indifference to personal appeal, should have been proof sufficient
to the public that he was a prime minister who looked forward and
planned for the future. And the plan? Why to stay in power for the
longest possible period of time. It is as natural for a government
to want to stay in power as it is for a man to want to live; nor is
there in this anything discreditable. A prime minister is sure that
he desires to retain power in order that he may serve the country as
no rival could conceivably serve it; and even if the desire fades
and is replaced by a lively appreciation of the personal
satisfactions which can be served by the office, no real prime
minister notices the transformation. The ego and the country soon
become interblended in his mind. A prime minister under the party
system as we have had it in Canada is of necessity an egotist and
autocrat. If he comes to office without these characteristics his
environment equips him with them as surely as a diet of royal jelly
transforms a worker into a queen bee.
Laurier saw that an efficient government, harmonious in its policies
and ably led, would afford a contrast to the preceding
administration that must forcibly impress the Canadian people. He,
therefore created a government of all the talents. Anxious for
discreet handling of the difficult fiscal problem he turned to Nova
Scotia for W. S. Fielding. Foreseeing the possibility of grave
constitutional problems arising he put the portfolio of justice into
the hands of the wisest and most venerable of Liberals, Sir Oliver
Mowat. Recognizing that a backward and stagnant west meant failure
for his administration he placed the department of interior, which
had become a veritable circumlocution office, under the direction of
the ablest and most aggressive of western Liberal public men,
Clifford Sifton. The time was to come when other values were to hold
in relation to cabinet appointments; but in the beginning efficiency
was the test, at least in intention. It was thus Laurier proposed in
part to build foundations under his house that it might endure. And
to insure that virtue should not lack its reward he proceeded to
buttress the edifice by a second line of support.
In the general election of 1896 the Liberal strategy had been to
give the party managers in the English provinces an apparent choice
of the best weapons, but with all these advantages the results
showed that they had barely held their own. The majority came from
Quebec where Laurier had apparently to face the heaviest odds. The
natural inference was not lost upon Laurier. If he was to remain in
power he must look to Quebec for his majority. A majority was
necessary and he must get it where it was to be had. This decision
was at first probably purely political. The consequences were not
fully foreseen, that to get this support a price would have to be
paid--by the Liberals of the other provinces. Still less was it
foreseen that the overwhelming support of his own people would
become not only politically essential to Laurier but a moral
necessity as well--something which in time he felt, by an imperious
demand of the spirit, that he must hold even though this allegiance
became not a political asset but a liability. Gradually, perhaps
insensibly at first, in opposition possibly to his judgment,
certainly to his public professions oft repeated, he came to regard
it as necessary to so shape party policy as always to command the
approval of French-Canadian public opinion. Sir Wilfrid lived to
see, as the culmination of 20 years of this policy, the French and
the English-Canadians more sharply divided than they had been for 80
years. Such is the capacity of the human mind for self-deception
that he could see in this divergence nothing but the proof that his
life's work had been destroyed by envious and designing men.
THE FOUNDATION STONE OF POLICY
Quebec in turning Laurierite did not turn Liberal. This was the
factor hidden from the public eye that governed the future. The
Laurier sweep of Quebec in 1896 was the result of a combination of
the Bleu and Rouge elements. The old dominant French-Canadian party
had been made up of Bleus and Castors--factions bitterly divided by
differences of temperament, of outlook and belief, and still more by
desperate personal feuds between the leaders. When the coming of
responsible government broke up the solidarity of the French-Canadians
they separated into three groups, the controlling factor in each
case being religious belief. The Castors were ultra-clerical
and ultramontane; the Bleus inherited the tradition of Gallicanism;
the Rouges imported and adapted the anti-clericalism of European
Liberals. Various influences--the brilliance and resourcefulness of
Cartier's leadership and antipathy to Rouge extremism among them--kept
Bleu and Castor in an uneasy alliance. This alliance began to
disintegrate when Laurier rose to the command of the Liberals. There
was a steady drift from the Bleu to the Liberal camp--by this time
the old definition of "Rouge" was under taboo; and in 1896 the Bleus
moved over almost in a body. This was not an altogether instinctive
and voluntary movement; it was suggested, inspired, successfully
shepherded and safely delivered.
Tarte's confidence that Laurier could win Quebec was not based
wholly upon faith in the power of Laurier's personal appeal. He was
himself a Bleu leader brought into accidental relations with the
Liberals. His breach with the Conservatives began as one of the
unending Castor-Bleu feuds. His knowledge of the McGreevy-Connolly
frauds gave him the power, as he thought, to blow the Castor chief,
Sir Hector Langevin--a cold, selfish, greedy, domineering, rather
stupid man--into thinnest air, thus opening the road to the
leadership of the French-Conservatives to his friend and leader, the
brilliant, unscrupulous and ambitious Chapleau. He over-estimated
his power. The whole strength of the government at Ottawa was at
once concentrated in keeping the lid on that smouldering cauldron of
stench and rottenness, the system of practical politics of that day.
The Conservative chiefs tried to suppress Tarte and he refused to be
suppressed--there was not a drop of coward's blood in his veins.
Then they set to work to destroy him. He sought a refuge and he
found it--in parliament, to which he was elected in 1891 as an
Independent as the result of an arrangement with Laurier. As he used
to say, it was a case of parliament or jail for him.
Inevitably, in following up his charges in parliament, Tarte was
thrown into more and more intimate relations with the Liberal
leaders. He knew that for him there was no Conservative forgiveness;
as he was wont to say: "I have spoiled the soup for too many." It
was not long before Sir John Thompson could congratulate Laurier, in
one of the sharpest sayings parliament ever heard, upon having among
his lieutenants--"the black Tarte and the yellow Martin." For ten
years he remained Laurier's chief lieutenant in Quebec, but he never
in any sense of the word became a Liberal, though in 1902, just
before he was thrown from the battlements, he busied himself in
reading lifelong Liberals out of the party. Chapleau, who was
Tarte's confidant and ally, though he was also a member of the
Dominion government, became Lieutenant-governor of Quebec and
retired to Spencer Wood, but not to forget politics among its
shades. When the peculiar developments of the Dominion campaign of
1896 made it evident that Conservative victory in Quebec under the
virtual leadership of the bishops meant the permanent domination of
the Castors, the whole Bleu influence was thrown to the Liberals.
Professor Skelton's life of Laurier does not take us much behind the
scenes. It is in the main a record of political events, with
comments upon Laurier's relations to them. Laurier's letters, mostly
to unnamed correspondents, are of slight interest, but to this there
are a few notable exceptions. There are letters between Laurier,
Tarte and Chapleau of the greatest political value. They make clear
to a demonstration, what shrewd political observers of that day
surmised, that there was a definite political understanding between
these three men. This explains the composition of the Quebec
delegation in the Laurier government. Apart from Laurier there was
in it no representative of French Catholic Liberalism, unless the
purely nominal honor of minister without portfolio given to C. A.
