason to be hopeful about his usefulness to them. The imperial preference just enacted by the Canadian parliament had been hailed both in Canada and Great Britain as a great concession to imperialistic sentiment, whereas it was in reality an exceedingly astute stroke of domestic politics by which the government lowered the tariff and at the same time spiked the guns of the high protectionists. In 1897, when Laurier first went to England, the imperial movement was at its crescent, synchronous with the great welling up of sentiment and reverence called forth by the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Strachey has a penetrating word about the strength which Queen Victoria's "final years of apotheosis" brought to the imperialistic movement:

"The imperialist temper of the nation invested her office with a new significance exactly harmonizing with her own inmost proclivities. The English policy was in the main a common-sense structure; but there was always a corner in it where common-sense could not enter. . . . Naturally it was in the crown that the mysticism of the English polity was concentrated--the crown with its venerable antiquity, its sacred associations, its imposing spectacular array. But, for nearly two centuries, common-sense had been predominant in the great building and the little, unexplored, inexplicable corner had attracted small attention. Then with the rise of imperialism there was a change. For imperialism is a faith as well as a business; as it grew the mysticism in English public life grew with it and simultaneously a new importance began to attach to the crown. The need for a symbol--a symbol of England's might, of England's worth, of England's extraordinary mystical destiny--became felt more urgently than before. The crown was the symbol and the crown rested upon the head of Victoria."

To be translated from the humdrum life of Ottawa to a foremost place in the vast pageantry of the Diamond Jubilee, there to be showered with a wealth of tactful and complimentary personal attentions was rather too much for Laurier. The oratorical possibilities of the occasion took him into camp; and in a succession of speeches he gave it as his view that the most entrancing future for Canada was one in which she should be represented in the imperial parliament sitting in Westminster. "It would be," he told the National Liberal club, "the proudest moment of my life if I could see a Canadian of French descent affirming the principles of freedom in the parliament of Great Britain." This, of course, was nothing but the abandonment of the orator to the rhetorical possibilities of the situation. Under the impulse of these emotions he fell an easy victim to the conspiracy of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Strathcona (of which he later made complaint) by which the "democrat to the hilt" (as Laurier had proclaimed himself but a short time earlier when he had been given prematurely the knightly title at a public function) was transmuted into Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It was, therefore, not without apparent reason that the imperialists thought that they had captured for their own this new romantic and appealing figure from the premier British dominion. But when the imperial conference met, Mr. Chamberlain, as colonial secretary, encountered not the orator intent on captivating his audience, but the cool, cautious statesman thinking of the folks at home. When the proposition for the establishment of an imperial council was made by Mr. Chamberlain it was deftly shelved by a declaration which stated that in the view of the colonial prime ministers "the present political relations are generally satisfactory under existing conditions." The wording is suggestive of Laurier, though it is not known that he drafted the statement. The skilful suspension of the issue without meeting it was certainly the tactics with which he met and blocked, in succeeding conferences, all attempts by the imperialists to give practical effect to their doctrine.

FIFTEEN YEARS OF SAYING "NO"

The role which Laurier had to play in the successive conferences was not one agreeable to his temperament. It gave no opening for his talent. It supplied no opportunities for the making of the kind of speeches at which he was a master. It kept him from the centre of the stage, a position which Sir Wilfrid Laurier had no objection to occupying. It obliged him to courses which, in the setting in which he found himself, must at times have seemed ungracious, and this must have been a trial to a nature so courtly and considerate. To the successive proposals that came before the conference, togged out in all the gorgeous garb of Imperialism, he was unable to offer constructive alternatives; for his political sense warned him that it was twenty years too soon to suggest propositions embodying his conception of the true relations of the British nations to one another. There was nothing to do but to block all suggestions of organic change designed to strengthen the centralizing of power and to await the development of a national spirit in Canada to the point where it would afford backing for a movement in the opposite direction. So Laurier had to look pleasant and keep on saying no. To Mr. Chamberlain's proposal in 1897 "to create a great council of the Empire," No. To the proposal made at the same time for a Canadian money contribution to the navy, No. To these propositions and others of like tenor urged in 1902 by Mr. Chamberlain with all his persuasive masterfulness, No. No naval subsidy because it "would entail an important departure from the principle of Colonial self-government." No special military force in the Dominion available for service overseas because it "derogated from the powers of self-government." To the Pollock-Lyttleton suggestion of a Council of advice or a permanent "secretariat" for an "Imperial Council," No, because it "might eventually come to be regarded as an encroachment upon the full measure of autonomous, legislative and administrative power now enjoyed by all the self-governing powers."

