First impressions are always tyrants. The first time I heard John
Wesley Dafoe talk he was in his large sanctum of the _Manitoba Free
Press_, in the summer of 1916. He was without a collar, his shirt
loose at the neck, and his hair like a windrow of hay. He reminded me
of some superb blacksmith hammering out irons of thought, never done
mending the political waggons of other people, and from his many talks
to the waggoners knowing more about all the roads than any of them.
The wheat on a thousand fields was baking that day, and the 'Peg was
roasting alive. Since that I have always pictured Dafoe sweltering,
terribly in earnest, whittling the legs of the Round Table and telling
somebody how it is that west of the lakes neither of the old Ottawa
parties has now any grip on the people.
Dafoe talked that way in 1916. He was beginning to lisp a little along
that restless line of thought in 1910. And in 1940 he may be sitting
in that same sanctum with walls of heavy books on two sides of him,
telling somebody just how it came to be that an economic cyclone on the
prairies once caught up all the Grits and Tories and nothing was ever
heard or seen of them again.
When Kipling wrote, "Oh, east is east and west is west, and never the
twain shall meet," he had never met Dafoe. Some directive angel
planted him at Winnipeg shortly after Clifford Sifton crowded the gate
there with people going in that they might choke it again with wheat
coming out; and while people went in and wheat came out through this
spout of the great prairie hopper, Dafoe dug himself a little ship
canal which as it grew bigger sluiced the political rivers of the West
into his sanctum before he lifted the lock and let them on down to the
sea at Ottawa. The West as he saw it was a place of coming mighty
changes. His own party was pushing the transformations. The prairies
were due to become the mother of great forces. You could not be always
herding people into a land like that from south, east and west and not
come within an ace of fostering some revolution.
And of all cities west of the lakes, Winnipeg was the clearing-house,
as much for policies and programmes as for wheat and money and people.
No political cloud ever gathered on the prairies that did not get blown
into Winnipeg before it burst. Dafoe stood ready for them all. He
believed that no change had happened yet to the Liberal party
comparable with the changes yet to come. He saw that party chaining
itself to tariffs and big interests and he said:
"Believe me, that won't forever do. There's something just short of a
revolution going to happen to this party before the West gets done with
it; and if the party isn't ready for the West, so much the worse for
the party."
Just to get ahead of mere chronology, the bane of many a good man's
life. In 1919 the most complete imitation of a little Moscow ever seen
on this continent was set up in Winnipeg. For many weeks it looked to
some hopefuls as though the Wheat City would reconstruct the whole
economic structure of the nation to suit the ideas of a violent
minority. The main recorded issue was "collective bargaining". The
real issue was direct action in the form of the sympathetic strike. By
its expected control of urban centres the Soviet organization aimed to
throttle big utilities, finance, shipping, railroads, telegraphs. The
United Grain Growers were to be but a helpless giant in the hands of
Jack Proletariat. Parliament was to be superseded by Direct Action.
The A.F.L. was to become obsolete. Trades Unions were to be taken over
and painted red. Citizens in starched collars were to become comrades
in shirt sleeves, or enemies. Political parties would be
reconstructed. The "workers" would own the country. The British
Empire would be shaken into Soviets. The Army and the Navy would be
internationalized. The real Capital of Canada outside of Winnipeg
would be, not London, but Moscow. The International would supplant
national anthems. Public opinion would be exterminated except as
revised by the Red leaders on the Red River at its junction with the
Assiniboine.
In the unfolding of this Great Adventure we pause here to observe that
it was a newspaper which behind the Citizens' Committee administered a
black eye to this attempt to make Winnipeg the Soviet headquarters of
North America and 120 millions of people. The name of the paper was
the _Manitoba Free Press_.
And the _Free Press_ was seeing Red. What business had the Red Flag in
a city like Winnipeg at all? If anywhere in Canada, why not in the
industrial, big-interest East--in Montreal or Toronto?