Geoffrion is to be taken as giving this representation. C. A. did
not put the honor very high. "I am," he said, "the mat before the
door." Tarte, a Quebecker and a Bleu, became Montreal's
representative at Ottawa. Disappointment among the Liberals led
first to rage and then to rage plus fear as Tarte with the magic
wand of the patronage and power of the public works department,
began to make over the party organization in the province. Open
rebellion under François Langelier broke out in December: "A
coalition with Chapleau," Langelier informed the public, "is under
way." But the rebellion died away. The Laurier influence was too
strong. Langelier was quite right in his statement. The coalition
movement at that time was far advanced. The letter from Chapleau to
Laurier, bearing date February 21, 1897, quoted by Professor
Skelton, was that of one political intimate to another. Take this
paragraph as an illustration: "The Castors in the battle of June
23rd lost their head and their tail; their teeth and claws are worn
down; even breath is failing for their cries and their movements and
I hope that before the date of the Queen's jubilee we shall be able
to say that this race of rodents is extinct and figures only in
catalogues of extinct species." The reference to the coming
extinction of the Castors had relation to the then pending
provincial elections as to which he made certain references to
political strokes which "I am preparing." Associated with this
Laurier-Tarte-Chapleau triumvirate was a fourth, C. A. Dansereau,
nominally postmaster of Montreal, actually the most restless
political intriguer in the province of Quebec. Dansereau had been
the brains of the old Senecal-Chapleau combination which had
dominated Quebec in the eighties. Just what Laurier thought of the
company he was now keeping was a matter of record for he had set it
forth in a famous article in L'Electeur in 1882 entitled "The Den of
Thieves," which led to L. A. Senecal, the Bleu "boss," prosecuting
him for criminal libel. Laurier stood his trial in Montreal, pleaded
justification, and after a hard fought battle won a virtual triumph
through a disagreement of the jury with ten of the jurymen favorable
to acquittal.
LAST ROUND WITH THE BISHOPS
Little wonder that Francois Langelier, his brother Charles, and
other associates of Laurier in the lean years of proscription were
consumed with indignation that Laurier should pass them by to
associate with his former enemies. They did not realize the
political necessity that controlled Laurier's course. Laurier had
great need to hold his new allies for his position in Quebec for the
first year or so of office was precarious. The Manitoba school
question had still to be settled. Laurier was political realist
enough to know that he would have to take what he could get and this
he would have to dress up and present to the public as his own
child. He knew that the bishops, chagrined, humiliated, enraged by
their election experience, were only waiting for the announcement of
settlement to open war on him. It would then depend upon whether or
not they were more successful than in June in commanding the support
of their people. In Laurier's own words: "They will not pardon us
for their check of last summer; they want revenge at all costs."
The real fight, it was recognized, would be in Rome. Thither there
went within two months of the Liberals taking office, two emissaries
of the French Liberals, the parish priest of St. Lin, a lifelong,
personal and political friend of Laurier, and Chevalier Drolet, one
of the Canadian papal Zouaves, who had rallied to the defence of the
Holy City twenty-six years before. There followed swiftly two more
distinguished intermediaries, Charles Fitzpatrick, solicitor-general
of Canada, and Charles Russell, of London, son of Lord Russell of
Killowen. Backing them up was a petition to the pope signed by
Laurier and forty-four members of parliament, protesting against the
political actions of the Canadian episcopate. Nor did the Canadian
hierarchy lack representation in Rome. While this conflict of
influence was in progress at Rome, the terms of the Manitoba school
settlement were made public in November, 1896. The settlement
embodied substantial concessions in fact, but Archbishop Langevin
and his fellow clerics at once fell upon it. Langevin denounced it
as a farce. To Cardinal Begin it appeared an "indefensible
abandonment of the best established, most sacred rights of the
Catholic minority." A regime of religious proscription was
inaugurated. Public men were subjected to intimidation; Liberal
newspapers were banned, among them L'Electeur, the chief organ of
the party. The bishops destroyed themselves by their violence. Rome
does not lightly quarrel with governments and prime ministers. By
March Mgr. Merry Del Val was in Canada as apostolic delegate; and
though care was taken to save the faces of the bishops, their
concerted assaults upon the government ceased. Laurier had never
again to face the embattled bishops, which is not the same thing as
saying that they ceased to take a hand in politics. As Professor
Skelton truly remarks: "The Archbishop of Montreal, Monseigneur Paul
Bruchesi, who kept in close touch with Wilfrid Laurier, soon proved
that sunny ways and personal pressure would go further than the
storms and thunderbolts of the doughty old warrior of Three Rivers."
With the bishops silenced, Laurier's foes in Quebec found the issue
valueless to them. Their political associates from other provinces,
after the disappointment of 1896, would not consent to a revival of
the question. One of the party leaders declared he would not touch
it with a forty-foot pole. Tupper formally erased it from the party
calendar. The question remained quiescent; but Laurier always
remained in fear of its re-emergence; and with cause. The
resentments it left went underground and later had a revival in the
passionate zeal with which the Quebec clergy embraced the faith of
nationalism as preached by Bourassa. In one respect the school
question and its settlement proved useful. It was the exhibit
unfailingly displayed to prove upon needed occasions that the charge
was quite untrue that in directing party policy Laurier was unduly
sensitive to Quebec sentiment. In effect it was said: "Laurier made
Quebec swallow in 1896; now it is your turn"--a formula which
finally became tedious through repetition.
SUPREME IN QUEBEC
The second issue which appeared for a moment to put Laurier's grip
on Quebec in peril was the South African war. Looking back
twenty-three years it is pretty clear that Laurier's position at the
outbreak of the war, that the Canadian parliament should be
consulted as to the sending of a contingent, was wholly reasonable.
Those were the days of heady Imperialism in the English provinces;
and, vigorously stirred up by Laurier's party foes for political
purposes, it struck out with a violence which threatened to bring
serious political consequences in its train. Tarte was credited with
having declared publicly in the Russell House rotunda: "Not a man
nor a cent for South Africa," which did not help matters. The storm
was so instant and threatening that Laurier and his colleagues bowed
before it. By order-in-council Canada authorized the sending of a
contingent. Other contingents followed, and Canada took part in the
war on terms of limited liability which were agreeable to both the
British and Canadian governments.
The South African war was most unpopular with the French-Canadians,
but the unpopularity did not extend to Laurier. They agreed in
theory with Bourassa but they recognized that Laurier had yielded to
force majeure. Indeed the very violence with which Laurier was
assailed in Ontario strengthened his hold in Quebec. It is not easy
for a proud people to stomach insults such as, for instance, the
remark in the Toronto News, that the English-Canadians would find
some way of "emancipating themselves from the dominance of an
inferior people whom peculiar circumstances had placed in authority
in the Dominion." The election of 1900 gave Laurier fifty-eight
supporters in the province of Quebec out of a total of sixty-five
seats. The Rouge-Bleu coalition had not come off officially,
Chapleau's death in 1898 having removed the necessity of formally
recognizing his services, but the coalition of Bleu and Rouge
elements had taken place; and it held so firmly that when some of
the architects of the fusion tried later to undo their work they
found this could not be done. Dansereau was the first to go. Mr.
Mulock, the postmaster-general, entirely oblivious of the fact that
Dansereau was one of the main wheels in the Quebec machine and
seeing in him only an entirely incapable postmaster, fired him in
1899 with as little hesitation as a section boss would show in
bouncing an incompetent navvy. Tarte and Laurier tried to patch up
the quarrel, but Dansereau preferred to return to journalism as
editor of an independent journal whose traditions were Conservative.
He was to be, five years later, one of the leaders in that curious
conspiracy, the MacKenzie-Mann-Berthiaume-La Presse deal--the details
of which as told by Professor Skelton read like a detective yarn--which
was turned into opera bouffe by Laurier's decisive and timely
interference. In 1902, Tarte, in Laurier's absence and in the belief
that he could not resume the premiership on account of illness,
attempted to seize the successorship by pre-emption, and was
promptly dismissed from office by Laurier. Tarte and Dansereau tried
to rally the Bleu forces against Laurier, but these were no longer
distinguishable from the Liberal hosts into which they had merged.
Their day was over and their power gone. Laurier reigned supreme.
These commitments and considerations furnished the background to the
drama of Laurier's premiership. Much that took place on the fore-stage
is only intelligible by taking a long vision of the whole setting.
There was nothing of assertiveness or truculence in this
steady movement by which Liberal policy and outlook was given a new
orientation, Quebec replacing Ontario as the determinant. Students
of politics can trace the changing influence through the fifteen
years of Liberal rule, in legislation, in appointments and in
administrative policies. One or two illustrations might be noted.
