Arthur Meighen A Biography Volume 1

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T he R ight H onourable A rthur M eighen, P.C.

ARTHUR MEIGHEN A Biography by ROGER GRAHAM

THE DOOR OF I OPPORTUNITY

CLARKE, IRWIN & COMPANY LIMITED To r o n t o

VANCOUVER

C O P Y R IG H T ,

by

C L A R K E , IR W I N

CANADA,

IÇ Ô O

& C O M P A N Y L IM IT E D

r c *06(0 C^12_ P W

\lA CA\

Printed in Canada

CONTENTS Preface I II

vii

T he Y ears

of

P reparation

F rom C lassroom

to

III

F rom C ourtroom

IV

Promotion

V VI VII VIII IX X XI

to the

3

C ourtroom

27

C ommons

44

to

M inistry

65

W artime P olitics: R ailw ay P roblems N ational D iscord

and

83

W artime P olitics: C onscription W artime P olitics: Strategy

for

112 a

T est

T he N ineteen Seventeen E lection O verseas P olitical U ncertainties T he N ationalization Successor

to

B orden

and

ofStrength

and a Journey

Social U nrest

of the

145

G rand T runk R ailw ay

178 21 i 245 273

Appendix

309

Notes

325

Index

339

PREFACE T he name o f Arthur Meighen, once one to be seriously reckoned with in Canadian affairs, is undoubtedly now unknown or known only vaguely to the great majority o f Canadians. Sic transit gloria. It is my hope daat this volume, and the one that is to follow, w ill help to rescue that name from -oblm oruand at the same time contribute to an understanding o f some aspects o f recent Canadian history in which Mr. Meighen played a leading part. I met Mr. Meighen for the first time some months after the publication in 1949 o f his volume o f speeches, JJnrevised and Un­ repented. I urged upon him that the favourable reception given his book and his association with so many prominent men and important events during the past forty years clearly indicated that he should write his memoirs. The same suggestion had, o f course, been made to him by others, but he replied to me with unmistakable finality, as probably he had replied to them, that at his age (he was then seventysix) he could not embark on such a task. I then proposed that I write his biography. He chuckled rather sardonically and said that, while he was gratified diat anyone should think such an undertaking worth while, he doubted that many would be interested in reading it, an opinion which I sincerely hope was without foundation! H ow­ ever, after considering the matter he agreed to sanction the work and to co-operate with me by providing whatever information he could. It was at about that time that the rather elaborate arrangements for the preparation o f W illiam Lyon Mackenzie K in g’s official bio­ graphy were announced and Mr. Meighen may well have reflected ruefully on the contrast between the impressive talents and other resources being devoted to that enterprise and the comparatively in­ auspicious circumstances under whicfi it was proposed to write the story o f his own life. A distinguished political scientist was retained as author o f Mr. K in g ’s biography and he was to enjoy the help o f a considerable staff o f expert assistants, to say nothing o f generous financial support from a great American foundation. O n the other

vii

vin

PREFACE

hand, I was, with every good reason, totally unknown to Mr. Meighen, though he was quite well aquainted with a number o f my relatives with whom he had grown up and gone to school near St. Marys. In­ deed, I am inclined to think, for it would be consistent with his strong loyalty to old friends and associates, that he authorized my work simply because he respected my heredity; he had little or nothing else to go on. Although I am fully and solely responsible for what the following pages contain, since this has been an individual and not a collective project, whatever merit they may possess is the result in very large measure o f the invaluable assistance given by a great many people. As they are so numerous, to mention each o f them is impossible. But, arbitrary as the selection may be, certain ones must be singled out and first and foremost among these is the subject o f the book himself. From the outset Mr. Meighen was unsparing o f time and effort in facilitating my work. He was always ready to talk to me, to write to me, to prepare notes and memoranada for my use and to let me consult his papers and records. A t the same time, and this I wish to emphasize, he never sought in any way to dictate to me what I should write or how I should write it. He always said that I must be completely free to decide for m yself how the job should be done and he invariably showed a scrupulous respect for that principle. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to him for this, or for his help, hospitality and unfailingly gracious courtesy. To have had his friendship, to have spent a good deal o f time in his company and to have listened to his conversation was an honour and a privilege which I would exchange for nothing else. To the members o f his immediate family, also, my thanks are due : to Mrs. Meighen, a generous and charming hostess, who gave me her own recollections o f certain events and allowed me to use the scrap­ books she had kept in years gone by; to their daughter, Mrs. Donald Wright, and their two sons, Mr. T . R. O. Meighen and Mr. M. C. G. Meighen, for their many helpfol courtesies. Through my association with Mr. Meighen I had the good fortune to meet some o f his many friends and acknowledgment must be made o f their assistance. In particular I am indebted to Dr. Eugene Forsey, whose contagious enthusiasm for the subject matter o f this book was matched only by his very extensive knowledge o f it. Dr. Forsey put his own relevant papers, his enviable memory and his admirably acute intellect freely at my disposal and for this I am grateful. In

PREFACE

IX

addition, he read this volume in manuscript and contributed a number o f important and helpful criticisms. One o f Meighen’s oldest and closest friends, the late Colonel H ugh Clark, a delightful companion and raconteur extraordinary, plied me with anecdotes and remini­ scences from an inexhaustible supply stored up during his immensely long and considerably varied experience. I want also to record my gratitude for their help to C h ief Justice Albert Sévigny o f Quebec, Mr. A . K irk Cameron, Mr. M. Grattan O ’Leary, Mr. Arthur Ford, Hon. C. G. Power, Hon. T . A . Crerar, Hon. E. L. Patenaude, Mr. Joseph Miller, Mr. A . G. Penny, Mr. C. D. McPherson, Mr. F. B. Bagshaw and Mr. A . B. Hogg. Professor F. W . Gibson o f Queen’s University called my attention to certain pertinent documents and shared with me his intimate knowledge o f recent Canadian political history. We frequently disagreed in our conclusions but his conversa­ tion was always stimulating. Mr. Meighen’s former secretary, Miss E. Mildred Edmondson, gave most valuable assistance in a number o f ways and to her my sincere thanks are due. Lastly but by no means least deservingly, to my wife, who listened patiently while the following pages were read to her at various stages o f their prepara­ tion and who offered many perceptive criticisms and suggestions, I offer my affectionate gratitude. I have had the advantage o f generous financial help from the University o f Saskatchewan, the Canadian Social Science Research Council and the Harold Adams Innis Fund, provided by the Rocke­ feller Foundation and adminstered by the University o f Toronto, where I had the privilege o f being Research Associate in the Depart­ ment o f History during the session o f 1957-58. I wish to thank the staffs o f the Public Archives o f Canada, the University o f Toronto Library, the Provincial Library o f Manitoba, the Saskatchewan Legislative Library and the Reference Division o f the Toronto Public Library for many courtesies extended. I am gratefill, too, for the editorial work skilfully done by the staff o f Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, and especially to Mrs. Patricia Vicari, who prepared the Index. R oger G raham University o f Saskatchewan August, i960

T H E D O O R O F O P P O R T U N IT Y 1874-1920

CHAPTER

THE

YEARS

ONE

O F P R E P A R A T IO N

Canada West. It was not much o f a place, an insig­ nificant hamlet tucked away remotely in the midst o f the huge forest. Huddled in the valley o f the north branch o f the Thames River, where the river descended three dainty steps in its slow, meandering course towards Lake St. Clair, a sawmill, a grist­ mill, a few log houses and a store furnished small, brave testimony that civilization had declared war on the wilderness. A lon g the edges of the narrow valley the hills rose steeply and all around the great trees in majestic profusion witnessed silently to the long, hard labour awaiting those w ho would conquer the land. Land ! that was the great lure in the fifth decade o f the nineteenth century, when this story begins. It was the prospect o f finding good, cheap land that had attracted the pioneer settlers who were moving in. They were coming now— the hungry, the dispossessed, the dis­ gruntled, the ambitious and adventurous— and already the forest was beginning to recede before the ringing blows o f the axe. It was the lure o f land that brought one young Ulsterman in particular to St. Marys at the end o f 1843. Rolled up in a pack he carried his meagre travelling possessions: a couple o f blankets, some food and clothing, a few books and a document, signed by the Reverend J. Harvey Rice o f Barton, Canada West, attesting “that the bearer Mr. Gordon Meighen is a member o f the Presbyterian Church in this place in good and regular standing and as such at his own request is hereby dismissed and affectionately recommended to the Christian fellowship and watchful care o f any sister church where God in his righteous Providence should cast his lot. . . .’n Gordon Meighen’s arrival was in fact providential, both for him­ self and for St. Marys: he was a school-teacher and the settlement was about to have a school. Gordon, the seventh o f the eight chil­ dren o f Arthur Meighen, a yeoman o f Londonderry, had moved to Upper Canada in about 1839 and had taught school at Balderson’s Corners near the town o f Perth in Lanark County and later in Perth

S

t. m arys,

3

ARTHUR MEIGHEN

itself. Before long he felt the urge to move on farther west into the Huron Tract, a vast wedge o f territory ten thousand square miles in extent, stretching eastward from Lake Huron and the St. Clair River. The tract was the property o f the Canada Company, which enthusi­ astically advertised the advantages o f buying land in it. It may have been the company’s propaganda that persuaded Gordon Meighen to leave the relatively settled society o f Perth and try his luck on a homestead in the western peninsula. He arrived at St. Marys, which was situated near the southeast corner o f the Huron Tract, very shortly after the naming o f the settlement, an event related to the building o f the first school whose teacher Gordon was destined to be. Founded in 1842 by Thomas Ingersoll, the place had originally been known as Little Falls. Ingersoll had laid out a town plan and sold several lots but the titles to these proved to be defective since the name Little Falls had not, as required, been formally registered with the Canada Company. Thus somewhat confusing legal difficulties had arisen which could only be resolved by the choice o f an official name. To see that they were resolved Thomas Mercer Jones, Commissioner o f the Canada Com­ pany, visited Little Falls in 1843, and brought with him his wife, the daughter o f no less a personage than Bishop John Strachan of Toronto. A meeting o f the inhabitants was called and the ways of democracy were at once revealed. A minority favoured retaining the name Little Falls; a majority wished to change it, but could not decide on a new name. Several names were proposed and rejected and various orators had their say. Finally Mary Strachan Jones intervened, perhaps moved by a sense o f noblesse oblige but more probably by a desire to get away from the wretched place, and settled the matter in a sprightly and novel fashion. She suggested that the village be named after her. In consideration o f this honour she would, she announced, contribute ten pounds towards the cost of the new school-house the settlers desired to build. The obstinacy of those who preferred other names melted away before Mrs. Jones’s charm and the equally alluring charm o f her money. W hat was a name, after all? But ten pounds! Mr. Jones handed over the money, Little Falls became St. Marys and Mary Jones, as befitted the daughter o f John Strachan, achieved sainthood and immortalized her name with one impetuous gesture.2 It was just after this that Gordon Meighen reached St. Marys. Family tradition has it that he was the builder o f the school, which