"One revolution at a time, please," we almost hear the _Free Press_
saying. "Now the war is done the West has to settle the fate of
Government at Ottawa in its own way. And the way of the West is not
with the Red Flag; not with Direct Action. This city is a headquarters
of evolutionaries, not of outlaws. You people of the Strike Committee
are trying to get the spot-light when you've no business anywhere
except right at back stage."
A perfectly straight argument, though not couched in those words.
Dafoe and his associates were profoundly busy with what to them was a
ten times greater issue than any form of Soviet anywhere in Canada. As
a matter of record the paper did admit that the metal workers had a
right to strike for collective bargaining.
"But no other Union here or elsewhere," it thundered "has any right to
a sympathetic strike to help the metal workers. This city is not going
to be throttled by a thug minority, who want to exercise governing
power as a revolutionary usurpation of authority."
A minority always leads. Majorities follow. The position of the _Free
Press_ was, that it is only a minority able to command a majority that
should rule; and the Soviet was no such minority--while the _Free
Press_ was.
A clear grasp of this is necessary in the business of judging Mr. Dafoe
and his coming influence upon Canadian affairs. What Dafoe enunciated
about the strike will have a strong bearing in the case upon what he
thinks about the Agrarians. The judge must get a fair judgment. But
of this later.
Dafoe was, so far as we know, the first editor in Canada to advocate
from the beginning of the war a Coalition Government. This was
natural. The _Free Press_ had no faith in the Borden administration of
Bob Rogers, owner of the _Winnipeg Telegram_. By the summer of 1916 it
was into a Coalition campaign. A year later when the Premier came back
from England declaring for conscription and inviting Laurier to join in
a Coalition, the _Free Press_ supported him.
Why this anxiety? We must pull off a bit of the makeup to find out.
The _Free Press_ was a Liberal paper. It supported Laurier in the
West. But the older it grew the more clearly Dafoe and his associates
saw that the man who had created the two new Western Provinces could
not hold them. Other gods were now arising. Their organ was the
_Grain Growers' Guide_; their parliaments were in grain growers'
conventions; their policy was radical Liberalism. The Liberal organ of
a Wheat City could not consistently antagonize this radical movement.
The farmers must be studied. So far as they could strengthen
Liberalism by becoming a Radical wing, they must be encouraged. At the
point where they developed an extreme left away from the party they
must be checked. The _Free Press_ which was yet to fight an economic
revolution must not itself be revolutionary.
This leads up to policy in Empire. The paper had gone against Borden
in 1911. It was against the taxation Navy of Borden even though it
could see the danger of war ahead. It was opposed to the whole
super-Tory idea of a centralized British commonwealth of nations. It
"hung the hide" of Lionel Curtis and his Round Table propaganda clubs
to the Canadian National fence. It argued for "a progressive
development in Canadian self-government to the point of the attainment
of sovereign power to be followed by an alliance with the other British
nations", who it was assumed would do likewise. For years before the
war the _Free Press_ had talked of this evolutionary Empire, deeply
regretting that Mr. Bourassa had coined the word "Nationalist" and made
it obnoxious.
Winnipeg seldom does things one half at a time. In the summer of 1917
J. W. Dafoe was one of the most astounded men in Canada. The other one
was Sir Wilfrid Laurier. That was the year of the famous Liberal
Convention. Had such a Convention happened in Chicago with such a man
as Roosevelt as the centre-piece, its doings would have been cabled the
world over. In its small way the Winnipeg Convention was more
sensational than the Big Strike two years later. Mr. Dafoe was in
Ottawa that summer. He was needed there. The Premier had come back
from England primed with a policy of conscription to be enforced by a
possible Coalition Government, an offer of which was made to the
Opposition leader. Since early in the war the _Free Press_ had argued
for coalition, but opposed conscription until after the United States
entered the struggle because of the inevitable exodus of slackers
across the border.