A CHALLENGE AND A CHECK
During the crisis of 1905 over the school provisions in the Autonomy
bills erecting Alberta and Saskatchewan into provinces, Walter
Scott, M.P., in a letter quoted by Professor Skelton, refers to the
"almost unpardonable bungling" which had brought the crisis about.
But Sir Wilfrid did not step into this difficulty by mischance. He
knew precisely what he was doing though he did not foresee the
consequences of his action because with all his experience and
sagacity he never could foretell how political developments would
react upon the English-Canadian mind. The educational provisions of
the autonomy bill were designed to remove the still lingering
resentment of Quebec over the settlement of the Manitoba school
question and to further this purpose Sir Wilfrid indulged in his
speech introducing these bills in that entirely gratuitous laudation
of separate schools which had on Ontario and western Canadian
opinion the enlivening effect of a match thrown into a powder
barrel. This incident revealed not only the tendency of Laurier's
policy but illustrated the tactics which he had developed for
achieving his ends in the face of opposition within the party. Upon
occasions of this kind he was addicted to confronting his associates
and followers with an accomplished fact, leaving no alternative to
submission but a palace rebellion which he felt confident no one
would attempt. By such methods he had already rounded several
dangerous corners, as for instance his committing Canada to submit
her case in the matter of the Alaska boundaries to a tribunal
without an umpire--though it was the clearly understood policy of
the Canadian government and the Canadian parliament to insist upon
an umpire; and he resorted again to a stroke of this character in
1905. Professor Skelton's story of the crisis is the official
version, but there is another version which happens to be more
authentic.
Following the general election of 1904, the government decided to
deal without further delay with the matter of setting up the new
provinces. It was known that there was danger of revival of the
school question, for during the election campaign a Toronto
newspaper had sought to make this an issue, contending that the
delay in giving the provinces constitutions was due to the demand of
the Roman Catholic church that they should include a provision for
separate schools. The policy agreed upon by the government was to
continue in the provincial constitutions the precise rights enjoyed
by the minority under the territorial school ordinances of 1901.
There was a vigorous controversy in parliament as to whether the
autonomy bills in their original form kept faith with this
understanding. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Mr. Fitzpatrick, minister of
justice, contended vehemently that they did. Clifford Sifton, who
was the western representative in the cabinet and the party most
directly interested, held that they did not. Mr. Sifton was absent
in the Southern States when the bill was drafted. He reached Ottawa
on his return the day after Sir Wilfrid had introduced the bills to
parliament. He at once resigned. Fielding, who had also been absent,
was credited with sharing to a considerable extent Sifton's view
that the bill introduced did not embody the policy agreed upon. The
resulting crisis put the government in jeopardy. A considerable
number of members associated themselves with Mr. Sifton and the
government was advised that their support for the measure could only
be secured if clauses were substituted for the provisions in the act
to which objection was taken. To make sure that there would be no
mistake that the substituted provisions should merely continue the
territorial law as it stood, they insisted upon drafting the
alternative clauses themselves. Sir Wilfrid, acutely conscious that
this constituted a challenge to his prestige and authority, used
every artifice and expedient at his command to induce the insurgents
either to accept the original clause or alternatives drafted by Mr.
Fitzpatrick; for the first time the tactical suggestion that
resignation would follow noncompliance was put forward. The
dissentient members stood to their guns; Sir Wilfrid yielded and the
measure thus amended commanded the vote of the entire party with one
Ontario dissentient.
The storm blew over but the wreckage remained. The episode did
Laurier harm in the English provinces. It predisposed the public
mind to suspicion and thus made possible the ne temere and Eucharist
congress agitations which were later factors in solidifying Ontario
against him. In Quebec it gave Mr. Bourassa, whose hostility to
Laurier was beginning to take an active form, an opportunity to
represent Laurier as the betrayer of French Catholic interests and
to put himself forward as their true champion. "Our friend,
Bourassa," wrote Sir Wilfrid to a friend in April, 1905, "has begun
in Quebec a campaign that may well cause us trouble." From this
moment the Nationalist movement grew apace until six years later it
looked as though Bourassa was destined to displace Laurier as the
accepted leader of the French Canadians. It was only the
developments of the war that restored Laurier to his position of
unchallenged supremacy.
In Manitoba also there were evidences of Sir Wilfrid's preoccupation
with the business of never getting himself out of touch with Quebec
public opinion. For years he sought by private and semi-public
negotiations to get the Winnipeg school board to come to a modus
vivendi with the church by which Catholic children would be
segregated in their own schools within the orbit of the public
school system, but failed, partly owing to the non possumus attitude
of Archbishop Langevin, who was not prepared to be deprived of a
grievance which enabled him to mix in Quebec and Manitoba politics.
The Liberal policy of accepting provincial electoral lists for
Dominion purposes resulted in the Manitoba lists being compiled
under conditions to which the Liberals of this province strongly
objected, and they fought for years to secure a right to final
revision under Dominion auspices. Twice they pressed their case with
such vigor that the government undertook to pass the requested
legislation but on both occasions resistance in the house by the
Conservatives led to the prompt withdrawal of the measure by Sir
Wilfrid. In both cases Manitoba Liberals knew quite well that the
difficulty was not the opposition of the Conservatives but the
opposition of Laurier. They were advised that Laurier was
apprehensive of the effect of the proposed legislation upon public
opinion in Quebec. He feared the criticism by his opponents that
while Laurier would not interfere with Manitoba when it was a matter
of the educational rights of the minority he was willing to
interfere when it was a matter of obliging his political friends.
There was something too in the charge that the delay in dealing with
the matter of the extension of the Manitoba boundaries arose from
the same feeling. To transfer the Northwest territories, where the
minority had certain constitutional rights in matters of education,
to Manitoba where the minority had none would be to put one more
weapon into the hands of Mr. Bourassa. The extension of Manitoba's
boundaries had to await a change in administration.
THE TALE OF FIFTEEN YEARS.
There is always a temptation to the biographer of a prime minister
to relate his hero to the events of his period as first cause and
controlling spirit--the god of the storm; whereas prime ministers,
like individuals, are the sports of destiny; things happen and they
have to make the best of them. The performances of the Laurier
government may be divided into two classes, those due to its own
initiative and those which were imposed by circumstances. The ratio
between the two classes changed steadily as the administration grew
in age. After the impetus born of the reforming zeal of opposition
and the natural and creditable desire to fulfil express engagements
dies away, the inclination of a government is not to invite trouble
by looking around for difficult tasks to do. "Those who govern,
having much business on their hands," says Benjamin Franklin, "do
not like to take the trouble to consider and carry into execution
new projects." This is a political law to which all governments
conform. Even the great reforming administration of Gladstone which
took office in 1868, had earned five years later the famous jest of
Disraeli: "The ministers remind me of one of those marine landscapes
not very unusual off the coast of South America; you behold a range
of extinct volcanoes; not a flame flickers upon a single pallid
crest."
Fifteen years of Liberal rule in Canada furnish a complete field for
the study of the party system under our system. In 1896 a party
stale in spirit, corrupt and inefficient, went out of office and was
replaced by a government which had been bred to virtue by eighteen
years of political penury. It entered upon its tasks with vigor,
ability and enthusiasm. It had its policies well defined and it set
briskly about carrying them out. A deft, shrewd modification of the
tariff helped to loosen the stream of commerce which after years of
constriction began again to flow freely. There was a courageous and
considered increase in expenditures for productive objects. A
constructive, vigorously executed immigration policy brought an ever
expanding volume of suitable settlers to Western Canada which in
turn fed the springs of national prosperity. This impulse lasted
through the first parliamentary term and largely through the second,
though by then disruptive tendencies were appearing. By its third
term the government was mainly an office-holding administration on
the defensive against an opposition of growing effectiveness. And
then in the fourth term there was an attempt at a rally before the
crash. The treatment of the tariff question, always a governing
factor in Canadian politics even when apparently not in play, is an
illustration of the government's progress towards stagnation. The
1897 tariff revision "could not," says Professor Skelton, "have been
bettered as a first preliminary step toward free trade."