THE

YEARS

OF P R E P A R A T IO N

5

vvaS constructed o f limestone quarried locally, at a cost o f one hundred unds, though no doubt to some extent its erection was a com­ munity enterprise. W hen it was finished and ready for use the good villagers applied to the Canada Company for its contribution o f ten per cent o f the cost o f construction, which it was accustomed to pay for all schools built in its territory. The reply, signed by Mr. Com ­ missioner Jones, was somewhat disillusioning. He had already paid the school grant, he wrote, and he reminded the villagers o f the christening ceremony. The company’s share was ten pounds and they could not deny that they had received that amount from him as the company’s officer. It was a grievous blow to the people and the worst o f it was that the name St. Marys was already duly registered with the company. Whether or not Gordon Meighen was the school’s sole builder, certainly he was its first master. For three or four years, commencing in the autumn o f 1844, he instructed the young scholars o f the village and established a considerable reputation, especially as an expert in mathematics. But, like most others w ho found their way to St. Marys at that time, he had come to acquire land and almost at once he applied to the Canada Company for a homestead. The site he had chosen was on the town line o f Blanshard Township, eight or nine miles northwest o f the village. It was a farm o f one hundred acres and the patent for it was issued on November the twenty-seventh, 1844. As Meighen was still working in St. Marys he did not at once move to his farm, but he walked out there when­ ever possible to fell the trees, clear the ground and build him self a log cabin. On his hikes back and forth between the village and the homestead he got into the habit o f counting his steps, presumably in order to reduce the number as much as possible by finding the shortest route through the forest. Not long after receiving his patent he married Isabella Irwin, whose brother owned the farm next door. Like Meighen and many other pioneers o f Blanshard Township, the Irwins were Ulster people and Presbyterians, newly arrived from the Old Country. These good folk, sober, industrious and Godfearing, along with the Scots with whom they shared the district, left a strong imprint o f earnest Puritanism on its life and on the attitudes o f its inhabitants which Was not to fade noticeably for generations to come. In 1846 the first ° f the two Meighen children was born ; it was a son whom his parents c listened Joseph. About a year later the teacher resigned from his

I ARTHUR M EIG H EN

job in the stone school o f St. Marys and the family moved to their own property. Although there must have been enough work to do on the farm to keep any able-bodied and ambitious man occupied, farming for Gordon Meighen proved to be never more than a part-time occupa­ tion. The love o f teaching was in him. N o sooner had he moved from St. Marys than he was busy building another school about a mile south o f his homestead at a tiny crossroads hamlet known then and still known as Anderson. H aving built the Anderson school he became its master, receiving for his labours the princely stipend o f ^ 5 u r . 3%d. a year.3 H e continued to teach there and to farm until 1859, when he died prematurely, leaving his wife and two chil­ dren, the second, Eliza Jane, having been born in 1848. The untimely death o f his father meant that Joseph had to leave school at the age o f thirteen in order to help his mother on the farm. In any event, with no high school nearby it would not have been easy to continue his schooling. He thus had heavy responsibilities thrust upon him at a tender age and this experience no doubt reinforced the lessons taught by the Calvinist theology in which he was reared and the frontier environment in which he grew up: the lessons of individual moral responsibility, self-reliance, sobriety, industry and thrift. The Presbyterian church taught that these qualities were the marks o f righteousness; the hard life o f the frontier proved them to be advantageous, even necessary, to existence. W hen he was in his early twenties Joseph Meighen fell in love with Mary Jane Bell, the daughter o f Henry Bell who had a farm about three quarters o f a mile to the east. The Bells also hailed from Ulster, from the vicinity o f Cookstown near Belfast. Early in 1871 the young couple were married and Joseph took his bride to the homely but substantial stone house his father had built to replace the original log cabin. The house, unlike its neighbours, stood as it stands now at the far end o f the farm from the concession road. Some say Gordon Meighen built so far from the road because that was the only place on his property where there was a good well; others say that he was misinformed as to the location o f the townline road, which had not yet been laid out. A t any rate, there stood the house in a pleasant rolling landscape, surrounded by fertile soil no longer filled with the roots o f the great fallen trees but cleared, cultivated and productive. Here on June the sixteenth, 1874 Arthur Meighen came into the

.

THE

YEARS

OF

PREPARATION

7

world, the second o f the six children born to Joseph and Mary Meighen during the first twelve years o f their long life together. There were three girls and three boys, each o f whom, with commend­ able frugality, was given only one Christian name: Annie, Arthur, Sara, William, Edward and Jennie. “ Not one o f the six,” Arthur later recalled, “ever failed to testify to the wholesome home teaching that emphasized continuously the immeasurable value o f sound edu­ cation and the equally limitless and permanent importance o f habits o f industry and thrift. We were surely made to know that our success or failure depended solely on ourselves; and the idea that we could attribute to others, or to the community or to the country, accounta­ bility for our own failure was never permitted to find lodgment in our minds. To these principles we owe whatever success life has brought »4 us. A ll those who knew Arthur as a child seemed to form impressions of him remarkable for their unanimity. They remembered him as the most distinctive o f the Meighen children, a somewhat withdrawn, quiet and very clever youngster o f frail appearance, studious, serious, contemplative and absent-minded, a boy who gave the impression of living mentally in a world somewhat removed from his immediate surroundings. He commenced his education in the school his grand­ father had built and presided over at Anderson. Every morning he set out for Anderson, lunch box and school books in hand, following the bank o f a small stream known as Flat Creek which pursued its insignificant easterly course across the farms o f the neighbours to the south until it joined the Thames a few miles away. A lon g the creek he would go until he came to the Anderson road, about a quarter o f a mile from home, and then he turned down the road to school. Although he was an exemplary pupil, capable and indus­ trious, Arthur annoyed his teacher in one respect: he was frequently late in reaching his desk. His father explained that this was because he stopped to count the fish in Flat Creek. The stream and its deni­ zens seemed to fascinate him. Once he set his lunch box on the ground beside him as he stopped to gaze contemplatively into the water. When the noon hour came, and the scholars reached expect­ antly for their provender, Arthur’s, alas, was not to be found : he had left it beside the creek. In time a reputation for aloofness came to surround this unusual and rather solitary little boy. Indeed a modern psychologist might have found in him some o f the disturbing characteristics o f the

8

ARTHUR MEIGHEN

“isolate,” standing apart as he did from the communal activities of his fellows and resisting the socializing pressures o f the group. But his contemporaries at school, both at Anderson and at the other school on the town line which he attended subsequently when the school districts were changed, recalled much later, after he had become a national figure, that he had had enough o f the average boy in him to avoid becoming that most contemptible o f beings, the teacher’s pet; one o f them even remembered that the teacher had given Arthur a licking for gouging out die centre o f a piece o f chalk and using it to imprint circular marks on the backs o f the other pupils. For all that the eldest Meighen boy stood out sharply from the crowd. He was not unfriendly, but he did not go out o f his way to make friends. He seemed unmistakably to prefer his own company. The other children always called him Arthur, never A rt or even Meighen. Only the members o f his immediate family ever called him A rt and he apparently tried to discourage this. One day when his youngest sister, Jennie, was about two, she was playing around the barn with W illiam and Edward. Arthur, who was then ten or eleven, appeared and Jennie greeted him as “ Hart.” He remonstrated with her gravely, and patiently explained, “No, no, the heart is something in here,” pointing to his chest. “ My name is Arthur.” Certainly the boy was less gregarious than most children o f his age. He had no love for sports and was not proficient in them. The good-natured wrestling indulged in by the other boys as a release of animal spirits struck him as pointless and a waste o f time. When school was out for the day the others, including his own brothers and sisters, would tarry, unless the weather was very cold, to play a game o f some sort or chaff each other. But Arthur Meighen would set his face towards home, up the road, along the creek, over the rail fence and in the back door. There might be a chore for a small boy to do around the farm or lessons to prepare for the next day, but i f he were especially lucky there would be time before supper to spend with whatever book he was currently reading. Once he had learned to read, it became his chief recreation, indeed, more than that— his ruling passion. Efforts were made to interest him in more athletic pastimes, for the benefits o f healthful outdoor exercise were recognized. His father made him a bow and some arrows and tried to teach him how to use them but Arthur was neither interested in nor adept at archery. From his father’s workshop, too, came a cleverly fashioned spear with which to annoy the fish in Fla1

THE

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9

Creek but by his indifference the boy showed that he would rather count than kill them. O f course exercise could be had by doing useful work on the farm; this was the best means yet discovered o f strengthening moral as well as physical fibre and in any case the remorseless routine o f labour required the help o f all hands, how­ ever small and inexperienced. The jobs assigned him Arthur did widr a will. His first considerable task was to weed by hand a field of mangels. He was promised and received three cents a row for the work, but the rows were two hundred feet or more in length. “I stuck to the job until finished,” he wrote long afterward, “and in some measure established a reputation in the household for per­ sistence.”5 He had less success with his one and only attempt to milk a cow. Bravely he sat on the m ilking stool and went to work. When nothing happened despite his earnest endeavour, his mother, who was watching, exclaimed, “For pity’s sake, Arthur, go do something you can do!” What could Arthur do well, besides weeding mangels? His two brothers, once they were old enough, seemed to take naturally to farm work but Arthur was more at home reading, studying and talk­ ing about what he had read and studied. Even as a youngster he showed remarkable powers o f concentration ; when he was immersed in a book he became utterly oblivious to the bustling activity o f the rest of the family. Fortunately his parents were glad to encourage him in these habits. “ Neither o f my parents,” he later recalled, “ever begrudged me the time which I occupied in good reading though some o f it might have been on work d ays.. . . A n y thought o f taking time that could be employed in farm work, for any odier form o f recreation, would have been instantly smothered in disapproval.” 6 Neither Joseph nor Mary Meighen had much schooling but both had a very high regard for books and learning. They were deter­ mined that, so long as they showed they deserved them, their children should have all the advantages o f education which circumstances had denied to them. It was largely this consideration that led Joseph to sell the old place on the Blanshard town line in the spring o f 1886 and move to another farm on the western edge o f St. Marys within walking distance o f the town’s high school. I f they had remained out in the township eight or nine miles away the education o f the children would have ended when they finished public school, since their parents could not afford to board them in St. Marys for the winter. But it was simply undrinkable to the Meighens that their

10

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children’s schooling should stop then; so the only thing to do was to move. W hile recognizing die importance o f formal education, the parents knew that its benefits would be largely nullified by the lack o f a proper atmosphere at home. The children were constantly admon­ ished to pay attention to the teacher, to prepare dieir lessons thor­ oughly and to remember the great truth that to live a successful and worthy life one requires knowledge. But learning, after all, did not begin and end in school. Knowledge was to be found, too, and per­ haps most o f all, in the great world o f books. In their reading the children were guided and inspired chiefly by their mother, a woman o f high intelligence and strong character with a literary turn o f mind. Their father’s reading was confined mainly to the farm journals, which he perused assiduously in order to make him self as proficient as possible in his work and to keep abreast o f important developments in agriculture. He was a skilful and progressive dirt farmer but he made no pretence o f being anything more. He was acutely conscious o f his inability to speak and write grammatically and, while he had his own father’s talent with numbers, he readily conceded that he was not his wife’s equal when it came to a knowledge o f literature and history. Mary Meighen’s favourite author was Thomas Carlyle; she knew all about Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great and the French Revolution. But her tastes were catholic enough to embrace the works o f most o f the great English poets and prose writers. Their books she begged, borrowed or bought, urging her children to use and enjoy them. Arthur, for one, needed no urging and many a pleasant after­ noon he spent undisturbed under a fruit tree or, i f the weather was inclement, curled up indoors near the stove, in the company o f Shake­ speare, Gibbon, Wordsworth, Byron, Macaulay, Carlyle or Scott. His youngest brother, Edward, retained to the end o f his days a memory o f Arthur as a youth lying on the floor, totally absorbed in the book before him and absent-mindedly eating grapes from a nearby bowk Blessed with an unusually retentive memory, he remembered what he read and was fascinated by the various ways in which his favourite authors used the English language. O f them all Shakespeare, he knew, was incontestably the greatest, though for a lively and lucid prose style he thought Macaulay had no peer. But all were com­ panions who never failed to delight, no matter how many times he re-read their magic pages.