Sir Wilfrid's policy was not, however, wholly negative, for he was mainly responsible for the formal change in 1907 in the character of the periodical conferences. The earlier conferences were between the secretary of state and representatives of "the self-governing colonies." They were colonial conferences in fact and in name--a fact egregiously pictured to the eye in the famous photograph of the conference of 1897, revealing Mr. Chamberlain complacently seated, with 15 colonial representatives grouped about him in standing postures. In 1907 the conference became one between governments under the formal title of imperial conference, with the prime minister the official chairman, as primus inter pares. It was the first exemplification of the new theory of equality.

The change of government in Great Britain in 1905 must have brought to Sir Wilfrid a profound sense of relief; it was no longer necessary to rest upon his armor night and day. Not that the Imperialist drive ceased but it no longer found its starting point and rallying place in the Colonial office. The centralists operated from without, looking about for someone to put forward their ideas, as in 1911 when they took possession of Sir Joseph Ward, New Zealand's vain and ambitious Prime Minister, and induced him to introduce their half-baked schemes into the Conference. He and they were suppressed by universal consent, Sir Wilfrid simply lending a hand. Sir Wilfrid's refusal at this conference to join Australia and other Dominions in a demand that they be consulted by the British government in matters of foreign policy seemed to many out of harmony with the Imperial policies which he had been pursuing. Mr. Asquith at this conference declared that Great Britain could not share foreign policy with the Dominions; and Sir Wilfrid declared that Canada did not want to share this responsibility with the British government. Seemingly Sir Wilfrid thus accepted, despite his repeated claim that Canada was a nation, a subordinate relation to Great Britain in the field of foreign relations which is the real test of nationhood. In fact, however, this was the crowning manifestation of his wariness and far-sightedness. He realized in 1911 what is only now beginning to be understood by public men who succeeded to his high office, that a method of consultation obviously defective and carrying with it in reality no suspensory or veto power, involves by indirection the adoption of that very centralizing system which it had been his purpose to block. If, Sir Wilfrid said, Dominions gave advice they must be prepared to back it with all their strength; yet "we have taken the position in Canada that we do not think we are bound to take part in every war." He saw in 1911 as clearly as Lloyd George did in 1921 (as witness the latter's statement to the House of Commons in that year on the Irish treaty) that the policy of consultation gave the Dominions a shadowy and unreal power; but imposed upon them a responsibility, serious and inescapable. He thus felt himself obliged to discourage the procedure suggested by Premier Fisher of Australia, even though, to the superficial observer, this involved him in the contradiction of, at the same time, exalting and depreciating the status of his country.

LAURIER'S VIEW OF CANADA'S FUTURE

What conception was there in Laurier's mind as to the right future for Canada? He revealed it pretty clearly on several occasions; notably in 1908 in a tercentenary address at Quebec in the presence of the present King, when he said: "We are reaching the day when our parliament will claim co-equal rights with the British parliament and when the only ties binding us together will be a common flag and a common crown." He was equally explicit two years later when, addressing the Ontario club in Toronto, he said: "We are under the suzerainty of the King of England. We are his loyal subjects. We bow the knee to him. But the King of England has no more rights over us than are allowed him by our own Canadian parliament. If this is not a nation, what then is a nation?" Laurier looked forward to the complete enfranchisement of Canada as a nation under the British Crown, with a status of complete equality with Great Britain in the British family. A keen-witted member of the Imperial Conference of 1911, Sir John G. Findlay, Attorney-General for New Zealand, saw the reality behind the anomalous position which Sir Wilfrid held. "I recognized," he says, "that Canadian nationalism is beginning to resent even the appearance--the constitutional forms--of a sub-ordination to the Mother country." "And," he added, revealing the clarity of his understanding, "this is not a desire for separation." But it was not in London that the question of Imperial relationships presented its most thorny aspect. Laurier could maintain there a stand-pat, blocking attitude with no more disagreeable consequences than perhaps a little social chilliness, the symbolical "gracious duchess" showing a touch of hauteur and disappointment. It was in the reactions of the issue upon Canadian politics that Laurier met with his real difficulties. He could not, by tactics of procrastination or evasion, keep the question out of the domestic field; the era of abject, passive and unthinking colonialism was beginning to pass; and the spirit of nationalism was stirring the sluggish waters of Canadian politics. Sir Wilfrid had to face the issue and make the best of it. He handled the question with consummate adroitness and judgment; but ultimately its complexities baffled him and the Imperialists who wanted everything done for the Empire and the so-called "Nationalists" of Quebec, who wanted nothing done, joined forces against him.