"Unfortunately," he adds, "it proved to be the last step save for
the 1911 attempt to secure reciprocity." After 1897 Laurier's policy
was to discourage the revival of the tariff question. Tarte's
offence was partly that he did not realize that sleeping dogs should
be allowed to lie. "It is not good politics to try to force the hand
of the government," wrote Laurier to Tarte. And he added: "The
question of the tariff is in good shape if no one seeks to force the
issue." With Tarte's ejection there followed nearly eight years
during which real tariff discussion was taboo. Then under the
pressure of the rising western resentment against the tariff
burdens, the government turned to reciprocity as a means by which
they could placate the farmers without disturbing or alarming the
manufacturers. By what seemed extraordinary good luck the United
States president, Republican in politics, was by reason of domestic
political developments, in favor of a reciprocal trade agreement. It
seemed as though the Laurier government as by a miracle would renew
its youth and vigor; but the situation, temporarily favorable, was
so fumbled that it ended not in triumph but in defeat.
The disasters of the Laurier railway policy--or rather lack of
policy--must always weigh heavily against the undoubted achievements
of the Laurier regime. A period of marked national expansion gave
rise to all manner of railway ambitions and schemes, and Laurier
lacked the practical capacity, foresight and determination to fit
them into a general, well-thought-out, practicable scheme of
development. Again it was a case of letting the pressure of events
determine policy, in place of policy controlling events. He could
not deny the Grand Trunk's ambitions, but he obliged it to submit to
modifications demanded by political pressure which turned its
project, perhaps practicable in its original form, into a huge,
ill-thought-out transcontinental enterprise. Equally he could not hold
the ambitions of Mann and McKenzie in check. The advisability of a
merger of these rival railway groups was obvious at the time, but
Laurier let them each have their head, dividing government
assistance between them, with resulting ruin to both and bequeathing
to his successors a problem for which no solution has yet been found.
PERSONAL GOVERNMENT
During the years of his premiership Laurier rose steadily in
personal power and in prestige. It is in keeping with the genius of
our party system that the leader who begins as the chosen chief of
his associates proceeds by stages, if he has the necessary
qualities, to a position of dominance; the republic is transformed
into an absolute monarchy. In the government of 1896 Laurier was
only primus inter pares; his associates were in the main
contemporary with him in point of years and public service. Their
places had been won by party recognition of their services and
abilities. In the government of 1911 Laurier was the veteran
commander of a company which he had himself recruited. Of his 1896
colleagues but few remained, and of these only Mr. Fielding had kept
his relative rank in the party hierarchy. All his remaining
colleagues had entered public life long subsequent to his accession
the Liberal leadership. Not one had been in parliament prior to
1896. Their entrance into public life, their steps in promotion,
their admittance to the government were all subject to his approval,
where they were not actually due to his will. To Laurier's authority
they yielded unquestioning obedience, and with it went a deep
affection inspired and made sure by the personal consideration and
kindliness that marked his relations with them. Under these
conditions, men of strong, individual views and ambitions, with
reforming temperaments and a desire to force issues, did not find
the road to the Privy Council open to them; different qualities held
the password.
In 1908 Sir Wilfrid, when a discerning electorate had deprived him
of a colleague whose political incapacity had been completely
demonstrated, became a party to a deal by which he re-entered
parliament. An old friend took the liberty of asking Sir Wilfrid why
he wanted this associate back in the cabinet, only to be told that
"So-and-So never made any trouble for me." At least twice in the last
four years of his regime Sir Wilfrid, conscious of the waning
energies of his party, took advice outside of his immediate circle
as to what should be done; on both occasions he rejected advice
tendered to him because this involved the inclusion in the cabinet
of personalities that might have disturbed the charmed serenity of
that circle. Sir Wilfrid preferred to have things as they were,
perhaps because his sense of reality warned him that, so far as the
duration of time during which he would hold office was concerned,
there probably would not be any great difference between a
government wholly agreeable to him and one reconstituted to meet the
demand of the younger and more vigorous elements in the party. In
1909, in a letter to a supporter who had lost the party nomination
for his constituency, he gave premonition of his own fate: "What has
happened to you in your county will happen to me before long in
Canada. Let us submit with good grace to the inevitable."
The inevitable end in the ordinary course of events would have been
the going on of the party until it died of dry rot and decay, as the
Liberals had already died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the
party and for Laurier's subsequent fame--though it may not have
seemed so at the time--emergence of the reciprocity question gave
it an opportunity to fall on an issue which seemed to link up the
end of the regime with its heroic beginnings and to reinvest the
party with some of its lost glamor.
LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX
THE defeat of the Liberals in September, 1911, raised sharply the
question of the party's future and the leadership under which it
would face that future. Speaking at St. Jerome toward the close of
the campaign Sir Wilfrid had stated positively that if defeated he
would retire. This declaration of intention--no doubt at the moment
sincerely made--was designed to check the falling away from
Laurier's leadership in Quebec, which was becoming more noticeable
as election day drew near. But the appeal was ineffective.. The
effective opposition to Laurier in Quebec came not from Borden or
from Monk, the official leader of the French Conservatives, but from
Bourassa. Laurier and his lieutenants fought desperately, but in
vain, to break the strengthening hold of the younger man on the
sympathies of the French electors. In Quebec the custom of the joint
open air political meeting is still popular, and at such a concourse
in St. Hyacinthe, an old Liberal stronghold, Sir Wilfrid's
colleagues, Lemieux and Beland, met a notable defeat at the hands of
Bourassa--an incident which clearly revealed how the winds were
blowing. Bourassa, fanatically "nationalist" in his convictions and
free from any political necessity to consider the reactions
elsewhere of his doctrines, was outbidding Sir Wilfrid in the
latter's own field. Laurier received the news of the electoral
result in a hall in Quebec East, surrounded by the electors of the
constituency which had been faithful to him for 40 years. He
accepted the blow with the tranquil fortitude which was his most
notable personal characteristic; but the feature in the disaster
which must have made the greatest demand upon his stoicism was this
indication that his old surbordinate and one time friend
was--apparently--about to supplant him in the leadership of his own
people. The election figures showed that whereas Laurier had carried
49 seats in Quebec in 1896, 58 in 1900, 54 in 1904 and again in
1908, he had been successful in only 38 constituencies against 27
for the Conservatives and Nationalists combined. Laurier, at the
moment of his defeat, was within two months of entering upon his
70th year. He had been 40 years in public life; for 24 years leader
of his party; for 15 years prime minister. He had had a long and
distinguished career; and he had gone out of office upon an issue
which, with confidence, he counted upon time to vindicate. He had
long cherished a purpose to write a history of his times. The moment
was, therefore, opportune for retirement; and it must be assumed
that he gave some thought to the advisability or otherwise of living
up to his St. Jerome pledge. But neither his own inclination nor the
desire of his followers pointed to retirement; and the next session
of parliament found him in the seat he had occupied twenty years
before as leader of the opposition. The party demand for his
continuance in the leadership was virtually unanimous. There was
only one possible successor to Sir Wilfrid--Mr. Fielding. But he was
not in parliament. Also he was in disfavour as the general whose
defensive plan of campaign had ended in disaster. His name suggested
"Reciprocity"--a word the Liberals were quite willing, for the time
being, to forget. He was left to lie where he had fallen. For some
years he lived in political obscurity, and it was only the emergence
of the Unionist movement which made possible his re-entrance to
public life and his later career.
THE REVIVAL OF LIBERAL HOPES
When Sir Wilfrid resumed the leadership after the formality of
tendering his resignation to the party caucus it meant, in fact,
that he intended to die in the saddle. Thereafter Sir Wilfrid talked
much about the inexpediency of continuing in the leadership, and
often used language foreshadowing his resignation--indeed the
letters quoted by Professor Skelton in the latter chapters of his
book abound in these intimations--but these came to be regarded by
those in the know as portents: implying an intention to insist upon
policies to which objections were likely to develop within the party.