THE

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II

Since Sunday was a day when no work was done except die in­ escapable chores, it provided the greatest opportunities for reading. It was also, however, the day for formal religious instruction and while the family lived out in Blanshard every Sabbath morning found them in the wagon bound for the Presbyterian church at Motherwell, about three miles to the north in Fullarton Township. Every Sunday afternoon the children who were old enough walked back to the church again to hear the familiar Bible stories and the equally familiar moral lessons drawn from them. Unfortunately, Anderson, which was closer, had only a Methodist church which the Meighens were not inclined to attend. A t Motherwell the True Word was expounded and, after all, apostasy was much more to be dreaded than incon­ venience. Once, though, how or why he could not later remember, Arthur did find him self in attendance at a service in the Anderson church. The proceedings differed markedly from those he was accustomed to, and had, in his young Presbyterian eyes, a deplorable lack o f decorum and restraint. A t Motherwell emotions were kept in check; one remained sober, silent and still during the sermon, no matter how long it lasted, but at Anderson the pastor’s fervent remarks were punctuated frequently by cries o f “A m en!” Even the children joined their elders in what seemed to Arthur a shockingly rude display of impatience. In his own church one might indeed think that the preacher had gone on long enough but one would never dare to signify this opinion with shouts o f “ Am en!” The Motherwell church was situated on the edge o f the Mitchell road which ran in a northwesterly direction from a point west o f St. Marys towards the village o f Mitchell. A t church and Sunday school the stern teachings o f home and school— the virtue o f hard work, the necessity o f moral rectitude, the responsibility o f the indi­ vidual, the wrath o f God towards those who disobeyed His laws— were fortified by religious authority. In those good, simple days the separate influences o f home, school and church were in happy har­ mony and pointed the individual in the direction o f the same goal: success on earth and salvation in heaven through his own worth and effort. As luck would have it, the weekly journeys to and from Motherwell provided an objective illustration o f the great truth that the Lord did not help those who did not help themselves. A t the corner of the town line and the Mitchell road lived an indigent farmer by the name o f Johnnie Cameron, a Scot distinguished from his neigh-

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hours and most o f his nationality by a laziness o f character and a thrift­ lessness o f habit which were the despair o f his family and a warning to his disapproving friends. As the Meighens came down the road on Sundays they beheld the Cameron farm neglected, the Cameron house in disrepair and the four hungry, ragged Cameron children 1 balefully watching their progress from the overgrown yard. While the other farmers o f the district took care for the morrow, tilling fields, tending stock and repairing implements, Johnnie Cameron improved the hours by tinkering with the perpetual-motion machine he had invented, a device which would, any day now, bring him fame and great fortune. In the meantime his property went to wrack and ruin and his family suffered the consequences o f his cleverness. Here was poverty with all its horrid squalor to be observed and pondered, poverty o f which the sole cause was sheer indolence. No one could have been more disgusted by Cameron than Joseph Meighen, who was always fastidiously insistent on keeping up with the work on his own farm. The name o f the worthless man became a byword in the Meighen household and Mary Meighen, admonishing her children, would frequently warn them that, i f they failed in honest diligence, they too might become like him. The example o f Johnnie Cameron proved, indeed, the truth of the lessons that were constantly dinned into the young Meighens. Life on the farm was a constant struggle against the difficulties imposed by nature, which, though the soil was good, were still con­ siderable. To get ahead in this world, as any self-respecting person must desire to do, one must make a single-minded, purposeful onward march toward whatever worthy goal one had in view. One was always confronted with opportunities, which must be seized, and with temptations, which must be shunned. One must know that time wasted was time lost, that a penny saved was a penny earned. Whatever one undertook to do should be done with all one’s might, and persisted in until it was accomplished. These were the rules of the road to success and o f the good life. W hen he was ten or eleven Arthur set out on his first business venture. The door o f opportunity opened and he entered, as he was to do invariably throughout his life. The publishers o f The Farmers Advocate offered the prize o f a pocket watch to those who secured a certain number o f new subscribers. A watch ! That was something worth working for! Armed with subscription forms, a pencil and a very earnest manner, Arthur scoured the district, soliciting orders

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from strangers and acquaintances alike. After much tramping from farm to farm he obtained the required number o f new subscriptions

and in due course received the glittering prize. It was a grievous disappointment that the watch refused to go. Still, it was his and he had earned it; it was a tangible proof o f the rewards o f enterprise and perseverance. In this atmosphere, characteristic o f rural western Ontario at that time, in this round o f hard work and simple pleasures, Arthur Meighen spent the first twelve years o f his life. It was an unsophisti­ cated, rustic life but a good one. There were few diversions and little enough variety in the daily routine, it is true. A trip to St. Marys was a major venture and was rarely undertaken, and even a visit to the nearer hamlet o f Kirkton was a special event. There was little of gaiety or frolicsome fun in a household and a community where high seriousness generally prevailed. But for all that the lad was well off and in later years, looking back, he knew how well off he had been. The land, properly assisted by man, was fruitful and, while Joseph Meighen was never affluent, the physical needs o f his family were always amply provided for. The members o f the family, among whom the mother was probably dominant, though never domineering, were a closely knit group, stimulated by lively intel­ lectual activity and sharing common interests and undertakings. A t school, while having to do without the frills and refinements o f modern education, Arthur was well grounded in the basic skills needed for true learning, and the church provided the bedrock o f faith and expounded the ultimate truth from which alone an under­ standing o f life’s meaning and purpose could be derived. There was unity and coherence in the experiences o f his early years. There seemed to be few contradictions, few uncertainties, and little i f any reason to doubt the wisdom and efficacy o f the lessons borne in upon him by deliberate admonition and by experience. One’s destiny was to work hard and to improve oneself. The greatest pleasures were those which enriched the mind and opened new vistas o f knowledge. Knowledge was power, the power to employ fully whatever talents divine Providence had bestowed, the power to gain personal distinctlon>to serve one’s fellow men. Life was not a gift but a trust. Woe to him who failed to acquit him well o f that trust and proved himsçlf unworthy to be numbered among the children o f God. When die Meighen family moved to their new farm on its western

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edge in 1886 St. Marys was a very different place from the backwoods village Gordon Meighen had left forty years before. It had become the market centre for a large surrounding area and boasted several small manufacturing establishments. The main line o f the Grand Trunk Railway passed through the town, enhancing its com­ mercial importance and giving its citizens the proud assurance that they were not very far from Montreal, Toronto or Chicago. Two newspapers, The Journal and The Argus, kept the townspeople in­ formed o f local happenings and in touch with the outside world, and expounded the virtues o f the Conservative and Reform parties respectively. There were churches o f every major denomination and a number o f schools, including the collegiate institute. Along Queen Street, the principal thoroughfare, several blocks o f imposing, indeed slightly forbidding, buildings had been constructed o f the local grey limestone. The residential streets, with their comfortable, com­ modious houses, had an air o f very solid middle-class respectability. St. Marys was a bustling and thriving town, lying in a delightful valley, and its people looked forward to a future o f uninterrupted progress and expansion. Certainly, moving to town represented progress and expansion of a sort for the Meighens. Their new home was a large two-storey brick structure, roomier and more modern than the old house on the other farm. They had more neighbours nearer at hand and could participate in the varied activities o f the town. St. Marys provided an assured and growing market for the products o f the dairy farm Joseph Meighen proposed to operate. And, best o f all, St. Marys Collegiate Institute was now within easy reach. But there was no change in the tenor o f life in the Meighen household. There was the same strenuous routine o f manual labour, the same constant empha­ sis on doing creditable work at school, the same sober and consci­ entious attention to self-improvement, self-control and self-reliance. The outward circumstances o f living had altered to some extent but the strongly disciplined life continued as before. Shortly after the move to the new farm Arthur, having fulfilled the entrance requirements, began attending the collegiate institute, then under the distinguished leadership o f Mr. S. K . Martin, princi­ pal and teacher o f mathematics, o f whom Arthur always afterward thought with gratitude and admiration. In high school the boy maintained the reputation he had earned in public school for ability, diligence and attention to his work ; he stood invariably near the top

of his class. He still displayed an indifference to games and sports and consequently he lacked the great personal popularity which, then as now, the athlete commanded in preference to the scholar. Nor did his rather shy and introspective disposition help to place him at the centre o f the school’s social life. Yet to some extent he was drawn out o f his shell at the collegiate for there he found an outlet for that talent for controversy which was to be one o f his outstanding characteristics in later life. He had, in fact, begun to develop that talent at home even before he had a chance to at high school. In verbal disputation his first encounters were with his father. Joseph Meighen had a very ready mind and a keen interest in politics ; for all his lack o f book learning and his trouble with grammar and syntax he could put up a forceful and cogent argument. His convictions— some might better have been termed prejudices— were very lively, and he spoke, i f not with polished correctness, at least with vigour and emphasis. He was fond of drawing his eldest son into political discussions, and there was much to discuss. Those were the days when the movement for com­ mercial union with the United States was burgeoning; the Reform party was committing itself to a supposedly modified form o f that policy, which seemed to many Canadians to contain dangerous political as well as economic implications, while the Conservatives under Sir John A . Macdonald were preparing to take their stand on “the Old Man, the Old Flag, the Old Policy.” There was excitement in the air and some o f this infused the periodic arguments between the Meighens, father and son. The father would begin by reading something aloud from the newspaper and then deliberately provoke a disagreement, for the sake o f argument upholding the merits o f Edward Blake, Wilfrid Laurier and Sir Richard Cartwright, while the youth ardently defended Macdonald, the hero o f that Tory house­ hold. It was a game but it was taken seriously and the two o f them would go at it hot and heavy, facing each other across the kitchen table, while the younger children listened in wide-eyed wonderment. Once, as the discussion waxed uncomfortably warm, Mary Meighen intervened and asked Joseph why he pretended to support men in whom he did not believe. “ It’s the only way the boy will learn,” was his reply and after that during these verbal duels she held her peace. Such sessions were good training in the skills o f argument but a larger audience awaited Arthur at school. One o f the student organi­ zations was an active and energetic Literary Society, whose object,

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according to its constitution, was the encouragement o f literary andl aesthetic culture, by discussions, original essays, and readings from original authors.” Am ong other things the society published the school newspaper, The Censer, o f which Arthur was at one time elected assistant editor. But the chief activity o f the Literary Society, and the one into which he entered most fully, was debating. Discus­ sions on weighty subjects were staged from time to time as the main item in an afternoon programme o f entertainment and edification. Precisely what went on and what was said at these meetings we shall never know ; the society’s minutes contain such illuminating pas­ sages as “T he debate was o f much interest. . . . The other parts of the programme, which we shall not mention in detail, were interest­ ing and good.” It is recorded, though, that in each o f his last three years at the school Arthur took part in one o f these debates, in every case upholding— successfully— a sound liberal opinion: That the execution o f Charles II [sic] was justifiable” ; “ That Capital Punish­ ment is [not] justifiable” ; and finally— vast and pregnant proposition! _“That the effects o f the French Revolution have been beneficial.” This was the orator and parliamentarian, serving his early appren­ ticeship. For these jousts he prepared him self with care, planning his arguments and trying to anticipate the weak spots in his oppon­ ents’ armour. And he not only planned what he would say but consciously strove to perfect his manner o f saying it. A knowledge o f the facts and the ability to construct a reasoned argument were most important but he knew that even they would be ineffectual without a mastery o f forensic technique. O n one occasion Mary Meighen chanced to look out a window to see her eldest son standing on a tree stump, gesticulating energetically and talking powerfully to himself. Surprised and momentarily alarmed, she called her husband. Joseph, come quickly ! Arthur must have gone out o f his head !” But Arthur was merely rehearsing a speech, very probably on the demerits o f the second Stuart, the horrors o f legalized murder or the blessings of 1789. The Literary Society absorbed all o f his time at school that was not devoted to his studies. In 1890 and again the following year he was elected a councillor o f the society and in January 1892 he capped his career by being elected its secretary for the spring term, his last in the St. Marys Collegiate Institute. T he minutes for that term, written in his round scrawl, are still preserved in the records o f the schoo • None o f the other extra-curricular activities interested him and in afij

