Part 6

Long before the war came, Canada recognized in Mr. Borden a Premier who knew the meaning of moral caution so well that he knew not boldness at all except that his cause was right. Borden had the ethical stolidity of Asquith without the latter's personal weaknesses or his powers of oratory. He needed somebody with him as stage manager and makeup artist. Even his virtues might have been advertised with effect--though as a rule, except in characters like Lincoln, it takes the perspective of time to put those into a poster. So eminently respectable; so high in honour; so fair in judgment; so irresolute in action; so defective in imagination; so content to be overshadowed by lesser men in his own party even though he never was intimidated by bigger men in the Opposition: such, so far as we could see him before the war, was Sir Robert Borden.

Platitudes lay in wait for the Premier to utter them. Only by an effort of will could he lift them to a plane of high interest. He could sketch great issues with the solemn hand of a great preacher pronouncing a benediction; but he never could utter an aside, or crack a joke, or tell a story, or forget that once upon a time Fate had picked him to be a leader and so help him he would go through the motions of shepherding while the other men were the real collie dogs of the flock. If only Borden could have broken some bucking broncho, or worn some new kind of bouquet, or invented some imitation of a brazen serpent to hold up, the people and the party might have got hold of him and followed him.

Such was Premier Borden before the war, and so he remained, but under a magnifying glass, afterwards. The war was a godsend to the Government. It drove out alleged dissension in the Cabinet and gave the party which had met defeat in the Naval Aid Bill a chance to perpetrate something which no Parliament would dare try to defeat. Sometimes I almost think Borden was for short periods in the war a truly great man--in the eyes of the angels. He had known the war was coming; he had said so. There was a secret plan of action on file in the Archives months before it came. Not his to exult in I-told-you-sos to the leader opposite who had mitigated the menace. He rose to his programme of duty. He did not even wait till Britain declared war, but cabled assurances of aid on August 2nd, 1914. Special Parliament was assembled. The hour had struck. A Halifax writer present at the Khaki Parliament says:

"Sir Wilfrid easily bore off the honours in oratory. It was a great occasion and he rose to it. . . . Sir Robert is no orator, but he spoke in straight man-fashion of the great crisis. The climax of his speech was a solemn warning of the dark days to come 'when our endurance will be tried.'"

Had the Premier issued a referendum in that first month of Canada's going to war he would have wept at the amazing number of Noes from the Province in which Laurier was born, and the provinces in the Far West which he had created; in the one, obvious indifference whatever the cause; in the other enmity from the Nationals whom Laurier had imported to make Liberal voters. Even in the rural areas, traditionally the stronghold of Liberalism, indifferentism was the rule; and in the city of Kitchener where Laurier had politically baptized Mackenzie King, his successor, there was almost a state of civil war.

But the fervour of the Hughes programme prevented the Premier from taking stock of the nation. He permitted Hughes to treat Quebec as an automatic part of Canada at war--which it was not; and he failed to use even the Machiavellian energies of Bob Rogers in getting a line on the psychology of the West, supposed to be useful only in elections. Sir Robert had long known of the menace of Germany, and his Naval Aid Bill was one proof that he knew. But he did not understand the menace of disunited Canada. There never was in Ottawa any informing vision of Canada at war. Canada, in fact, was not at war. Political feuds were indeed forgotten; thanks to a noble-minded Premier that was natural enough. But had there been a national poet then big enough to translate into great verse the true spiritual state of Canada, he would have written with poignant sadness about Quebec; perhaps a few verses on the overwhelming British-born majority in the First Contingent. He would have explained that being a native son of Canada, whether you were English or French by extraction, did not of itself lead to enlistment in the ranks. The Premier should have known whether Sam Hughes was awarding patronage by making officers from the Conservative party or whether according to his own statement he was doing just the opposite. In fact it was the Premier's business to see that the Minister of War pursued neither policy.

But with the Hughes flares all about him it was hard for the Premier to see the nation; most of all Quebec. In this matter of the two Canadas, Sam Hughes saw his opportune duty and he did it. Sir Robert saw his and shrank from it, not weakly but blindly. Quebec should have been the instant objective of all the wisdom in Canada's Cabinet. Except for one or two grand battalions and a minority of broad-minded French-Canadians, Quebec was not at war, as part of united Canada. Banging the drum and blowing the bugle in Quebec was as wrong in strategy as to send Bob Rogers down to exorcise, as he did in 1915, the phantom of conscription. Sir Robert knew that even in civil times his Government was electorally ignored on the St. Lawrence. How much more in a time of unpopular war? Was it not clear that every hurrah for the Empire in Ontario, every fresh battalion mustered and drilled in Toronto, every troopship down the St. Lawrence, was a nail in the coffin of Quebec's potentiality in the war?