Notwithstanding the severity of their defeat--they were in a
minority of 45 in the House--the Liberals in opposition showed a
good fighting front, and ere long hope revived. The Borden
government found itself in difficulties from the moment of taking
office--largely by reason of the tactics by which Laurier's
supremacy in Quebec had been undermined. The Nationalist chiefs
declined an invitation to enter the government, but they controlled
the Quebec appointments to the cabinet, and thus assumed a
quasi-responsibility for the new government's policy. The result was
disastrous to them; for the Borden government, subject to the
influences that had enabled it to sweep Ontario, could not concern
itself with the preservation of Bourassa's fortunes. The extension
of the Manitoba boundaries was a blow to the Nationalists; they
failed in their efforts to preserve the educational rights of the
minority in the added territory. Laurier had evaded this issue;
Borden could not evade it, and by its settlement Bourassa was
damaged. Still more disastrous to the Nationalist cause was the
naval policy which Mr. Borden submitted to Parliament in the session
of 1912-1913. There was in its presentation an ingenious attempt to
reconcile the irreconcilable which deceived nobody. The contribution
of the three largest dreadnoughts that could be built was to satisfy
the Conservatives; the Nationalists were expected to be placated by
the assurance that this contribution was merely to meet an
emergency, leaving over for later consideration the question of a
permanent naval policy. But all the circumstances attending the
setting out of the policy--the report of the admiralty, the letters
of Mr. Churchill, the speeches by which it was supported with their
insistence upon the need for common naval and foreign policies--made
it only too clear that it marked the abandonment of the Canadian
naval policy which had been entered upon only four years before with
the consent of all parties and the acceptance in principle of the
Round Table view of the Imperial problem. Laurier challenged the
proposition whole-heartedly. Here was familiar fighting ground. From
the moment they joined battle with the government the Liberals found
their strength growing. They were indubitably on firm ground. They
were helped mightily by Mr. Churchill's attempted intervention in
which he belittled Canadian capacity in a manner worthy of Downing
street in its palmiest days. Mr. Churchill had the bright idea of
coming to Canada to take a hand personally in the controversy. A
Canadian-born member of the British House of Commons sounded out
various Canadians as to the nature of the reception Mr. Churchill
would receive. Mr. Churchill did not come--fortunately for the
government. The Liberals fought the proposition so furiously in the
Commons that the government had to introduce closure to secure its
passage through the commons, whereupon the Liberal majority in the
Senate threw it out. The Liberal policy was to challenge the
government to submit the issue to the people in a general election.
That within eighteen months from the date of their disastrous defeat
the Liberals should invite a second trial of strength spoke of
rapidly reviving confidence. The government ignored the challenge,
for very good reasons. In the sequel Laurier, as with all his
policies having to deal with Imperial questions, was amply
justified. The policy of Dominion navies was never again seriously
questioned in Canada; when admiralty officials, true to form,
challenged it in 1918 it was Sir Robert Borden who defended it, to
some purpose.
These developments were fatal to Quebec Nationalism as a distinct
political force under the direction of Mr. Bourassa. The ideas that
inspired it did not lapse. Nor did Mr. Bourassa, as apostle of these
ideas, lose his personal eminence. But the electors in sympathy with
these ideals began to develop views of their own as to the political
action required by the times. Their alliance with the Conservatives
had brought them no satisfaction. They had ejected the most eminent
living French-Canadian from the premiership to the very evident
injury of Quebec's influence in Confederation--that about
represented the sum of their achievements. The thought that they had
been on the wrong track began to grow in their minds. The conditions
making for the creation of the Quebec bloc were developing. The
disposition was to get together under a common leadership. It was
still a question as to whether, in the long run, that leader should
be Laurier or Bourassa; but all the conditions favored Laurier. For
one thing, he could command a large body of support outside of his
own province which it was quite beyond the power of Bourassa to
duplicate. The swing to Laurier was so marked that by 1914 the
confident prediction was made by good political judges that if there
were an election Laurier would carry 60 out of the 65 seats in
Quebec. Such a vote meant victory. Sir Wilfrid was slow in coming to
believe that an early reversal of the decision of 1911 was possible;
but finally found himself infected with the hopefulness of his
following. Hard times became a powerful ally of the Liberals and the
government suffered from the first shock of the impending railway
collapse. The course of the party lay clear before it; it was to see
that the conditions in Quebec remained favorable and to await, with
patience, the coming of an election which would reopen the doors to
office. But not too much patience, for the years were slipping past.
Laurier was in his 73rd year.
THE PARTIES AND THE WAR
Such were the political conditions: a government in a position of
growing doubtfulness and a combative and confident opposition--when
Canada found herself plunged over night into the Great War. Under
the high emotion of this venture into the unknown politics vanished
for a brief moment from the land. If that moment could have been
seized for a sacred union of hearts dedicated to the great task of
carrying on the war how different would the whole future of Canada
have been! In the fires of war our sectional and racial intractibilities
might have been fused into an enduring alliance. But Canadian
statesmanship was not equal to the opportunity. For this
Sir Wilfrid has no accountability. There is no question of the
correctness and generosity of his attitude as revealed in the war
session of August, 1914. From a speech in the next session it might
be inferred that he would have gone farther than he did if overtures
had been made to him.
In Canada, as elsewhere, the war spelt opportunity for more than the
patriot and the hero. The schemer, resolute to make the war serve
his ends, appeared everywhere. From the morrow of those first days
of high exaltation the two currents ran side by side in Canada: the
clear tide of valor and self-sacrifice, the muddy stream of
cowardice and self-seeking. There was an influential element in the
dominant party which was determined to exploit the war to the limit
for political and personal interests. The war meant patronage; it
must be placed where it would do the most party good. It meant an
opportunity for artificial and perfectly safe distinction; this must
be employed for increasing the political availability of friends.
Political colonels began to adorn the landscape. It meant a corking
good issue upon which an election could be won; why not take
advantage of it? While the government officially was leading a
united people into action, these scheming political profiteers were
perfecting their plans for appealing to the people on the ground
that the government--a party government which had not invited any
measure of close co-operation from the opposition--must have a
mandate to carry on the war. There is a quite authentic story of a
leading Canadian being cheered up on a train journey by assurances
from a travelling companion, a friend holding high office, that
events were shaping for certain victory; until he learned that the
enemy about to be defeated was the "damn Grits." The battle of Ypres
in April, 1915, saved Canada from an ignoble general election on the
meanest of issues. Though some of the conspirators still pressed for
an election, it soon became apparent that the proposal was abhorrent
to public opinion. Canadians could not bring themselves to the point
of fighting one another while their sons and brothers were dying
side by side in the mud of Flanders.
The danger of a profound division of the Canadian people in war-time
passed; but irretrievable damage had been done to the cause of
national unity. In considering subsequent events these unhappy
developments of the first year of the war cannot be overlooked.
Party feeling among the Liberals had been held in leash with
difficulty; now it was running free again. The attitude of the party
towards the government was in effect: "You have tried to play
politics with the war; very well, you will find that this is a game
that two can play at." The strategy looking to a future trial of
strength was skilfully planned. There was no challenge to the
government plans. It was given full liberty of action upon the
understanding that it would accept full responsibility and be
prepared to render an account in due time to parliament and people.
The tactics were those of paying out the rope as the government
called for it. The attitude of the Liberal leaders towards the war
was unexceptionable. Sir Wilfrid's recruiting speeches--and he made
many of them--were admirable; and he did not hesitate to point the
way of duty to the young men of his own province. Upon things done
or not done the attitude of the parliamentary Liberals was
increasingly critical; and the government, it must be said, with its
scandals over supplies, its favoritism in recruiting, its beloved
Ross rifle, gave plenty of opportunity to opposition critics. With
every month that passed the political advantage that had come to the
government, because it was charged with the task of making war,
waned.