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rase case w what time he could spare had to be spent assisting his father uu the farm. The dairying operations were becoming fairly extensive and there was plenty o f work to keep several hands busy. In the late 1880 s and early 1890’s prices were abnormally low and money was not plentiful. Joseph Meighen could not afford to pay Arthur with cash, nor did the youth expect such remuneration. After all, dairying was a family undertaking in which as a matter o f course he and his brothers took their part when they grew old enough. There were rewards, however, to be won by the industrious— the rewards o f education : as Arthur wrote later, “ One had to hold up his end to be worthy o f furdier schooling and University advantages.”8 In addition to what he could do after school, he helped out during the long summer vacations by delivering milk in the town. During the summers o f 1891 and 1892 he was allowed to take charge o f the merchandising end o f the business, in which his father felt less at home than he did with matters affecting production. Here was the challenge o f responsibility, and the lad responded eagerly, more than doubling the sales. The truth o f the lesson so often dinned into him was again shown by experience: personal effort results in personal gain, only through hard work can one find satisfaction and success. In the spring o f 1892 Meighen graduated with first-class honours in mathematics, English and Latin. The following September he boarded a Grand Trunk train for Toronto to enrol in the honours course in mathematics at the university. His mother, with her almost obsessive respect for education and her faith in Arthur’s ability, had planned for years that he would be a high-school teacher. The other two boys, she seemed to take for granted, would remain and take charge o f the farm when their father retired. Arthur would rise to the loftier eminence o f the pedagogue and this was his prospective ate as he solemnly bade his family good-bye on the station platform. , 11, was the first time that the shy, quiet, eighteen-year-old farm boy ad been to such a big city. In recent years there had been an occa­ sional visit to London, the business centre o f western Ontario, but ondon was by no means in the same class with the capital city, p ronto was big and wealthy, and big with pride in its size and wealth, k ne homes and imposing buildings. Toronto, as all Torontonians ew, was the province’s hub o f society and culture, as well as o f smess and government. In fact they had more than a faint susf cion that its commercial and cultural pre-eminence must be felt far

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beyond the borders o f Ontario. Those who had the good fortune to live in Toronto were blessed indeed. Not the least o f the civic wonders that excited the admiration o f these fortunate folk was the university, and to this academic mecca Meighen made his way. He found an inexpensive but adequate room in a house on McCaul Street, which overlooked The Grange, Goldwin Smith’s residence, and from which in the months to come he would sometimes observe that eminent Victorian walking and ruminating in his garden. After the finding o f lodgings came the formalities o f registration, followed by the mixed delights and disillusionments o f the lecture room. It was all so different from the simple and familiar life at home. The St. Marys Collegiate Institute had seemed a slightly awesome place when he first passed through its portals at the age o f twelve but the difference between it and the tiny public schools Arthur had attended was nothing compared to the difference between the collegiate and the university. A t high school his fellow pupils came almost entirely from the town and their experience o f the world was as limited as his own; at “Varsity” he mingled with sophisticated city-dwellers, as well as with young men, and even a few young women, from all over the province and from yet more distant parts. The teachers at the collegiate, while regarded with due deference and respect, had been few in number and well known to the students through direct personal contact; the profes­ sors and lecturers at the university were more numerous, more learned and more remote. However, Meighen came to know a few o f them well and to admire them for their intellectual gifts and teaching abilities. As a specialist in mathematics he had most to do with Professor Alfred Baker and the urbane and talented A . T. DeLury, one o f the most popular and respected instructors on the campus. But the man who made the greatest impression on him was Professor W. J. Alexander o f the Department o f English at University College. Meighen had been reading Shakespeare for several years and had already found in his works an inexhaustible source o f pleasure. When Alexander read Shakespeare aloud to his class, however, the power and beauty o f the language, the insight into human motives and emotions, die majesty and force o f the drama were revealed as never before to the enchanted youth. Alexander could establish a kind o f spiritual communion between a receptive listener on the one hand and the poet and his characters on the other. His lectures

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remained in Meighen’s mind as among the few truly memorable experiences o f university. What most impressed him at the university, however, was not the varied qualifications o f members o f the faculty, far less the charm o f its campus or the number and size o f its buildings. Its most cherished and valuable feature was the library. Here were more books than he had ever dreamed of, knowledge waiting to be devoured. Here was an opportunity at last to read to his heart’s content. W hile he paid enough attention to his formal course o f study to obtain excellent marks, at the same time he embarked on a career o f outside reading which carried him far afield. There was no scheme or plan to it, no self-imposed course o f reading. He simply dipped into those things that interested him most: history, biography, science, and, o f course, works by and about his beloved Shakespeare. “A tendency to reach into other fields,” he wrote later, recalling those days, “and a habit o f reading what I liked rather than what I was training in as a specialty, as well as an indulgence in more or less aimless reflections, resulted in my being only a moderately success­ ful student.”” “Moderately successful” ? His success, despite aimless reflection and random reading, was immoderate enough to earn him a Bachelor’s degree in 1896 with first-class honours in mathematics. Meighen’s university career was quiet and unobtrusive; it could not have been otherwise for one who spent most o f his spare time in the library or his room. He was not prominent in student affairs and made no effort to project him self into the limelight. He avoided social gatherings and athletic contests, whether as a participant or spectator, and maintained the air o f aloof detachment which had been his as a small boy. His circle o f close friends was narrow. Two of them, E W. C. McCutcheon and W. J. Wright, had been fellow students and fellow debaters at the collegiate. Another, William Dickson, had also been a St. Marys friend. The most intimate friend­ ships he formed after reaching Toronto were with J. Stanley McLean and Malcolm W. Wallace. After he became well known he was generally regarded with great affection, but while he was at university few people knew him well. There was nothing to indicate that he would ever be anything but the successful high-school teacher he expected to become, but for many o f his contemporaries a brighter future was predicted. Prominent in those years in the pages o f the student newspaper, The Varsity, were the names and deeds o f such persons as James T. Shotwell, Bernard K . Sand well, Hamar Green-

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wood, Robert H. Coats and Arthur J. Stringer. One personable young man in particular, the grandson o f the rebel William Lyon Mackenzie — known to his friends as Rex and to his detractors by less regal names— was among the best known figures on the campus for his numerous extra-curricular activities as well as his prowess in his chosen field o f political science. The shy mathematician was o f a different type. Others formed clubs and conducted student strikes and became the prominent men in campus affairs. He stuck to his books and his aimless reflections, for the most part foregoing the frivolous social diversions o f university life. N or did he shine brightly in a literary way. He contributed one piece to The Varsity, a lengthy review o f Tess o f the d’ Urbervilles, which had appeared three years earlier, describing it as “ a terrible assault on the accepted conventions for the measurement o f purity and worth,” and claiming that o f all H ardy’s novels it was “ the most comprehensive o f his genius and the most expressive o f his individuality.” 10 Such diversion as he allowed him self he found in the meetings o f the Literary and Scientific Society, which performed the dual functions o f a student government and an organization catering to the desire for entertainment and extra-curricular intellectual exercise. As The Varsity gravely explained, it was “ the oldest and largest of the university societies, and the only one in which the men o f every department and o f every year come together for mutual improve­ ment.” Meighen was a sporadic attendant at the weekly meetings of the “Lit,” and took part in two o f its debates, with less pronounced success than he had had in high school. The first, preceded by ren­ ditions o f “ H ow I Killed a Bear” and “The Wreck o f the Nancy B e ll” was on the topic, “Resolved, That the monarchical form of government is preferable to the republican form o f government.” Meighen upheld the negative (in late Victorian Toronto o f all places!) and lost. Two years later he tried again, this time arguing “ That the Govern­ ment should have foil control o f the railways.” A n observer who styled him self “ Campus” thus described the proceedings: Never— almost never— has a debate called forth so much discussion. Mr. Meighen [fie],11 the mathematical genius o f ’96, led the affirmative, and in a carefully worded speech fired thunderbolts of eloquence across the pathway o f the negative. When, however, Mr. Spotton arose in reply, his very appearance struck terror into the hearts o f the bravest o f his opponents. Every sentence was an avalanche, every word a0

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earthquake, every look a lightning flash, every motion an argument. Some nine or ten gentlemen spoke, and the matter was thoroughly thrashed out, regardless o f the hour. Mr. Sinclair, ’96, had to be called down at the very beginning o f his speech for making a joke, not provided for in the constitution. He said he just wanted to point out a spot on the argument o f the leader o f the negative. . . . It was like waiting for the returns from Algoma during an election, to wait till everyone had satisfied himself that he had said more than he knew, but the end came peacefully at last. The Chairman, in a very able and concise summation, reviewed the arguments and gave as his decision that “ the affirmative had succeeded in establishing their case from the theoretical standpoint, while the negative were certainly the winners from the practical point o f view.” A vote o f thanks to the Chairman, with cheers to give it spice, were the last echoes I heard as I slid down the bannister, and skipped round the corner at the grisly hour o f 11.30. I have decided never to miss a meeting o f the Lit, not even if a circus comes to town.12

For the sake o f “mutual improvement” the “Lit” sponsored annual mock parliaments as well as debates. Meighen was in two o f these, in the second attaining the exalted rank o f Postmaster-General. O f the first, a successor to Longfellow signing him self N. de Plume wrote a lengthy poetic account which told, in part, how Government sat, with supporters, ten to the right o f the Speaker, And to his left sat the lonely three o f an opposition; While to the back, in wildest confusion, straddled cross-benches, Wild-looking beings called Patrons— a fierce and turbulent party Strange to the ways o f a Government House, making din and disorder, And in their midst shone the beaming face o f their leader, McKinnon. Long was his hair as the hay in the meadows at autumn; One hand was closed on his club, and the other on Bourinot’s cover. Few were the questions put in regard to the Government’s actions, Few were the jokes effervesced by those furious members, the Patrons. Shortly the House grew earnest and wished to discuss the exchequer; Into Committee o f Ways and Means was resolved on a motion. Then rose a government minister, big with a nation’s finances; Spoke o f the gross dishonesty practised by those who preceded; Told how he had to contend with a deficit mighty in millions; Told how he hoped to handle the purse with care and economy, Leaving at last to his country a surplus o f hundreds o f millions; Hard would he strive to be honest and much to cut down the expenses; Warning he gave to the House that if ever the Patrons got power, Quickly the surplus would melt away as the snows in the spring-time.