There was a strong conscriptionist group of Liberals in Ottawa. We
must assume that Mr. Dafoe, though not a member of Parliament, was
strongly behind them; his presence in Ottawa indicates that his
counsels were needed in view of the attitude to be taken by Western
Liberals. It was the conscriptionist group of Liberals in Ottawa that
decided upon the Convention, whether on the advice of Mr. Dafoe is not
generally known. The intention was to create a Western Liberal group
free from Laurier control, prepared to consider coalition--involving
conscription--on its merits. So far, the policy of the Convention was
in line with the previous programme of Mr. Dafoe. But the Liberal
machine in the West--which was not Mr. Dafoe's party at all, because
for some time he had been working on the principle that both the old
parties as such had lost their grip on the West--went out and captured
the delegates. The Convention was suddenly stampeded for Laurier, a
result which Mr. Dafoe never expected but against which he had strongly
urged, the Liberal Unionist leaders. The _Free Press_ thereafter
thundered against the Convention as entirely misrepresenting Western
Liberalism. The subsequent South Winnipeg convention shewed that the
_Free Press_ was right. Almost the entire strength of Western
Liberalism swung into the Union movement and the Coalition, and the
_Free Press_ became a temporary, though independent, supporter of the
Union Government for the purpose of winning the war.
Now for the larger front stage view; how does Mr. Dafoe's attitude in
the defeat of the Winnipeg Soviet idea of government and his former
campaign against Laurier Liberals match with his attitude towards the
Farmer Movement as embodied by Mr. Crerar? The leader of the Agrarian
movement is a friend of the _Free Press_ for much the same reason that
the strike leaders in 1919 were a foe to it. Crerarism in the West
looks for the support of that paper in its drive upon Ottawa. From his
experience outwardly to the public, and intimately behind the scenes,
always concerned with building up a new Liberalism on the wreck of the
old, Dafoe endorses Crerar and his movement. When Crerar went into the
Government the _Free Press_ favoured his going. Mr. Dafoe clearly
states that, "if the Union movement could retain its Liberal elements
and produce an economic and taxation policy acceptable to Western
opinion, we could continue to support it." In contemplating such a
miracle, did he expect that the ultra-Tories would lop away from the
Union, making a "rump" party to match the Laurier Liberals, and leaving
the Union Government free to make an alliance with the Farmer Group?
This we do not profess to know. In a political age like this almost
any sort of alliance may be made for the purpose of capturing
Parliament. But a permanent alliance between Western Liberalism
represented by Mr. Crerar and the Government by Coalition looks now as
fantastic as a Coalition between Lloyd George and de Valera. Mr. Dafoe
probably knew that the Government and Mr. Crerar would lock horns over
the tariff--since any species of protection and free trade never could
sleep together. When Mr. Crerar left the Government on the budget
issue, the _Free Press_ ceased its active support of the Government and
moved its guns to a detached position. When Meighen became Premier and
in his programme speech at Stirling outlined his policy, Dafoe
definitely declared himself as no longer in support of the Union
Government. As he could not support the Laurier Liberal party, which
he had formerly opposed, the only thing left was to make an active and
open alliance with Mr. Crerar.
Such a mobile course of action is incomprehensible unless we keep in
mind the fact that Mr. Dafoe has long found it impossible to support
either of the old parties. The Coalition was a new one which he
consistently supported on its merits and up to a point. The point was
reached. Unionism and Agrarianism were incompatible. Therefore
Unionism was a Tory institution; and the only Liberal programme left
for the _Free Press_ was to form an alliance with Mr. Crerar and his
great group of class-conscious Agrarians.
By this time, if he reads this, Mr. Dafoe will have observed that we
are trying to corner him on the question:
If you were opposed to a Labor Soviet which aimed at making a little
Moscow of Winnipeg, what are you going to do about a Farmer Soviet that
aims to capture Ottawa?
Already he has begun to answer. He uses a label for the party led by
Mr. Crerar and evolved with the aid of Mr. Dafoe:
The National Progressive Party.
A good name, even if not new. What is behind the label? That the
party so named has now taken over all the Liberal economic traditions
in the West and after the next general election will become the real
Liberal Party of Canada. In the opinion of Dafoe, Mackenzie King
should keep out of the West in the coming election in order to let Mr.