Yes, Sir Robert Borden knew that. He knew that Laurier was sulking like Cassius in his tent; that he was gnawing himself over the failure of his own predictions about the peace welfare of the world as well as for his own defeat in the election of 1911; that the man of the "sunny ways" was becoming a reactionary and a cynic, an old leader of great power, which he was willing to use to the utmost for the prosecution of the war had he been in office, but in opposition was manacled by a sense of futility against forces in Quebec which he understood and feared far more than did the Premier.

No doubt the Premier traversed all this, many a time and in great concern. And it may be that he saw so sharply into the sad hopelessness of it all that he decided not to ask Laurier for advice, or even suggestion. Such is lack of imagination.

Laurier had his day in the grand expansion of the country. Borden would have his, in the sacrifices and moral energies of the dark days to come. It was a greater thing to be Premier in war than ever it had been in peace. Canada was a greater land in action on the West front than ever she had been stringing railways, settling farms and building towns on the frontiers. The more Canada went to the front of her own free will, the greater she seemed abroad. The credit of this nation at war went up in London and Paris much faster than its investment credit had ever gone on the exchanges. The further one got from Ottawa the greater the country seemed. A Canadian Cabinet Minister meeting a British Minister in London could talk for an hour on the wonderful war character of this country. London was the centre of gravity of the west front, and of Canadian Ministers. The Premier spent almost half his time in or near London, whenever summoned, or whenever politic to go--to a place where the rancours of Ottawa were all buried in the grand cause. The Premier of Canada sometimes went to London when he would rather have stayed at home; more often when he felt that it was emotionally bigger to be Premier in London than in Ottawa. He was more honoured in war than Laurier had been in peace. He would have been a better Canadian had he stayed in Ottawa more. But there were many Canadians who were more concerned about how to help Foch and Lloyd George win the war in Europe than about how to knuckle down to common business at home. The trek to England and to Europe became a fad. The nations went world crazy. Premiers neglected to "saw wood." It was a matter for gratitude that they did not parade in khaki.

Premier Borden's lingering objection to Coalition here, even after it was established in London, did him no credit. He was displeased when the Chairman of the Imperial Munitions Board, back from a business conference in London, asked if the Premier had any objection to his stating the case for the need of Coalition at a public dinner. Of course the Chairman was out of order. But he was talking business, not politics.

The war was not going well. The British part of it was badly enough bedevilled by distance and differences of opinion between various Dominions without the distraction of party politics.

But for the great services of win-the-war Liberals the Military Service Act might have disrupted the Coalition even when it came. It was an extreme measure; much more hazardous here than in Britain--except for Ireland, of which we wanted no imitation in Quebec. There were times when Sir Robert longed for the wings of a dove. His offer of Coalition came at a time when he knew Laurier would refuse it. Conscription he carried out as a necessity. He never wanted it. No Premier of a free-will nation would. There were bigoted anti-Quebeckers who would have had compulsion from the first to show the French that Canada was greater than Quebec. But if Canada had sent conscripts in 1915 what would have become of the glory of the Canadian army? The argument that it was the best men who were killed, thereby robbing the nation of its flower, is thoroughly ignoble. Canada has never regretted that her best men died first, or that the Premier delayed conscription until it was inevitable. Canada does regret that the Government did not until too late, attempt to make any national register of the strength of this nation as had been done in England before conscription came as the final result. To have applied conscription before the United States went to war would have driven thousands of slackers across the border. Enough went as it was in the fear that conscription was coming.

The bilingual bungle in the Commons was even worse than the bad feeling over conscription. In this debate the angry French element in the House were a bad commentary on the still hopeful minority of broadminded French-Canadians who wanted to carry on the honour of Courcellette. The controversy over titles was no feather in the cap of the Premier, who made a bad fist of defending a practice the most glaring instance of which was the creation of hereditary titles in a democratic country.