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Lengthy and heated discussion was caused by this innocent Budget; Speeches were made by a number o f men both for and against it. Allison, Stephens and Shaw, McKenzie and Meighan, Showed in their speeches political shrewdness and skill as debaters. Wise with the wisdom of serpents they were but as doves were they harmless. Then was the question stated and put to a vote o f the members; Fixed was its fate for the House threw out the too-plausible Budget. Then, midst the cheers o f a mob uncouth, unruly and restless, Call was made on McKinnon to form a Cabinet quickly, And the august and law-making Parliament ended its session. Yet went the members not home, but abided, the clock struck but ten; Precedent called for another hour’s unsparing amusement. Quick as a flash the floor was cleared o f its chairs and its tables, And at the instrument faithfully sat the orchestra, Sandwell; Fingered the keys with the strength o f a giant and grace of a fairy. While o’er the floor tripped gallant mock Parliament squires, Government dancing with Patron, while Patron embraced Opposition. High festivity reigned for an hour ’mid lancers and dancers, Each a Society sage, a Parliament fiend and a waltzer. On thro’ the driving snow filed a foot-sore body o f students, Gay were they, tho’ the night was cold and the snow filled the path­ ways.13

“ Yet went the members not home. . . .” It is hard to imagine the serious-minded Meighen lingering to take part in such a madcap gambol with the other parliamentarians, no matter how sweetly B. K . Sandwell played the piano. I f he did, that occasion was the exception rather than the rule. His appearances at “L it” functions were few and fleeting in any case and as for other festivities— football games, conversaziones, dances and the spontaneous, roistering student larks— they knew him not. Years later when he was Prime Minister one o f his college contemporaries wrote him: “ You were always so bashful and unassuming at Varsity, never attended the dances, foot­ ball, baseball or even the Literary Society. . . . Rex K in g was always a noisy fellow, although brainy, and had ideas. Just the opposite to you, that is, as to the noise.” 14 These recollections were not quite accurate but they faithfully conveyed the impression Meighen made on his fellow undergraduates. Most o f the noise emitted by Mackenzie K ing at the university had to do with the notorious student “ strike” o f February 1895.' The brief boycott o f classes, which led inevitably to the appointment

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of a Royal Commission, was precipitated, though its basic causes lay deeper, by the dismissal o f Professor William Dale, who had indiscreetly criticized the university administration in public and expressed doubts about the competence o f some o f his colleagues. On the afternoon o f the day the dismissal was announced, a Friday, a mass meeting o f students was held in Wardell’s H all on Spadina Avenue. According to Mackenzie King, it was the largest mass meeting he had ever seen and “very enthusiastic.”16 K ing, by now one o f the principal figures among the malcontents, moved a reso­ lution calling upon the students to boycott their lectures. This was seconded by Hamar Greenwood, another ringleader, and carried with only four dissenting votes. Meighen, who had had nothing whatever to do with the growing agitation against the administration and against certain members o f the faculty, was present at the meeting, as was almost the entire student body. He had always been taught to respect authority, and not least the authority o f teachers, but in this case the issue seemed complicated. The faculty were to some extent divided among them­ selves and, even though the charges o f “tyranny” levelled by K ing and others against the administration might have been extreme, some of its actions did appear to warrant censure. So Meighen acquiesced in the decision to boycott classes and absented him self for the next two or three days, along with all but a tiny handful o f individualists, until the president o f the university promised the investigation o f their grievances the students had demanded. In later years Meighen’s chief recollection o f the strike was that it first afforded evidence, which subsequent events were consistently to confirm, that Mackenzie King protested too much and at too great length his devotion to freedom and democracy. By the time he graduated in 1896 Meighen had made up his mind that he would prefer a career in business to teaching. The decision that he should be a teacher had not really been his in the first place, but his mother’s, and he had merely accepted it without enthusiasm, as a dutiful son. But as his college years unfolded, the prospect o f spending his life before a blackboard, repeating over and over the propositions o f Euclid or the declensions o f Latin verbs, became less and less alluring. On die other hand, his success in increasing the sales o f his father’s dairy products, and even his much more moderate success in selling fence wire to the farmers around St. Marys during

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one summer vacation, helped to convince him that he had some talent for business and that there was more scope for enterprise in that field than in the respectable but underpaid vocation o f teaching, This decision he announced, much to his mother’s dismay, when he returned home after graduation. As luck would have it, there was a position open in a general store in die tiny hamlet o f Woodham, a few miles from the old Meighen farm in Blanshard Township, and this Meighen obtained. It took only a few weeks for disillusionment to set in. He soon learned all that the modest enterprise had to teach him and found that the life o f a village storekeeper had no appeal for him. Consequently, he returned to the farm, where he could be o f use for the rest o f the summer, hoping that another and more promising business opportunity would appear. None materialized, however, and there were still no prospects as autumn approached. Did this mean that he must teach after all ? His mother was not slow to reach that conclusion and the young man was himself at last obliged to bow to the inevitable. Accordingly, he returned to Toronto in September and enrolled in the Ontario College o f Peda­ gogy so that he might be taught how to teach. T he College was, “as conducted then, a worthless institution,” he later remarked.17 Most o f what was promulgated in the name o f method was either so obvious as to be infantile or so wispily elusive and utopian as to be immaterial. H e felt the term was very largely wasted and the only redeeming fact was that his good friends, Malcolm Wallace and Stan­ ley McLean, were there to bear with him the futility o f it all. The three o f them, though, did not bear it without protest. They were all members o f a committee which sent a grand remonstrance to Sir George Ross, the Minister o f Education. The Minister promised, as Wallace later wrote, to “ take the matter into his serious consideration, where, unfortunately, it expired.”18 A t that time positions for high-school teachers were not easy to come by and those who succeeded in finding them counted themselves fortunate indeed. Meighen, the reluctant pedagogue, was one o f the lucky ones. He was hired by the high-school board o f Caledonia on the Grand River in Haldimand County to teach English and mathematics and other subjects in the lower grades as well. The salary was small but it was a promising start and things went well enough for several months. Meighen may have seemed a rathet forbidding mentor to his pupils, with his austere, somewhat remote manner and his lack o f patience with fools or laggards. But in a day

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when the teacher was a person o f authority and not merely primus inter pares in a microcosmic democracy, the stern discipline he main­ tained and the strict attention he demanded were not unexpected. Suddenly in March o f that year in Caledonia the peaceful routine was shattered and Meighen’s teaching career blew up in his face. One day he reprimanded one o f the girls in his class who was proving troublesome, and when she sullenly replied by deliberately dropping her books on the floor with a loud clatter, he sent her home. The next morning before school had started for the day, her father, who also happened to be chairman o f the school board, burst into Meighen’s classroom “ and, with threatening mien and peremptory language, denounced me in the presence o f some pupils. . . .” Far from being intimidated, the fledgling teacher explained the reason for the disciplinary action, adding that he “ would not tolerate such impairment by him o f my authority over pupils” and demanding “that a meeting o f the School Board be called at once in order that the other members might hear the case and pronounce a verdict on his side or on mine.” 19 The meeting was held a few days later. Meighen appeared before it, but in no spirit o f contrition or humility. He presented the board with an ultimatum: either the chairman would resign or they must find a new teacher. These bleak alternatives were debated at length and at last a decision was reached in Meighen’s favour by a vote o f five to three, the chairman voting with the minority. The offended parent thereupon announced his resignation and Meighen accordingly continued to discharge his duties. By this time the affair had produced great excitement in the town, which, like the school board itself, was sharply divided into factions. The actions o f a teacher always provided meaty food for discussion and Meighen’s temerity in standing up to so formidable a person as the chairman o f the body which employed him had caused a stir. Feelings ran high, not least the feelings o f the former chairman, whose anger at being deserted by his board and bested by a stripling fresh from Normal School may be imagined. Though he had resigned from his position, he clung to its prerogatives, and, indeed, invented some new ones in an ingeniously engineered, i f totally improper, effort to gain revenge. When the vote upholding Meighen was taken two trustees had been absent. Upon their return, the chairman, having briefed them carefully, called another meeting o f the board without Meighen’s

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knowledge. The matter was again debated and a vote was taken. This time the members divided evenly, five supporting the teacher as before and five, including the chairman, voting against him. In order to break the deadlock the chairman now cast a second vote in his own favour and withdrew his resignation. W hen Meighen heard o f this the next morning he at once submitted his own resig­ nation, effective immediately. These events were not without their comic aspect but the situ­ ation was serious, both for Meighen who was unemployed and for his senior students who, with examinations fast approaching, were without a teacher o f mathematics and English. Anxious that their children pass their year, a number o f parents besought Meighen to carry on but he refused adamantly to enter the school. He did, how­ ever, feel a responsibility to his pupils and rather than abandon them in their hour o f need he rented at his own expense a room over a flour and feed store and there the scholars marched each day for their lessons. W hen the term was over he was asked by some o f his sup­ porters i f he would accept re-engagement. Without regret he replied that he would not. He had entered upon a career o f teaching with misgivings and distaste and, even before the row with the chairman, had been formulating plans for a different life. The dispute had simply strengthened his determination to escape from a profession for which he had no love and to put him self where he would never again be the victim o f the backstairs intrigues o f petty local politicians.

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for a new career, which were in his mind even before the quarrel with the chairman o f the Caledonia school board, embraced two steps : he would go west, and he would study law. The law had an innate interest for him and the prac­ tice o f it seemed to promise more variety and opportunity than a teacher could ever look forward to. Certainly it offered the prospect of independence, o f being one’s own master, and o f freedom from the pettifogging politics o f small-town school boards. And what better place to make a fresh start than the West ? People were beginning at last to move in great numbers into that land o f promise. N o one could pick up a newspaper, even in Caledonia, without reading something about the western boom and without being aroused by the opportunity for self-advancement that could be found out there. Winnipeg beck­ oned, beckoned urgently and irresistibly, and thither Meighen resolved to go. He would do what his grandfather Meighen had done when he left Ulster for Perth and then moved on farther west to the Huron Tract. The West was even farther west now but it still symbolized progress, freedom and opportunity. The young man’s mother wept when she heard o f his decision, her usually disciplined fortitude yielding to her great disappointment. She had so wanted Arthur to be a teacher and Winnipeg seemed very far away. Her son, how­ ever, was not to be deterred by tears or sentiment. He had made up his mind and that was that. As luck would have it, the means o f financing his legal studies and a further reason for going west appeared just at this time. Meighen read in a Toronto newspaper an advertisement offering a half-interest in a patent right on a machine designed for cleaning dried fruits. He investigated the proposition and became convinced that in his straitened circumstances and with his pressing needs it would be worth trying. Taking the few dollars he had saved in Caledonia and six hundred dollars he borrowed in St. Marys on the strength o f his father’s endorsement, he purchased the half-interest e i c h e n ’s p l a n s

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and in August 1898 set off for Winnipeg, the intended headquarters o f his new enterprise. His conveyance was a colonists’ coach on a harvest excursion train, the fare, Toronto to Winnipeg, ten dollars. It was an uncomfortable, i f economical, way to travel, no question o f that, but he had always been taught to bear discomfort stoically and in any case his mind was so foil o f thoughts o f dried fruit and law and o f a future full o f promise and achievement that he was more or less unaware o f his immediate surroundings. To get to Winnipeg was the first important thing. Unfortunately, the demand on the prairies for a machine to clean dried fruit was, for some unfathomable reason, almost non-existent. However ingenious the device may have been mechanically, the patent proved to be less than rewarding financially. As a result, Meighen was driven back on his own resources in order to repay his debt and to make a living for himself. Sadly enough, his only resource was his training and experience as a teacher and so he found him self once more engaged in that nonetoo-agreeable occupation. He secured employment with the Win­ nipeg Business College where, from the autumn o f 1898 until the end o f 1899, he spent six days and three nights a week teaching English and mathematics and, as enrolment increased, various other subjects. It seemed that he had escaped from the frying pan in Cale­ donia only to fall into the fire in Winnipeg. By dint o f rigorous saving, however, he managed, while working at the business college, to pay back the six hundred dollars he had borrowed and to accumu­ late enough money to begin studying law. In those days there was no law school in Manitoba. The student prepared him self by being articled to a lawyer, gaining such experi­ ence as he might and reading for the examinations set by the Law Society o f the province. Meighen’s new career got under way with the new century. On January the second, 1900 he took out articles as a student-at-law with Edmund L. Taylor, Q.C., o f Winnipeg. About six months later, in order to obtain a larger remuneration, he transferred to the firm o f Munsen and Allan, and early in 1901 he moved again, for the same reason, this time to the office o f Howard, Johnston and Loftus. After working there for a little less than a year, Meighen was pre­ sented with another opportunity to move on, an opportunity which promised not only monetary advantage but greater experience and responsibility as well. Articled clerks, in those days at least, had