THE CANADIAN IMPERIALISTS

It was the Imperialists in the old country and in Canada who gave the issue no rest; they believed, apparently with good reason, that a little urgency was all that was needed to make Canada the very forefront of the drive for the consolidation of the Empire. The English-speaking Canadians were traditionally and aggressively British. The basic population in the English provinces was United Empire Loyalist, which absorbed and colored all later accretions from the Motherland--an immigration which in its earlier stages was also largely militarist following the reduction of the army establishment upon the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. It was inspired with a traditional hostility to the American republic. The hereditary devotion to the British Crown, of which Victoria to the passing generations appeared to be the permanent and unchanging personification, threw into eclipse the corresponding sentiment in England. English-speaking Canadians were more British than the British; they were more loyal than the Queen. One can get an admirable idea of the state of Ontario feeling in the addresses at the various U.E. L. celebrations in the year 1884; in both its resentments and its affections there was something childish and confiding.

Imperialism, on its sentimental side, was a glorification of the British race; it was a foreshadowing of the happy time when this governing and triumphant people would give the world the blessing of the pax Britannica. "We are not yet," said Ruskin in his inaugural address, "dissolute in temper but still have the firmness to govern and the grace to obey." In this address he preached that if England was not to perish, "she must found colonies as fast and far as she is able," while for the residents of these colonies "their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country (i.e. England) and their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and sea." Seely got rid of all problems of relationship and of status by expanding England to take in all the colonies; the British Empire was to become a single great state on the model of the United States. "Here, too," he said, "is a great homogeneous people, one in blood, language, religion and laws, but dispersed over a boundless space." Such a conception was vastly agreeable to the more aggressive and assertive among the English Canadians. It kindled their imagination; from being colonists of no account in the backwash of the world's affairs, they became integrally a part of a great Imperial world-wide movement of expansion and domination; were they not of what Chamberlain called "that proud, persistent, self-asserting and resolute stock which is infallibly destined to be the predominating force in the future history and civilization of the world"? Moreover, it gave them a sense of their special importance here in Canada where the population was not "homogeneous in blood, language and religion;" it was for them, they felt, to direct policy and to control events; to take charge and see that developments were in keeping with suggestions from headquarters overseas.

What these Canadian parties to the great Imperial drive thought of Sir Wilfrid's dilatory, evasive and blocking tactics is not a matter of surmise. Upon this point they did not practise the fine art of reticence; and their angry expostulations are to be found in the pages of Hansard, in the editorial pages of the Conservative press, in the political literature of the time, in heavy condemnatory articles which found publication through various mediums. Thus Sir George Foster could see in Laurier's statements to the Ontario club nothing but "foolish, even mischievous talk." "If," he added, "they are merely for the sake of rhetorical adornment they are but foolish. If, however, they are studied and serious they are revolutionary." And to the extent that they could they made trouble for Sir Wilfrid, in which labor of love they were energetically assisted, upon occasion, by high officials from the other side of the Atlantic. Laurier had five years of more or less continuous struggle with Lord Minto, a combination of country squire and heavy dragoon, who was sent to Canada as governor-general in 1898 to forward by every means in his power the Chamberlain policies. He busied himself at once and persistently in trying to induce the Canadian government to commit itself formally to the policy of supplying Canadian troops for Imperial wars. In the spring of 1899 he wanted an assurance which would justify the war office in "reckoning officially" upon Canadian troops "in case of war with a European power;" in July he urged an offer of troops in the event of war in South Africa which "would be a proof that the component parts of the Empire are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder to support Imperial interests." With the outbreak of the South African war, Lord Minto regarded himself less as Governor-General than as Imperial commissioner charged with the vague and shadowy powers which go with that office; and Sir Wilfrid had, in consequence, to instruct him on more than one occasion that Canada was still a self-governing country and not a military satrapy. Professor Skelton does nothing more than barely allude to these troubles; the story, which would be most interesting and suggestive, will perhaps never be told. But some idea of what was afoot can be drawn from the fact that at a public gathering in Montreal in the month of November, 1899, Lord Minto was advised and instructed by an active politician and leading lawyer that under his powers as the representative of Imperial authority he could order the Canadian militia to South Africa without reference to the Canadian parliament!