General elections were due in the autumn of 1916. It became a
serious question of Liberal policy to decide between agreeing to an
extension of the life of parliament, which the government intended
to request, and the forcing of an election. Two lieutenants of Sir
Wilfrid toured Western Canada sounding Liberal opinion; their
disappointment was obvious when, in a conference with a group of
Liberals in Winnipeg, they found opinion solidly adverse to an
election. Their reasons for an election were plainly stated--in
brief they were that on the details of its war management the
government could be, and, in their judgement, should be, beaten. But
Sir Wilfrid, with his hand on the country's pulse, could not be
stampeded. He saw, more clearly than his lieutenants, the danger to
the party of refusing an extension at that time. A twelve months was
added to the life of parliament with a reservation in the minds of
the Liberals that the first extension would be the last. This meant
an election in 1917.
THE NATIONALISTS AND ONTARIO
Mr. Bourassa was acutely conscious of the development of opinion in
Quebec favorable to the Liberals, and he sought to retain his hold
upon his following by the tactics which in the first place had given
him his following--by going to extremes and outbidding Laurier. The
chief article in the Nationalist creed was that Canada was
everywhere a bilingual country, French being on an equality with
English in all the provinces. This contention rested upon a
conglomeration of arguments, assertions, assumptions, inferences,
and it was backed by thinly disguised threats of political action.
The opposing contention that bilingualism had a legal basis only in
Quebec and in the Dominion parliament with its services and courts
was interpreted as an insult. Mr. Lavergne, the chief lieutenant of
Mr. Bourassa, was wont to wax furiously indignant over the
suggestion, as he put it, that he must "stay on the reservation" if
he was to enjoy the privileges that he held to be equally his in
whatever part of Canada he might find himself.
Events in Ontario put the test of reality to the Nationalist
theories. A feud broke out between the English-speaking and the
French-speaking Catholics over the language used for instruction in
separate schools where both languages were represented; and
resulting investigation revealed a state of affairs suggesting
something very like a conspiracy to minimize or even abolish the use
of English in all school areas where the French were in control.
Resulting regulations and legislation intended to put a stop to
these conditions gave French a definitely subordinate status. This
fired the heather, and later somewhat similar action by Manitoba
added fuel to the flames. The Nationalist agitation was resumed with
increased vehemence in Quebec; and the Ontario minority were
encouraged to defy the regulations by assurances that means would be
found to bring Ontario to time. In addition to legal action (which
brought in the end a finding by the Privy Council completely
destroying the Nationalist claim that bilingualism was implied in
the scheme of Confederation) various ingenious attempts were made to
apply pressure to Ontario. The most daring, and in results the most
disastrous, was the threat that if Ontario did not remove the
"grievances of the minority" the people of Quebec would go on strike
against further participation in the war. That dangerous doctrine
operating upon a popular mind impregnated with suspicion of the
motives and intentions behind Canada's war activities, produced the
situation which made inevitable the developments of 1917. The
movement against Ontario was Nationalist in its spirit, its
inspiration and its direction. Side by side with it went a
Nationalist agitation of ever-increasing boldness against the war.
Ammunition for this campaign was readily found in the imputations,
innuendoes, charges, mendacities of the Labor and pacifist
extremists of Great Britain and France; they lost none of their
malignancy in the retelling. Bourassa included Laurier in the scope
of his denunciations. Laurier's loyal support of the war and his
candid admonitions to the young men of his own race made him the
target for Bourassa's shafts. Something more than a difference of
view was reflected in Bourassa's harangues; there was in them a
distillation of venom, indicating deep personal feeling. "Laurier,"
he once declared in a public meeting, "is the most nefarious man in
the whole of Canada." Bourassa hated Laurier. Laurier had too
magnanimous a mind to cherish hate; but he feared Bourassa with a
fear which in the end became an obsession. He feared him because, if
he only retained his position in Quebec, Liberal victory in the
coming Dominion elections would not be possible. Laurier feared him
still more because if Bourassa increased his hold upon the people,
which was the obvious purpose of the raging, tearing Nationalist
propaganda, he would be displaced from his proud position as the
first and greatest of French-Canadians. Far more than a temporary
term of power was at stake. It was a struggle for a niche in the
temple of fame. It was a battle not only for the affection of the
living generation, but for place in the historic memories of the
race. Laurier, putting aside the weight of 75 years and donning his
armor for his last fight, had two definite purposes: to win back, if
he could, the prime ministership of Canada; but in any event to
establish his position forever as the unquestioned, unchallenged
leader of his own people. In this campaign--which covered the two
years from the moment he consented to one year's extension of the
life of parliament until election day in 1917--he had repeatedly to
make a choice between his two purposes; and he invariably preferred
the second. In the sequel he missed the premiership; but he very
definitely accomplished his second desire. He died the unquestioned
leader, the idol of his people; and it may well be that as the
centuries pass he will become the legendary embodiment of the
race--like King Arthur of the English awaiting in the Isle of Avalon the
summons of posterity. As for Bourassa, he may live in Canadian
history as Douglas lives in the history of the United States--by
reason of his relations with the man he fought.
THE BILINGUAL EPISODE
The Canadian house of commons was the vantage point from which Sir
Wilfrid carried on the operations by which he unhorsed Bourassa.
Here we find the explanation of much that appears inexplicable in
the political events of 1916 and 1917. Laurier was out to
demonstrate that he was the true champion of Quebec's views and
interests, because he could rally to her cause the support of a
great national party. Hence the remarkable projection of the
bilingual issue into the proceeding of parliament in May, 1916. The
question as an Ontario one could only be dealt with by the Ontario
authorities once it was admitted--Sir Wilfrid being in agreement--that
disallowance was not possible. Yet Sir Wilfrid brought the
issue into the Dominion parliament. If he had done this merely for
the purpose of making his own attitude of sympathy with his
compatriots in Ontario clear, the course would have been of doubtful
political wisdom, in view of his responsibilities to the party he
led. But he insisted upon a formal resolution being submitted.
Professor Skelton, in the passages dealing with this episode, shows
him whipping up a reluctant party and compelling it, by every
influence he could command, to follow him. The writer, arriving in
Ottawa when this situation was developing, was informed by a
leading Liberal member of parliament that the "old man" had thought
out a wonderful stroke of tactics by which he was going to
strengthen himself in Quebec and at the same time do no harm in
Ontario--a feat beside which squaring the circle would be child's
play. Very brief enquiry revealed the situation. Sir Wilfrid was
determined to have a resolution and a vote. The western Liberals
were in revolt; the Ontario Liberals were reluctant but were
prepared to be coerced; most of the maritime province Liberals were
obedient, but there was a minority strongly opposed. Theoretically
the formula that there was to be no coercion, each member voting as
his conscience directed, was honored; but Sir Wilfrid had found it
necessary to indicate that if in the outcome it should be found that
any considerable number of his supporters were not in agreement with
him, he would be obliged to interpret this as indicating that the
party no longer had confidence in him. Professor Skelton supplies
the evidence that Sir Wilfrid pressed the threat to resign almost to
the breaking point. He actually wrote out something which was
supposed to be a resignation before the Ontario Liberals
capitulated. The western Liberals were of sterner stuff; they stood
to their guns. No resignation followed. "The defection of the
western Liberals," says Professor Skelton, "forced from Sir Wilfrid
a rare outbreak of anger." The use of the word "defection" is
enlightening, as showing Professor Skelton's attitude towards the
Liberals who in those trying times adhered to their convictions
against the party whip. He is a thorough-going partisan, which, in
an official biographer, is perhaps the right thing.