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two consuming grievances: they were grossly underpaid and they were given little i f any chance to do work that would teach them anything about the law and the practice o f it. In Meighen’s opinion the second complaint was the more serious. It was true that keeping body and soul together on his wretched little stipend was a perpetual struggle but the utter drudgery o f the insignificant chores he was assigned to do was even worse. Later he remarked that he might just as well have spent his time as an articled student writing his own name for all he learned about the law during those days. Thus he was very happy and encouraged when S. R. W right o f Portage la Prairie, a settlement on the main line o f the Canadian Pacific Railway sixty miles west o f Winnipeg, asked him to take charge o f his office and practice in that town. Mr. W right had decided to move north to Swan River to try his fortune in a district just being opened up. Being uncertain o f the prospects up there, he preferred not to dispose of his business in Portage and wanted a young man able and willing to look after it temporarily. Meighen promptly accepted the offer, once again packed his bags and said good-bye to Winnipeg. It required courage, even for one driven to some extent by financial need, to give up the relative security o f his post in Howard, Johnston and Loftus and, without foil professional qualifications, to assume personal responsibility for another man’s practice in a strange town, but he had always been taught to seize every worthwhile opportunity that presented itself and he knew at once that this was no time for indecisive wavering. In any case, he was not wanting in courage and self-confidence. He was very ambitious and he was sure that the way to get ahead was to seek responsibility eagerly and to accept it gratefully, rather than to wait for it to be thrust upon him. The town o f Portage la Prairie had a rather chequered past and great expectations o f a bountiful future. In the early i88o’s it had experienced a sudden boom with the building o f the Canadian Pacific Railway. Soon it had outstripped even Winnipeg in rate o f growth, and land values in the town and surrounding neighbourhood had sky-rocketed fantastically. A fever o f hopefulness had gripped every­ one, only to be abruptly subdued by the economic collapse which shortly followed. In the later 1880’s Portage relapsed into a state o f somnolent quietude and the dream that it would shortly become the great metropolis o f the West retreated before the face o f a grimmer reality. With the turn o f the century, however, hope was born anew as the march o f the settlers into “ the last, best West” commenced in

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earnest. Two new transcontinental railways, the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific, were built, and their main lines, like that o f the Canadian Pacific Railway, passed through the town; optimism revived and the people o f Portage began once again to think that the town’s strategic location, coupled with the great fertility of the land around, might after all give it the future which had earlier been dreamed of. Forward-looking, hopeful boosters among its citi­ zens set to work to bring that future closer. The chief agents o f this good work were the Board o f Trade and its affiliated body, the Twenty Thousand Club. The latter, formed in 1906, was dedicated to the proposition that in ten years the population o f Portage should be tripled to reach the round and imposing figure o f twenty thousand. I f this were to happen the natural advantages o f the place must be made known so as to promote industrial expan­ sion. For, as everyone knew, no town was worth its salt i f it lacked industries and all the good things o f this life were to be measured in quantitative terms. The more industries, the more employment; the more employment, the more people; the more people, the greater the volume o f business ; the greater the volume o f business, the better the town. Such was the creed o f the civic-minded. In 1908 the Twenty Thousand Club published a booklet with the breathtaking title, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba: The Railroad Ship­ ping and Distributing Centre, the Manufacturing, Wholesale, fobbing and Residential Centre o f Western Canada. The authors o f this enthusiastic production set die tone o f their presentation, and gave the gist o f their faith, in one monumental sentence: Portage la Prairie is in just the right position on the map to interest and is sought by Manufacturers, Wholesalers, Jobbers and Investors, because it stands just within the Gateway o f the World’s Granary; a vast territory over which new villages and new towns are springing into existence over night; a territory o f such tremendous proportions that, whilst millions o f acres have already been cultivated, is still of such great depth and width that it is practically virgin soil; a vast rich agricultural field pregnant with opportunities and advantages, where the demand for every known manufactured article is increasing daily because Portage la Prairie provides every necessary and convenient railway facility for the accurate and hasty distribution o f all wares where the supply has never exceeded the demand.

They went on to declare unblushingly that Portage was already “ the greatest railway centre in Canada” by virtue o f the fact that the three

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transcontinental main lines and the Midland branch o f the Great Northern ran side by side, bisecting the town. They enumerated the many things that were already produced there, from flour and fence wire to soda water and cigars (“ the best domestic cigar on the Cana­ dian market” ). They printed photographs o f seven Portage churches and o f some o f the commodious houses, rambling stone or brick structures, typical residences o f the comfortable middle class in that comfortable age. They went into raptures over Island Park which, together with Crescent Lake, created “a scene indescribable for beauty and grandeur . . . adding not a little to the joy o f living in the Beauti­ ful City o f the Plains.” A ll in all, according to the booklet, Portage was a beautiful city nestled snugly in a forest of heavily foliaged Manitoba maple and other native trees; each street smooth, level, broad and clean, with beautiful shade trees and smooth granolithic sidewalks lining either side; with well-kept boulevards and bright green lawns, adding an air o f homelike cheerfulness and pleasant rest to the eye. The business blocks are constructed o f stone and brick whilst many, in fact the majority o f residences are built o f the same substantial material, emphasizing the conservative, prosperous, progressive strides the city had enjoyed throughout the years o f construction which has been conducted in such a way as to manifest a provision for future comfort and convenience as well as for the present.1

To this second Eden, this progressive conservative place, Arthur Meighen came early in 1902. It may be that he felt privileged to share “the joy o f living in the Beautiful City o f the Plains” or it may be that he realized that Portage, while quite a town, was not quite such a town as the Twenty Thousand Club would have one believe. He was never one to take much notice o f his physical surroundings, to be impressed by grandeur or bothered greatly by petty discomforts and inconveniences. But he probably could not help noticing the univer­ sal drabness, the biting cold, the relentless wind, the drenching dust and engulfing mud. But i f he did notice, he accepted these incon­ veniences as part o f his lot. He was no booster, and the back-slapping enthusiasm, the determined civic pride, the forced friendliness o f the lonely crowd were not for him. Portage la Prairie was a place to live in and especially a place to work in ; it presented him with a personal challenge, an opportunity to make good and a promise o f reward. Whether it grew into the metropolis so ardently hoped for by the Twenty Thousand Club or remained the rather nondescript place it actually was did not, for the present, matter much to him.

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In any case his life in Portage was not, in one respect, different from the life he had always led : he had to work extremely hard. The responsibility for conducting Mr. W right’s practice was an onerous one for a young man not yet called to the bar. For the first time it was borne in upon him how much one’s clients’ welfare and one’s own reputation depended on one’s industry, skill and judgment. His responsibilities could not be taken lightly and so he immersed himself in the preparation o f his cases. Then, too, being still a student, he was required to take out articles again, and did so with W. }. James, a Portage lawyer “ o f quite extraordinary attainments and limita­ tions.”2 This attachment took up some o f his time— as much o f it as James could command— time wasted in the performance o f routine, elementary tasks. In addition to all this his law examinations loomed ahead so that almost every evening found him in his room studying. It was thus not surprising that at first the people o f Portage la Prairie looked upon die newcomer as somewhat remote and detached from the society o f the town. They noticed his slim, almost gaunt, figure and his serious, tired-looking face as he hurried from the McLenaghan Block, where he roomed, to his office, or from office to court-house. He seemed, and was, a young man who had no time for idle chat or social diversion, a young man entirely preoccupied with his work. It could not be otherwise. Between practice, appren­ ticeship and study his days were fully taken up and he was not temperamentally inclined to make time for frivolous conviviality. The liking for his own company, his as a child, was still with him. The horror o f wasting precious time, so thoroughly instilled in him by his parents, was still, as it always would be, very strong. He had a career to make and knew o f only one way to make it: by singleminded, diligent attention to his work. To most o f the six or seven thousand townspeople, then, Meighen was, and remained as long as he was in their midst, a rather distant and eccentric figure, though they soon came to have a healthy respect for his professional abilities. They might consult him as a lawyer, they might, later, vote for him as a politician, but relatively few could with accuracy describe themselves as his friends. To the few who did come to know him well, however— and many o f the friendships he formed there survived long after he left Portage for good— there was much more to the man than met the casual eye. They discovered in him a quiet charm, an excellent sense o f humour and a kindly dis-

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position. As they knew him better, friendship ripened into affection for his personal qualities, and respect into admiration for his intel­ lectual talents. They learned that his outward reserve could be pene­ trated and that beneath it lay a mordant wit, a love and a capacity for good conversation and a fund o f droll stories which Meighen was as delighted to tell as his audience was to hear. They were impressed by his knowledge, amused by his absent-mindedness and delighted by his utter indifference, even after he had become a public figure, to such things as styles in dress, the creature comforts o f life and the acquisition o f goods and chattels as die signs o f success. And yet at times they felt rebuffed and mystified by a certain remoteness in Meighen, the protective barrier he threw up to shield him self from fools and time-wasters. I f a conversation degenerated into triviality, gossip or platitude, he might sit there for a time without listening, thinking his own thoughts, and then suddenly excuse him self and return home. Men’s organizations, except those o f the Conservative party, he studiously avoided, nor was he fond o f idle street-corner chats or casual visits to other people’s homes. This was not because of snobbishness or conceit or contempt for the folk o f Portage— far from it. But a man was allotted only three score years and ten; there was much to be done and no time to be lost in the doing o f it. Several other young men had rooms in the McLenaghan Block, where Meighen lived for his first two or three years in Portage la Prairie. The room next door to his was shared by Charles McPherson, a newspaperman, and Frederick Bagshaw, a bookseller. Often McPherson and Bagshaw would call on their neighbour for a chat. All diree had to occupy the bed since Meighen insisted he had no need for other furniture. The window was draped with blankets and the floor warmed with a carpet o f newspapers. They would sprawl on the bed, talking about books, politics (Bagshaw and McPherson were both misguided Grits) or the affairs o f the town. Sometimes Meighen would take up a volume o f orations he had been reading and give his visitors a passage from it, saying when he had finished, “What do you think o f that? Isn’t that good?” I f they agreed he might read them more and i f not he would explain why they were wrong. For part o f one winter the three friends during these dis­ cussions munched apples, which they plucked from a seemingly bottomless barrel in the corner o f the room. Meighen, trying to live as cheaply as possible and as often as not scorning to buy restaurant meals, had purchased the barrel as a long-term investment, only to

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find that he was unable to consume its contents by him self before they went bad. In the McLenaghan Block there was a certain amount o f the sort o f moderate, unsystematic carousing that one might expect o f a group o f unmarried men in their twenties. In this the temperate and studious Meighen did not join; life was too real and earnest! However, he would join the other inmates o f a Sunday evening to sing hymns around a piano, a pastime he always enjoyed, and he even allowed his natural aversion to athletics to be overcome tempo­ rarily to act as pitcher on their baseball team, Remy’s Colts. Later Bagshaw, with nostalgic affection for those good old days, swore that he had been a good pitcher and Meighen, possibly with greater realism, swore that he had not, but in any case when he left the Block in 1904 his baseball career came to an abrupt and permanent end. The cause o f his leaving was his marriage, for the McLenaghan Block, with its roster o f gay young bachelors, was obviously less than an ideal habitation for a newlywed couple. After moving to Portage Meighen had begun to dabble in real estate, then a very saleable com­ modity, and he had some success with it on a small scale. In the late summer o f 1902, at the time o f the Winnipeg Fair, he had taken a trip to the city. The object o f his visit was not to see the fair, in which he had not the slightest interest, but to keep an appointment with a man to whom he hoped to sell some farm land near Portage. He was sitting in the lobby o f his hotel, waiting for the man, when an acquaintance happened along, stopped to pass the time o f day and asked him to come upstairs to meet some friends. Meighen refused, as he was anxious not to miss the hoped-for purchaser. There­ upon the other, not to be gainsaid, went up the stairs and persuaded his friends to come to the lobby. Am ong them was Miss Isabel Cox, a school-teacher from Birtle. Miss Cox had come to Winnipeg to see the fair, which interested her intensely and which she was enjoying to the full, in spite o f having to limp painfully on a foot which had been stepped on by her riding horse just before she left home. She was the daughter o f Charles Cox o f Granby, Quebec, and niece of Palmer Cox, author o f the “ Brownie” books and builder o f Brownie Castle at Granby. Her father had died when she was four and subse­ quently her mother had moved with her to stay with relatives near Birtle and had married W. H. H. Wood, the town’s postmaster. When Isabel had come to the fair, she had been unable to secure a hotel room because the city was so crowded, and had found one in a private