Associated with Lord Minto in the applying of Imperial pressure to the Canadian government was General Hutton, commander of the Canadian forces. In those days this position was always filled by an Imperial officer who was given leave of absence in order that he might fill the position. He was thus a Canadian official, paid out of the Canadian treasury and subject to the Canadian government; but few of the occupants of the office were capable of appreciating this fact. They regarded themselves as representatives of the war office with large but undefined powers in the exercise of which they frequently found themselves in conflict with the Canadian government. General Hutton's interfering activities were so objectionable that he was got rid of by a face-saving expedient; but four years later a successor to his office, Lord Dundonald, was formally dismissed by order-in-council for his "unpardonable indiscretion" in publicly criticizing the acting minister of militia. Lord Minto, unofficially advised by military officers and opposition politicians, resisted signing the order-in-council until it was made clear to him that the alternative would be a general election in which the issue would be his refusal. The incident was conclusive as to the necessity of having a Canadian at the head of the Canadian forces--a change which was subsequently effected.

These controversies and conflicts of opinion became factors in Canadian politics. The Conservatives sought in the general elections of 1900 to make an issue out of the government's hesitation in taking part in the South African war in advance of the meeting of parliament; this, plus injudicious and provocative speeches by the incalculable Mr. Tarte and the general indictment of Laurier as lukewarm towards the cause of a "united Empire" weakened the Liberals in Ontario; but this loss was easily off-set by gains elsewhere. Again in 1904 the Dundonald issue was effective only in Ontario which, in keeping with what appears to be an instinctive political process, was beginning to consolidate itself as a make-weight against the overwhelming predominance of Liberalism in Quebec. In the 1908 elections the Imperial question was almost quiescent in the English provinces; but it was beginning to emerge in a different guise and with aspects distinctly threatening to Laurier in his own province.

"COLONIALISM INGRAINED AND IMMITIGABLE"

Laurier in resisting the Chamberlain push knew that even English-Canada, long somnolent under a colonial regime, was not in the mood to accept the radical innovations that were being planned in Whitehall; and he knew, still better, that his own people would be against the programme to a man. The colonialism of the French-Canadians was immitigable and ingrained. They had secured from the British parliament in 1774 special immunities and privileges as the result of Sir Guy Carleton's hallucination that given these the French-Canadian habitant would assist the British authorities in chastising the rebellious American colonists into submission. These privileges, continued and embodied in the act of confederation, were enjoyed by the French-Canadians--as they believed--by virtue of Imperial guarantees; they held that they were safe in their enjoyment only While there was in the last analysis British control over Canada and while the final judgment on Canadian laws was passed by British courts. But their colonialism, unlike that of the English-Canadians, was of a quality that could never be transmuted into Imperialism. The racial mysticism of that movement repelled them; and still more they were deterred by the cost and dangers of Imperialistic adventure. It was for England, in return for their whole-hearted acceptance of colonial subordination, to protect them internally against any courses by the English-Canadians which they might choose to regard as an infringement of their privileged position and externally against all danger of invasion or conquest.