The writer's activities in encouraging opposition to these party
tactics led to a long interview with Sir Wilfrid, in which there was
considerable frank language used on both sides. Sir Wilfrid gave
every indication that he was profoundly moved by what he called "the
plight of the French-Canadians of Ontario." They were, he said,
politically powerless and leaderless; the provincial Liberal
leaders, who should have been their champions, had abandoned them;
the obligation rested upon him to come to their rescue. The
suggestion that, while he might be within his rights in thus
expressing his individual views, he should not seek to make it a
party matter in view of the strong differences of opinion within the
party, was rather impatiently brushed aside. Still less respect was
shown the observation that it was not desirable that the Liberal
party should identify itself with a resolution the carrying of which
meant a general election in the height of the war upon a race and
religious issue. Sir Wilfrid, in the course of the conversation,
touched quite frankly upon the necessities of the Quebec political
situation. He advanced the argument, which was put forward so
persistently a year later, that it must be made possible for him to
keep control of Quebec province, since the only alternative was the
triumph of Bourassa extremism, which might involve the whole
Dominion in conflict and ruin.
The episode passed apparently without disruptive results; but
surface indications were misleading. In reality a heavy blow had
been struck at the unity of the Liberal party; there began to be
questionings in unexpected quarters of the Laurier leadership. What
had happened was only too clear, to those who looked at the
situation steadily. Party policy had been shaped with a single eye
to Quebec necessities; and party feeling, party discipline, the
personal authority of Laurier has been drawn on heavily to secure
acceptance of this policy by Liberals who did not favor it. But
there is in politics, as in economics, a law of diminishing returns.
A year later the same tactics applied to a situation of greater
gravity ended in disaster. The split which came in 1917 followed
pretty exactly the split that would have come in 1916 over
bilingualism, had the Liberal members not been constrained by their
devotion to party regularity to vote against their convictions.
THE MOVEMENT FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
The movement for national government long antedated the emergence of
the issue of conscription; it was, in its origin, Liberal. Its most
persistent advocates in the later months of 1916 and the opening
months of 1917 were Liberal newspapers, among them the Manitoba Free
Press; and there was an answer from the public which showed that the
appeal for a union of all Canadians who were concerned with "getting
on with the war" made a deep appeal to popular feeling. The most
determined resistance came from the Conservatives. The ministerial
press could see nothing in it but a Grit scheme to break up the
Borden government, which they lauded as being in itself a "national
government" of incomparable merit. But that movement was equally
disconcerting to the Liberal strategists since it threatened to
interfere with their plans for a battle, to end, as they confidently
believed, in a Liberal victory. In January, 1917, Sir Wilfrid could
see nothing in the movement but an attempt to prevent a French-Canadian
from succeeding to the premiership, and wrote in those terms
to N. W. Rowell.
An offer by Sir Robert Borden to Sir Wilfrid Laurier to join him in a
national government would have been unwelcome at any time excepting
perhaps in the first months in the war; but in the form in which it
finally came, in May, 1918, it was trebly unacceptable. Sir Wilfrid
was asked to help in the formation of a national government to put
into effect a policy of conscription, already determined upon.
Although history will no doubt confirm the bona fides of Sir
Robert's offer, it cannot but be lenient to Sir Wilfrid's
interpretation of it as a political stroke intended to disrupt the
Liberal party and rob him of the premiership. From his viewpoint it
must have had exactly that appearance. Laurier's position in Quebec
had been undermined in the years preceding the war by the
Nationalist charge that his naval and military policies implied
unlimited participation, by means of conscription, in future
Imperial wars. He had always denied this; and when Canada entered
the great war he, to keep his record clear, was careful to declare
over and over again that Canadian participation by the people
collectively, and by the individual, was and would remain voluntary.
As the strain of the war increased the feeling in Quebec in its
favor, never very strong, grew less. There began to be echoes of
Bourassa's open anti-war crusade in the Liberal party and press. Sir
Wilfrid, watching with alert patience the development of Quebec
opinion, began cautiously to replace his earlier whole-hearted
recognition of the supreme need of defeating Germany at all costs by
a cooler survey of the situation in which considerations of prudent
national self-interest were deftly suggested. The "We-have-done-enough"
view was beginning to prevail; and Laurier, intent upon the
complete capture of Quebec at the impending elections, while he did
not subscribe to it, found it discreet to hint that it might be
desirable to begin to think about the wisdom of not too greatly
depleting our reserves of national labor. To Laurier, thus engaged
in formulating a cautious war policy against the day of voting, came
the invitation from Borden to join him in a movement to keep the
armies of Canada in the field up to strength by the enforcement of
conscription. Every aspect of the proposition was objectionable to
Laurier. It meant handing back to Bourassa the legions he had won
from him, and with them many of his own followers. No one was
justified in believing that Laurier with all his prestige and power
could commend conscription to more than a minority of his
compatriots. Sir Robert Borden's proposal meant the foregoing of the
anticipated party victory at the polls, the renouncement of the
premiership, and the loss, certainly for the immediate future and
probably for all time, of the affection and regard of his own people
as a body. The proposition doubtless looked to him weird and
impossible, and not a little impudent. The argument that the
proposed government could better serve the general interests of the
public, or even the cause of the war, than a purely Liberal
government, of which he would be the head, probably struck him as
presumptuous. Three days before Sir Robert Borden made his
announcement of an intention to introduce conscription, Sir Wilfrid,
anticipating the announcement, wrote to Sir Allan Aylesworth his
unalterable opposition to the policy. This being the case, there
never was a chance that Laurier would entertain Borden's offer to
join him in a national government.
THE LIBERAL DISRUPTION
Sir Wilfrid, rejecting Borden's offer, adhered to his plan of an
election on party lines; but he knew that conditions had been
powerfully affected by these developments. His position in Quebec
was now secure and unchallenged--even Bourassa, recognizing the
logic of the situation, commended Laurier's leadership to his
followers. If he could hold his following in the English provinces
substantially intact the result was beyond question. He set himself
resolutely to the task. Thereafter the situation developed with all
the inevitableness of a Greek tragedy to the final catastrophe. Sir
Wilfrid surveyed the field with the wisdom and experience of the
veteran commander, and from the disposition of his forces and the
lay of the land he foresaw victory. But he overlooked the
imponderables. Forces were abroad which he did not understand and
which, when he met them, he could not control. He counted upon the
strength of party feeling, upon his extraordinary position of moral
authority in the party, upon his personal hold upon thousands of
influential Liberals in every section of Canada, upon the lure of a
victory which seemed inevitable, upon the widespread and justified
resentment among the Liberals against the government for things done
and undone to keep the party intact through the ardors of an
election. One thing he would not do; he would not deviate by an inch
from the course he had marked out. Repeated and unavailing efforts
were made to find some formula by which a disruption of the party
might be avoided. One such proposition was that the life of the
parliament should be extended. This would enable the government,
with its majority and the support it would get from conscriptionist
Liberals, to carry out its programme accepting full responsibility
therefor. Sir Wilfrid rejected this; an election there must be. This
was probably the only expedient which held any prospects of avoiding
party disruption; but after its rejection Liberals in disagreement
with Laurier still sought for an accommodation. There was a
continuous conference going on for weeks in which all manner of
suggestions were made. They all broke down before Laurier's
courteous but unyielding firmness. There was the suggestion that the
Liberals should accept the second reading of the Military Service
Act and then on the third reading demand a referendum; rejected on
the ground that this would imply a conditional acceptance of the
principle of compulsion. There was the proposal that Laurier should
engage, if returned to power, to resort to conscription if voluntary
recruiting did not reach a stipulated level--not acceptable. Scores
of men had the experience of the writer; going into Laurier's room
on the third floor of the improvised parliamentary offices in the
National History Museum, spending an hour or so in fruitless
discussion and coming out with the feeling that there was no choice
between unquestioning acceptance of Laurier's policy or breaking
away from allegiance to him. Not that Laurier ever proposed this
choice to his visitors. He had a theory--which not even he with all
his lucidity could make intelligible--that a man could support both
him and conscription at the same time. There is an attempt at
defining this policy in a curious letter to Wm. Martin, then premier
of Saskatchewan, which is quoted by Skelton. Sir Wilfrid in these
conversations--as in his letters of that period, many of which
appear in Skelton's Life--never failed to stress conditions in Quebec
as compelling the course which he followed; the alternative was to
throw Quebec to the extremists, with a resulting division that might
be fatal. There was, too, the mournful and repeated assertion--which
abounds also in his letters--that these developments showed that it
was a mistake for a member of the minority to be the leader of the
party. At the close of the session, when it became increasingly
evident that a party split was impending, there were reports that
Laurier proposed to make way for a successor upon some basis which
might make an accommodation between the two wings of the party
possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal
M.P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in
Professor Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no
significance and it came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and
necessity retained the leadership.