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home; but by chance she had come downtown to visit some cousins who were staying in the same hotel as Meighen. The introductions were made and for the first and only time in his life Meighen found him self in love. Always he had been too busy or preoccupied to pay much attention to girls and his natural shyness had not disposed him to seek their company. But now, busy or not, shy or not, he knew that this gay, charming, sprightly and good-looking young lady was the one for him. Here again was an opportunity to be grasped. He let no grass grow under his feet. That very night he took her to a play, Still Waters Run Deep, and that was the beginning o f their courtship. It was hardly a whirl­ wind affair. Meighen, still a student and operating Mr. W right’s practice on a meagre salary, did not feel able yet to embark on mar­ riage, and Birtle was separated from Portage by one hundred and fifty miles o f the North West branch o f the Canadian Pacific Railway, so that the couple were able to see each other none too frequently. But such obstacles are nothing to those in love and at last the wedding date was set for June the first, 1904, when Meighen was on the threshold o f his thirtieth birthday. It was arranged that Fred Bagshaw and Charlie McPherson should be groomsmen. The two o f them had some difficulty in preparing the absent-minded bridegroom for his nuptials. McPherson was given custody o f the ring and licence about a week before the great day and he and Bagshaw took charge o f buying railway tickets and making other arrangements. Both o f them, as well as the other residents o f the McLenaghan Block, drew on their immense store of bachelor experience and plied Meighen freely with useful, if highly coloured, advice. A few days before leaving for Birtle a minor crisis arose. Meighen reported that his new shoes, purchased espe­ cially for the occasion, had been stolen. The local detective was called and suspicion was cast darkly on various individuals until suddenly Meighen recalled that he had stopped in for a shave just after buying them. A visit was made to the barber shop and there were the shoes, reposing exactly where he had left them with his customary forgetfulness, when he had paid the barber and walked away. Meighen, Bagshaw and McPherson were given a noisy send-off when they boarded the train for the slow, six-hour trip to Birtle, the day before the wedding. The next day, with the sun shining warmly out o f a cloudless sky, the ceremony was performed in the Anglican

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church. Afterwards a reception was held on a nearby lawn. With that peculiar gay solemnity appropriate to the occasion, toasts were proposed and responded to. There was laughter and jollity, suitably restrained, and then the couple set off on their wedding trip with shouted good wishes ringing in their ears. After a honeymoon in eastern Canada and N ew England, during which they visited Granby and the Meighens at St. Marys, they re­ turned to Portage where Meighen had purchased an unpretentious frame house on Campbell Street. He was by now a full-fledged bar­ rister and solicitor, having passed his final examinations in the spring o f 1903 with higher marks than he had received at university. He had his own shingle out now, at the doorway to the Millar Block on Saskatchewan Avenue, the town’s main street. There he had rented two tiny office rooms and was already by the time o f his marriage busily engaged in building up a practice for himself. In those boom times the practice could hardly help but grow and Meighen left no stone unturned to assist its progress. It was a typical small-town general practice, having to do mostly with civil matters and minor criminal offences. There were wills to draw up and estates to settle, real-estate transactions to be handled, small disputes to be smoothed over or, i f necessary, taken to the courts, and petty offenders against His Majesty to be defended. It was routine, hum-drum work in a way and yet it had infinite variety and a never-ending fascination for Meighen. A cross-section o f pioneer prairie humanity passed in and out o f his office door: the proud and the humble, the belligerent and the contrite, the greedy, the desperate, the stupid, the hopeful, the downcast, farmers and labourers, merchants and tradesmen, English, Scots, French, Icelanders and “ Hunkies.” The practice soon outgrew the first two small rooms and Meighen moved to larger quarters in the same building. There he spent most o f his waking hours, writing briefs, preparing arguments, pondering courtroom strategy and study­ ing die authorities. N ot long after his marriage he went into the first o f several partnerships-at-law with Ewan A . McPherson, many years later Meighen’s political rival in Portage and still later a distin­ guished chief justice o f Manitoba. Whatever the case he had in hand, Meighen treated it as though all depended upon a successful outcome. He did not spare himself in doing the best he could for his clients but devoted him self whole­ heartedly to each case. His clients, however, did not always co-oper­ ate as well as they might have. One o f these was a farmer from the

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Grandview district by the name o f McFadyen, a stupid and cowardly person who was accused o f rape. The case was tried in the Court o f King’s Bench at Portage. Shortly before the trial started Meighen was instructing the prisoner on court procedure and on how he should plead. H aving with some difficulty discovered from the wretch that he wanted to plead innocent, Meighen told him : “ Remember, at that point I want you to stand erect, hold your head up and look straight at the judge, then say ‘Not guilty’ with considerable vengeance.” When the trial got under way and die charge was read, the accused was asked how he pleaded. He looked at the judge and in a trem­ bling, scarcely audible voice answered : “ Not guilty with considerable vengeance.” He was convicted and, with considerable vengeance, sentenced to a lengthy prison term. In his practice Meighen encountered many humorous incidents and he relished them, especially i f they savoured o f irony. Once he took a precocious youth named A ylw in Pratt into his office as a prospective law student. Pratt was too young to be formally articled but possessed unquenchable determination to join the profession. Meighen knew from his own experience how tiresome and frustrating the life o f a law student was and A ylw in Pratt soon reached the same conclusion. One o f the seemingly irrelevant chores he was given to do was to go to the court-house to fetch certain exhibits. One o f Meighen’s clients, a house painter, had just won a small suit against his former partner and the Court had awarded him an assortment o f brushes, cans o f paint and ladders, all o f which had been produced as exhibits. A ylw in went to the court-house and the clerk loaded him up. On his way back to the office, brushes protruding from every pocket and paint cans hanging from his arms, he met Meighen on the street. “W hat on earth, boy, are you doing with all that stuff?” Meighen asked. A ylw in looked up solemnly and with great dignity replied: “ I’m studying law, sir.” By far the most famous criminal case Meighen handled was that in which he defended a certain Eli Grobb, a farmer o f the Treherne district, south o f Portage, who was accused o f murder. Grobb, who was in his late thirties at the time, lived a solitary bachelor existence. He had mortgaged some horses and, the mortgage being overdue and unpaid, an assistant bailiff by the name o f Clarkson was sent out to his farm one day in the early spring o f 1906 to seize the horses. Clarkson entered Grobb’s small, ramshackle house and stated his business. Grobb ordered him to leave but Clarkson refused. The

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order was repeated a second and third time without effect, whereupon Grobb walked over to the foot o f a stairway, picked up a gun and shot the bailiff dead. He then hitched up a horse and drove south to where his father and younger brother lived. He told them his story and subsequently repeated it to a Mounted Police constable at Treherne, admitting his guilt and emphasizing that he had thrice warned Clarkson to leave. After Grobb’s arrest certain members o f his family asked Meighen to undertake the defence. Feeling him self too inexperienced for such a difficult case, he advised them to retain senior counsel from Win­ nipeg, but told them he would be glad to assist whomever they secured. They agreed to this but warned him that, while they could find enough money to pay for one lawyer, they had not the funds for two. A t the ensuing trial, before Mr. Justice Perdue and a jury, George A . Stewart Potts, K .C., o f Winnipeg, who had been retained by the defendant, put up a plea o f not guilty by reason o f insanity, arguing that Grobb was irresponsible mentally, unable to instruct counsel and therefore unfit to stand trial. Expert testimony was adduced in sup­ port o f this contention but the Crown, represented by Edward Ander­ son, K .C., o f Portage, was able to produce equally strong or stronger expert testimony in support o f the opposite view. The sheriff and jailers who had been in charge o f Grobb gave evidence o f his normal behaviour while in prison. The jury empanelled to try the insanity question, perhaps impressed by the division o f opinion among the experts and the accordance o f opinion among the jail officials, unani­ mously found the accused to be sane and fit to stand trial. A t the suggestion o f Mr. Justice Perdue and with the consent o f all counsel, the trial for murder was delayed until the fall assizes. W hen the case was called at the fall assizes, Grobb demanded that the judge dismiss Potts from the case. He stated that he did not approve o f the plea o f insanity, that he was perfectly sane, that he had discharged Potts five months previously and that, while he had no wish to be represented longer by Potts, he had no objection to having his defence entrusted to Meighen. However, the judge re­ fused to comply with this demand and the trial proceeded. Potts, interrupted by frequent rude protestations from Grobb, again entered a plea o f insanity, arguing that while the accused might have been sane when so declared by the jury in the spring, he now was utterly incapable o f instructing counsel and should therefore not stand trial. A ll the experts who had testified before were again in attendance but

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in addition the defence had secured Dr. Chamberlain o f Toronto and Dr. Russell o f Hamilton, Ontario, both o f whom had examined the prisoner. Again the conflicting evidence as to Grobb’s mental con­ dition was offered, though o f course to a different jury, and again the man was found sane. A t this juncture the exasperated Mr. Potts washed his hands o f the case. There were good reasons for his discouragement. The panel from which the jury would be chosen to try Grobb for murder had been sitting in the courtroom when the verdict that he was sane was brought in; presumably the prospective jurors could not help but be influenced by this. In addition, the fonds o f the Grobb family had been exhausted by this time and the learned counsel from Win­ nipeg could hardly be blamed for declining to act further without much hope o f remuneration in a case that seemed hopeless. When Potts withdrew so did his young associate from Portage but upon the judge’s urging the latter reluctantly resumed the defence alone after Grobb had signified his approval. Meighen stipulated, however, that Dr. Chamberlain and Dr. Russell, who by now had left town, must be brought back at the Crown’s expense in order to testify once again for the defence. The request was granted by the Attorney-General of Manitoba. Finally, in the late fall o f 1906, the actual trial o f Grobb began. As there was no doubt that he had murdered Clarkson, the only hope for him was to establish his insanity at the time o f the crime. Meighen set out to do so, hampered by Grobb’s angry opposition to this strategy and by the fact that he had twice been declared sane enough to stand trial. Under Meighen’s questioning the evidence o f Dr. Russell was particularly valuable. It portrayed Grobb as a typical paranoiac who would impress the uninitiated as perfectly rational most o f the time but who actually suffered from a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur. Russell testified that Grobb was convinced that attempts were being made to poison his food in prison and that clergymen were preaching against him from their pulpits, that he intended to obtain a seat in the House o f Commons and expected a portfolio in the Laurier Cabinet, and that i f convicted he had made up his mind to lay his case personally before the K ing. He also emphasized that Grobb must have been in this deranged mental condition when he murdered Clarkson. During the presentation o f evidence Meighen made the greatest effort, both in examination and cross-examination, to bring out every

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fact, every impression which might indicate insanity. But his talents as a trial lawyer were even more strikingly revealed by his closing address to the jury. Here was his chance to construct an argument and he talked for an hour and twenty minutes, reviewing the evidence, fitting the pieces o f the puzzle together until finally there appeared, real and convincing, the picture o f an unfortunate wretch o f fre­ quently rational conduct murdering a man in cold blood and yet not responsible for the deed. The climax o f the speech came at the very end when he quoted Byron’s description o f Jean Jacques Rousseau: But he was phrensied— wherefore who may know? Since cause might be which skill could never find; But he was phrensied by disease or woe, To that worst pitch o f all, which wears a reasoning show.