Canada's "dark days" were fast coming. The resignation of Hughes was due before it came. The Premier's patience was scarcely any longer a virtue in this case, when four months after the declaration of war he had been compelled to make a diplomatic visit to Toronto's war camp in order to smooth out the troubles created by his "Chief of Staff."

From that time on to the end of his career we had the spectacle of a Premier overburdened and weary in his office, bewildered by the insistent advices of other men and sad over the failure of even conscription, in the face of such wastage, to get Canada's 5th Division into the field without weakening the four divisions we had. The Union Government was too heavy a load for so weary a man to carry. It had done its work, most of it well, some of it too late. The head of it was worn out. He was away much for his health, more for service in Europe, coming back to reconstruct his Cabinet, with the aid of Meighen, then away again. He had lost Hughes, Rogers, Crerar, Cochrane.

The strong men he had left, except Meighen, White and Foster, were Union Liberals.

Why did the Premier not himself resign? His work was done. His Union Government had finished the work which the nation gave it a mandate to do.

The answer must be in Sir Robert's own conviction that as a Premier of Canada he still had a great work to do in Europe in the settlement of peace. That work he did, some of it much more ably than much he had done at home. We had to read the headlines diligently to see where next Canada's mobile Premier would be needed in the adjustments of peace. More of the answer might be found in the doubt as to whether any man in Canada clearly knew what the Government's work, and therefore its mandate, would be. It was a time of upheavals when any nation with a Government carrying on its work constructively according to programme might have been glad to escape the further upheaval of a general election. But political parties have usually been profiteers in the emergency of a nation. Did the Premier fear that his resignation would force an election before the new party was ready? We are not told. Under pressure he called a caucus in 1919 to determine the programme of whatever party he had in the Union. The caucus determined nothing. Did he hope to carry on until the legal expiry of his term in 1922, thereby evening up with the Liberals who wanted to bring on an election in 1916?

This also we do not know. Sir Robert was a weary and baffled Premier. He did not know how to let go. Once even his faltering hand was off, who was to succeed him? There were three men to consider.

The man's work was done. He knew it. Much of it had been nobly done. He knew that the nation was sure of this. And he now understands that even with the failures and the weaknesses of his administration, both as Conservative and Unionist Premier, we cordially concede to this high mediocrity a place in our critical affairs only second to the credit that he gained in England and in Europe as the head of a nation that had gloriously fought and magnificently won--in the war.

Canada never had as great and noble a servant, who failed so conspicuously on personal grounds to be the nation's master. But there were elements in the patriotic servant-hood of R. L. Borden, higher than the political masteries of more brilliant men.

A POLITICAL SOLAR SYSTEM

RT. HON. SIR WILFRID LAURIER

Fifty years from now some Canadian Drinkwater, charmed by the eloquent perspectives of time, may write an "Abraham Lincoln" string of personal scenes from the lives of Wilfrid Laurier and John A. Macdonald. The narrative will thus begin in the very year that the story of Lincoln ends, and it will carry on down just fifty years in our national history to the time when Wilfrid Laurier, passionate student of the Civil War, reached the end of his climax in the affairs of Canada and the Empire. But the poet who does this must be inspired; because no young country at that period of time in the world had had two such remarkable men as contemporaries, and political foes, and lucky is the nation which at any period has such a man as Laurier.

Outwardly Laurier's political career was complex where Macdonald's was simple. John A. was as great a Canadian as Laurier; but in the simpler times in which he lived he had less cause to be puzzled by the web of fate and of political cross-currents at home and abroad, even though he was immensely more baffled by politicians and party emergencies.

Laurier swung in a great romantic orbit of political sentiment, vaster than that of any other statesman we ever had. For the fifteen years up till about 1906, he seemed like the greatest man ever born a citizen of Canada. Before that period he was a romance. After it he was a national hallucination. The last three years of his life he was a tragedy.

Yet the tragedy kept on smiling. Half a century of smiles. We never had a statesman who could smile so potently. Never one with such mellifluous music in his voice, such easy grace in his style, such a cardinal's hauteur when he wanted to be alone, and such a fascinating urbanity when he wanted to impress a company, a caucus or a crowd. The Romist whom Orangemen admired, the Frenchman who made an intellectual hobby of British democracy, the poetic statesman who read Dickens and re-read in two languages Uncle Tom's Cabin and sometimes played the flute, and the Premier of a bilingual country who had a passion for the study of the war which emancipated the negro, was the kaleidoscopic enigma of Canadian public life.