Sir Wilfrid misjudged, all through the piece, the temper and purpose
of the Liberals who dissented from his policy. For his own courses
and actions there was a political reason; he looked for the
political reasons behind the actions of those in disagreement with
him. He found what he looked for, not in the actual facts of the
situation but in his imagination. He saw conversion to the Round
Table view of the Imperial problem and the acceptance of dictation
from London--a very wild shot this! He saw political ambition. He
saw unworthy desires to forward personal and business ends. But he
did not see what was plain to view--that the whole movement was
derived from an intense conviction on the part of growing numbers of
Liberals that united national action was necessary if Canada was to
make the maximum contribution to the war. There was very little
feeling against Sir Wilfrid--rather a sympathetic understanding of
the position in which he found himself; but they were wholly out of
agreement with his view that Canada was in the war on a limited
liability basis. In the very height of the controversy Sir Wilfrid
could not be got to go beyond saying that Canada should make
enquiries as to how many men she could afford to spare from her
industries and these she should send if they could be induced
voluntarily to enlist. This was wholly unsatisfactory to those who
held that Canada was a principal in the war, and must shrink from no
sacrifices to make victory possible. Still less satisfactory was the
professed attitude of the Liberal candidates in Quebec; with few
exceptions they embraced the anti-war Nationalist programme. It
became only too evident that a Liberal victory would mean a
government dependent upon and controlled by a Quebec bloc pretty
thoroughly committed to the view that Canada had "done enough." For
those committed to the prosecution of the war to the limit,
conscription became a test and a symbol; and ultimately the pressure
forced reluctant politicians to come together in the Union
government. There followed the general election and the Unionist
sweep. Laurier returned to parliament with a following of eighty-two
in a house of 235. Of these 62 came from Quebec; and nine from the
Maritime provinces. From the whole vast expanse from the Ottawa
river to the Pacific Ocean ten lone Liberals were elected; of these
only two represented the west, that part of Canada where Liberal
ideas grow most naturally and freely. The policy of shaping national
programmes to meet sectional predilections, relying upon party
discipline and the cultivation of personal loyalties to serve as
substitutes elsewhere had run its full course--and this was the
harvest!
THE LAST YEAR
The events of 1917 were both an end and a beginning in Canada's
political development. They brought to a definite close what might
be called the era of the Great Parties. Viscount Bryce, in a work
based upon pre-war observations, in dealing with Canadian political
conditions, said:
"Party (in Canada) seems to exist for its own sake. In Canada ideas
are not needed to make parties, for these can live by heredity, and,
like the Guelfs and Ghibellines of mediaeval Italy, by memories of
past combats; attachment to leaders of such striking gifts and long
careers as were Sir John Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, created
a personal loyalty which exposed a man to reproach as a deserter
when he voted against his party."
For these conditions there were reasons in our history. Our parties
once expressed deep divergencies of view upon issues of vital
import; and each had experienced an individual leadership that had
called forth and had stereotyped feelings of unbounded personal
devotion. The chiefships of Laurier and Macdonald overlapped by only
four years, but they were of the same political generation and they
adhered to the same tradition. The resemblances in their careers,
often commented upon, arose from a common attitude towards the
business of political management. They conceived their parties as
states within the state. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say
they conceived them as co-ordinate with the state. Of these
principalities they were the chieftains, chosen in the first place
by election--as kings often were in the old times; but thereafter
holding their positions by virtue of personal right and having the
power in the last analysis by their own acts to determine party
policy and to enforce discipline. Their personalities made these
assumptions of power appear not only inevitable, but proper.
Personal charm, human qualities of sympathy and understanding; an
inflexible will which, except in crises, worked by indirection; the
prestige of office and the glamor of victory; and the accretions of
power which came from the passage of time--half their followers
towards the end of their careers could not remember when other suns
shone in the firmament; all these influences helped to transform
party feeling into that blind worship which drew from Viscount Bryce
his mordant comment.
This venerable but archaic political system did not survive the war.
Beside the loyalties inspired by the war tribal devotion to a party
chief seemed a trivial concern. Canadians, who gave first place to
the need of getting on with the war, viewed with consternation the
readiness of elements in both parties to put their political
interests above the safety and honor of the commonwealth. The
movement for national political unity was born of their concern and
indignation. This development was almost as displeasing to the
Conservative partisans as to the Liberal "legitimists," who upheld
the right, under all circumstances, of Laurier to regain the
premiership; and it was their inveterate and unthinking opposition
that had much to do with the ultimate disruption of the union. They
did not realize, until they got into the elections of 1921, that
their party had disintegrated under the stresses of war.
A study of the origin, achievements, failures, downfall and
consequences of Union government might be of interest, but it does
not come into a survey of the life of Laurier. These matters are
related to the influences that are now making over Canadian
politics; they concern the leaders of to-day, all minor figures in
the 1917 drama. Because the Union government passed without leaving
behind it tangible and visible manifestations of its power, there
are those who regard it as a mere futility--a sword-cut in the
water, as the French say. But of the Union movement it might well be
said: Si monumentum requiris circumspice. The spirit behind the
movement passed with the war, but it left the old traditional party
system in ruins. The readjustments that are going on to-day, the
efforts at the realignment of parties, the attempt to newly appraise
political values, and to redefine political relationships--all these
things are testimony to the dissolving, penetrating power of the
impulses of 1917.
But the task of attempting political reconstruction in a new world
was not imposed upon Laurier. The signing of the armistice was the
signal for the release of new forces; it was a great turning point
in the world's history. But for Laurier the tale of his years was
told. There was something fitting in the departure of the veteran
with the turning of the tide. He had been a mere survival on the
scene following the elections of 1917 which put into the hands of
the Union government a mandate to "carry on" for the remainder of
the war--which at that time gave promise of stretching out
interminably. That election set bounds to his ambitions, wrote finis
to his political career. "Unarm; the long day's work is o'er." He
continued to hold his rank in a party which waited upon events,
knowing that the task of rebuilding and reconstruction must fall to
younger hands. The serenity of mind which had sustained him in all
the changes of a long and varied life did not desert him; and he
looked forward with fortitude to the end now approaching. He had
come a long way from the humble beginnings in St. Lin, 77 years
before. Childhood; happy, carefree boyhood; a youth of gallant
comradeship with the young swordsmen of a fighting political army;
the ardors of a career in the making full of delights of battle with
his peers; the call to the command; the conquest of the premiership;
the long, crowded, brilliant years of office with their deep
anxieties, crushing responsibilities, great satisfactions,
substantial achievements; the bitterness of unexpected defeat; the
gallant fight to win back to power ending by a stroke of fate in
disaster; the final disruption of his party and the loss of old
friends who had followed him in victory or defeat; these
recollections must have been much in his mind during this year of
afterglow. The end was fitting in its swiftness and dignity. No
lingering, painful illness, but a swift stroke and a happy release.
"Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail."
The End