Crerar romp home with three-fourths of the entire representation in
Parliament. He alleges that Laurier destroyed the old Western Liberal
party in 1917; that King has not revived it--though Mr. Fielding might
have done so; that Western Liberals have become Progressive except in
the cities, where some have become Unionists. In making this statement
he probably reckoned on Michael Clark becoming a Progressive. But
Michael Clark has turned out to be one species of even Free Trade
Liberal which Crerarism cannot absorb.
Let us concede that here is one of the most absorbing problems in
Canada. If Dafoe backs Crerar in the effort to get that preponderant
majority away from Meighen and King, then he is afterwards committed to
Crerarism. Dafoe cannot afford to take Crerar and abandon the
traditions of the _Free Press_. If he is so keen about real
"nationalism" in this country as to regret that Bourassa made the word
obnoxious, he has surely decided that the policy of the N.P.P. must be
to build up a true national life in Canada. And the man who was
Canada's press representative at the Peace Conference, with such
exceptional facilities for focussing Canadian national sentiment among
other nations, will not dare to countenance in Mr. Crerar and his
followers any policy that will open the gates for the United States to
walk in and walk over this nation as twenty years ago his _Free Press_
associate, Clifford Sifton, opened the doors to let Europe inundate us
with a polyglot, un-national flood.
No Canadian journalist has shouldered so perilous a responsibility.
Dafoe knows what a struggle it is to preserve national identity on a
basis of one to twelve against us. Born in Ontario and experienced in
the East as few editors have ever been, he surely knows the value of
not surrendering our national birthright for a mess of free-trade
pottage.
If he knows this as well as we think he should, will he uphold the
_Free Press_ as the constant critic of Mr. Crerar if he attempts to
denationalize this country; or will he accept a portfolio of Minister
of the Interior in the Cabinet dominated by Messrs. Crerar and Drury,
and in his haste to establish the new Liberalism of the National
Progressive Party help to strike out the meaning of the word "National"
in the label?
Can a man who fought a Direct Action Strike because it aimed at
revolution, consistently endorse, lock, stock and barrel, a movement
which aims at a revolution by Indirect Action through Parliament?
Is government by a "National Progressive Party" Agrarian Group with a
business-farmer Premier and a farmer-dominated Cabinet any less of a
group government in principle than the One Big Union, even though it
does not tie up the nerve centres of the country by a minority general
strike, but merely throttles Parliament, which is supposed to be the
national brain, by the use of the group minority in voting?
Mr. Dafoe has already begun to answer. Again we see him sweltering in
his sanctum, his hair like a windrow of hay, as he dictates something
like this to his stenographer:
"Your logic is good except that your major premiss is a case of being
off to a bad start. The National Progressive Party is not a group; it
is a business majority. It contains the people who produce the
majority of the nation's wealth for consumption and export and
therefore enable the nation to pay its bills. It is Liberal because it
advocates free-trade and is opposed to big monopolies, and there is no
other Liberalism in Canada left worthy the name. The N.P.P. is the new
Liberalism, not for the West alone, but for the whole country. It
depends upon the franchise of the people, not upon the strike action of
revolutionary groups. Agriculture, not industry, is the basis of
Canada's economics. Even labour as embodied in the Trade Unions does
not aim at revolution: Only the Reds want that. And the Reds are a
hopeless minority. The farmers are not as yet a popular, though they
are an economic, majority; but the future of this nation depends upon a
voting as well as a producing majority of farmers."
This may not be the exact way in which Mr. Dafoe would state the case,
but it expresses the fact that sound economics are at the root of all
ideas which have to do with fair government. And it suggests that J.
W. Dafoe with his _Free Press_ has more to do than the _Grain Growers'
Guide_ with what the people think about the N.P.P.
For this reason we hope that Mr. Dafoe, the judge and the advocate as
well, will always stay "behind the scenes" to keep Mr. Crerar on the
right track if ever he gets the right of way.