If Sir Wilfrid had been called upon to choose only between these two camps he could perhaps have made a choice which would not have been ultimately a political liability. But the situation was not so simple. There was a third factor which, alike by inclination and political necessity, Sir Wilfrid had to take into account. This was Canadian nationalism, in contrast with the racial nationalism of which Mr. Bourassa was the apostle. The backing upon which Sir Wilfrid relied at first to resist the military and naval policies of the Imperialists was the timidity and reluctances of colonialism; but he knew that this was at best a temporary expedient. To urgings that Canada should assist in the upkeep of the Imperial navy by money contributions and should also maintain special militia forces available for service in Imperial wars overseas, Sir Wilfrid felt that some more plausible reply than a brusque refusal was necessary; and he met them with the contention that Canada must create military and naval forces for her own defence which would be available for the wars of the Empire at the discretion of the Canadian parliament. These views put forward almost tentatively in 1902 ultimately bore fruit in definite policies of national defence. Thus the answer to demand for naval contribution, to which policy all the other Dominions had subscribed, was to declare that Canada should have her own navy; and this took form, after numerous skirmishes with admiralty opinion, which was scandalized at the suggestion, in the Naval Service Bill of 1910.

This course, which was thus urged upon Sir Wilfrid by events, earned him the displeasure of both the Imperialists and the Little Canadians. To the former Laurier's policy seemed little short of treasonable, particularly his insistence that while Canada was at war when England was at war the extent, if any, of Canada's participation in such war must be determined solely by the Canadian parliament. His own countrymen on the other hand viewed with disquietude these first halting steps along the road of national preparedness; might it not lead by easy gradations to that "vortex of militarism" against which Sir Wilfrid had voiced an eloquent warning? Where there is opinion capable of being exploited against a government the exploiter soon appears. In Quebec, Monk, Conservative, and the Nationalist, Bourassa, who entering Parliament as a follower of Laurier had developed a strong antipathy to him, were indefatigable in alarming the habitant by interpreting to him the secret purposes of the naval service bill. It was nothing, they claimed, but an Imperialistic device by which the Canadian youth would be dragged from his peaceful fireside to become cannon fodder in the Empire's wars. Meanwhile in the English provinces, the government's policy was fiercely attacked as inadequate and verging upon disloyalty by the Imperialists. The Conservative opposition, after one virtuous interlude in 1909 when they showed a fleeting desire to take a non-political and national view of this matter of defence, could not resist the temptation to profit by the campaign against the government's policy; and they joined shrilly in the derisive cry of "tin pot navy." These onslaughts from opposite camps were a factor in the elections of 1911; especially in Quebec where twenty-seven constituencies (against eleven in 1908) elected opponents of Laurier.

POLICIES THAT ENDURE

Sir Wilfrid fell; but his Imperial policies lived. During the campaign the old country Imperialists had been very busy from Rudyard Kipling down--or up--in lending aid to the forces fighting the Liberal government; and its defeat was the occasion for much rejoicing among them. Mr. A. Bonar Law, M. P., doubtless voiced their views when he predicted under the incoming regime, "a real advance towards the organic union of the Empire." All these hopes, like many which preceded them, were short-lived; for Sir Robert Borden, once he got his bearings, took over the Laurier policies and widened them. In that significant fact the clue to these policies is found. They were not personal to Laurier, owing their coolness towards perfervid Chamberlainism to his lack of English blood as his critics held; they were in fact national policies dictated by the necessities of the times. To the casual student of the development of Imperial relations for the decade following 1896, it might seem that the Liberal conception of an Empire evolving steadily into a league of free nations was only saved from destruction by the fortunate circumstance that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was during those years the representative of Canada at successive Imperial conferences; but this would be, perhaps, to put his services too high. Canada's public men have never failed her in the critical times in her history when attempts were made through ignorance or design to turn her aside from the high road to national sovereignty; as witness Gait in 1859, Blake in his long duel with Lord Carnarvon, Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885, when he resisted the premature demand for a Canadian contingent for service in the Soudan, Tupper in the early nineties when his vigorous resistance to the proposal that Canada should pay tribute for protection had something to do with the demise of the Imperial Federation League. Any man fit to be premier of Canada would have taken pretty much the position that Sir Wilfrid did. This does not in the least detract from the credit due Laurier. The task was his and he discharged it with tact, ability, patience and courage. For his services in holding their future open for them every British Dominion owes the memory of Laurier a statue in its parliament square.