Whether or not because o f the magic o f Byron, the jury, after deliber­ ating almost three and a h alf hours, returned the verdict for which Meighen had asked: “N ot guilty on account o f insanity.” Mr. Justice Perdue thereupon committed Grobb to die pleasure o f the LieutenantGovernor in Council and then took the unusual step o f publicly congratulating the counsel for the defence on his conduct o f the case. I would like to say before the court adjourns that I think that all the friends and relations o f the accused owe a great debt o f gratitude to Mr. Meighen in continuing the defence under the circumstances and also for conducting it in such a highly capable and successful manner. He has certainly done everything that counsel could have done on behalf o f the accused.3

It was a great personal triumph for the young lawyer who had been practising less than four years. “ This case,” he later observed, “ cer­ tainly did me no harm in Central Manitoba. From that time on it became possible for me to be somewhat more selective in the accept­ ance o f clients.”4 The only person who showed no appreciation o f Meighen’s labours was the man saved from the gallows, Eli Grobb. After the judge had complimented his lawyer, Grobb rose and announced that he hoped to appeal and to present fresh evidence, an announcement which gave furdier proof o f his insanity, i f any were needed. He then stalked from tire courtroom without acknowledging Meighen’s presence in any way, much less thanking him for what he had done. N o doubt he was thinking o f what K ing Edward V II would do when he heard o f this gross miscarriage o f justice.

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The case had an amusing aftermath which Meighen recounted to his friends with evident relish. Instead o f being elected to the House o f Commons Grobb was directed to the Brandon Asylum. Some years later when Meighen was him self in Parliament and engaged in an election campaign, he visited the asylum and came upon Grobb in the grounds. “ Hello, Eli,” he said, “I see you’re still here.” “ Yes,” growled the other, “ and you’re the son o f a bitch who sent me here.” Meighen tried again. “ It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen you, Eli.” And Grobb replied, “ I ain’t been sheddin’ no tears.” Marriage for Meighen brought a marked change, a change for the better, in his domestic arrangements. The catch-as-catch-can bachelor existence o f the McLenaghan Block gave way to the well-ordered routine— the regular meals, the clean clothes, the comfortable ameni­ ties— o f a well-organized household. Isabel Meighen managed do­ mestic affairs with brisk efficiency, making up for her husband’s absent-minded indifference to what he considered small things. She gave the same meticulous attention to detail in looking after house­ hold and social relations that he lavished on the preparation o f his cases. He could not have yearned for the McLenaghan Block in the face o f die obvious advantages o f the married state. But the greatest blessing o f marriage for him was children. The first o f their three was born in October 1905 and was resoundingly christened Theodore Roosevelt O ’Neil. O ’Neil was a family name on the Cox side and the other two names were given in deference to the rough-riding, gogetting President for whom Meighen had conceived a great admira­ tion. Meighen doted on Teddy, as he did on his other two children when they were born, and it was one o f die regrets o f his later years that he had not been able to find more time to spend with them when they were small. Marriage also brought a change in his social relationships. His cronies o f the Block, especially Fred Bagshaw and Charlie McPherson, were not forgotten, o f course. They still met frequently and talked about politics and literature and life. But now the Meighens moved mostly in a circle o f young married couples like themselves where a solitary bachelor would, some o f the time at least, feel slightly out of place. Their social engagements were less attractive to Meighen than they were to his wife, who liked a gay good time in the company of their friends. Small talk about this and that soon palled on him ;

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dancing did not appeal to him much ; fun for its own sake was not fun and often Meighen would retreat from the madding crowd to read or study or simply go to bed. Once, after he had been elected to the House o f Commons, a group o f people were in the Meighen livingroom singing, laughing and enjoying themselves. The host soon excused him self and went to another room to work on a speech for the next session. After a while one o f the guests said to Isabel Meighen, “ Won’t we disturb Arthur with all this noise? ’ “ Not at all,” was the reply. Persisting, the guest sought out Meighen and asked him if he was not distracted by the noise. “W hat noise?” he answered. “ I didn’t hear any noise.” His ability to shut out the world while he concentrated on what he was doing was a neverfailing source o f wonder to the people o f Portage. His friends noticed it in his home; his partners and students noticed it in his office. He could work endlessly, serenely, without flurry, under almost any conditions, and he always seemed surprised that others could not do the same. Nothing appeared to rattle him. Wherever he was in the flesh and whatever was going on around him, i f he so desired he could be far away in mind and spirit. Stories o f Meighen’s eccentric absent-mindedness multiplied. Once he went to a wedding attired in a morning suit and tan shoes. Another time he lost a copy o f H olland’s Jurisprudence and, after searching for it in every likely place, he told Fred Bagshaw about it, thinking that someone might have brought it into the bookseller’s shop. Bagshaw had not seen it and asked Meighen to try to remember where he had last been reading it. A t last Meighen recalled that he had been sitting on a woodpile on die edge o f town. “Then some Indian has probably picked it up when filching some wood,” said Bagshaw. They hastened to the woodpile and searched in vain. From there they went to a nearby Indian village and found the volume in the possession o f an impassive brave, who reluctantly handed over his unfamiliar and mysterious booty. The incident which most endeared Meighen to the Portagers occurred after a fashionable wedding in the town. The Meighens were among the guests and they left Teddy in the care o f some neigh' hours who were not honoured with an invitation. The wedding was followed by a reception and dancing. About midnight Meighen decided it was time to go home. His wife, however, was enjoying herself immensely and wanted to stay longer. A t length it was agreed that Meighen should go home, retrieve the baby from the neighbours

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and put him to bed. Charlie McPherson and Fred Bagshaw would bring Isabel home when the party was over. About one-thirty in the morning they drove up to the Meighen house and when Isabel went jn die two men waited to make sure that all was well. In a moment they heard an excited cry: “W here’s Teddy?” Meighen had gone to bed and was sound asleep. The neighbours were still baby-sitting. This was Arthur Meighen o f Portage la Prairie, Manitoba: a re­ spected lawyer, immensely able, industrious and conscientious; a serious man but one with a keen ironic sense o f humour; temperate of habit, kindly o f disposition, firm in conviction and integrity; simple in tastes, without affectation or conceit; not easy to get to know well, but once known, liked and admired. His friends knew from his early days in their midst that here was a man with a future. But they did not know that there was much more, very much more, in store for him than a general law practice in a prairie town. The little world o f Portage was good enough, though limited, and Meighen had cause to be happy that Fate had cast his lot there. Many men have had to be satisfied with fewer blessings than were his and con­ tent to live out their days in secluded anonymity. But Meighen was not such a man. For all its simple attractions, and though he felt at home amid its familiar surroundings, the town did not provide enough scope for his aspirations. Beyond it, beyond the daily routine of home and office and court-house, lay another world, the great world o f public affairs, beckoning to men o f ambition and talent, offering outlets for creative energy, opportunities for power, service and recognition. Meighen, ambitious, eager and conscious o f his abilities, could not let this other world pass him by. A life spent buried in Portage would have been for him a fretful and frustrating existence. He had moved successfully from pedagogy to law, from East to West. By 1907 he knew that the time had come to move on again and had made up his mind to go into politics. His decision rcieant that Portage la Prairie would see him less and less in time tocome, until at last it would see him no more.

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i n t e r e s t in politics was, o f course, no new thing for Meighen. It had been born in the old days when he used to argue with his father as a youngster in St. Marys. There the highly developed political consciousness o f his home and com­ munity had been ingrained in him. It remained with him and was strengthened as he grew up, and it flourished in the atmosphere of pioneer prairie society among a people whose future depended heavily upon what governments did and how they did it. N ot long after moving to Portage Meighen began to concern himself, though at first not very prominently, in the affairs o f the Liberal Conservative party there. He joined the Young Men’s Conservative Club and performed his first recorded political act at a banquet tendered by the club to Hugh Armstrong, the provincial member for Portage, in 1903. Meighen proposed a toast to the legislature, telling “ a humorous tale to emphasize the need for effective organization in the coming [pro­ vincial] campaign.” 1 Humorous it may have been, but not sufficiently so for the reporter from the local Tory paper to include it in his account o f the affair. W hen the Dominion election campaign o f 1904 got under way, Meighen delivered several speeches on behalf o f the member for Portage, Nathaniel K . Boyd. It was to no avail, however, for the seat was captured for the Liberals by John Crawford, an implement dealer in Neepawa and a man o f no great eminence or ability but o f good repute in the community. Although he fought in a losing cause, this first taste o f electioneering was highly pleasing to Meighen and it whetted his appetite for more. A n audience at a political meeting, he found, stimulated him, just as a jury in a courtroom did ; it challenged his forensic powers and tested the agility o f his mind. And what was an election, after all, but a gigantic trial in which the electorate was a vast jury, listening to and weighing the evidence and arguments pre­ sented and handing down its verdict o f victory or defeat ? This was a delusion to which Meighen clung for a long time and from which

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he was to suffer : that in politics as in law the weight o f evidence and the force o f argument determine the issue; that a reasonable presen­ tation o f the facts and o f their significance wins the day. Judges have been known on occasion to express incredulity and dismay over verdicts arrived at in the jury room and ultimately Meighen was to experience a deep disillusionment widi the processes o f democracy as he discovered that in politics reason did not always prevail. A t any rate, from the first he paid the voters the compliment o f treating them as reasonable beings. His technique on the hustings was that o f the able barrister: he built up his argument stone upon stone, made the logic o f his case crystal clear, added just enough wit and sarcasm to expose the other side to ridicule, burst now and then into a flash o f eloquence; and delivered his whole speech calmly but with conviction in a voice resonant and powerful and in words o f classic simplicity. He never talked down to an audience but he did speak so that all could understand and was rewarded by the knowledge that what he had to say was listened to with rapt attention. Meighen had the gift o f gripping an audience, not with the spell-binding art of the demagogue, but by the urgency and earnestness o f his speech, and many a man has testified to the powerful impact his words and personality had on those who heard him. His exhilarating baptism into politics in 1904 made him want to carry on the war and made him look forward to the next battle when once again the jury would reach another and perhaps wiser decision. As the time for the next national election approached Mr. Boyd dis­ claimed all desire for the Conservative nomination in Portage, and Meighen decided to seek it himself. His lack o f experience, the fact that he had never been elected to office, had never suffered the apprenticeship o f serving on a school board or municipal council, did not deter him. Politics was debate. He loved words and knew how to use them and was sure that when his time came and he found him­ self in the forum o f Parliament he would be able to hold his own. In the meantime it was thought that there was little or no chance o f wresting the seat from Crawford. This opinion Meighen shared but he reasoned that whoever secured the nomination and made a good run o f it would have first claim on the party’s support in the following election. I f he stood by and allowed someone else to do so his chances of entering Parliament in the foreseeable future would be greatly reduced. If, on the other hand, he got the nomination he would gain valuable electioneering experience, would make him self more

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widely known and would be ready by 1911 or 1912 to make a really serious bid for the seat. However, there were two other comparatively young men, both close personal friends o f Meighen, who were more prominently active in the party and had a better claim to the nomination than he. One was J. J. Garland, a clothing merchant, the other Fawcett G. Taylor, President o f the Board o f Trade, a lawyer with a larger practice and greater affluence than Meighen could then claim. The dominant star in the Manitoba Conservative galaxy o f those days was the Hon­ ourable Robert Rogers, Minister o f Public Works in Sir Rodmond Roblin’s government, a man with a notorious penchant for political intrigue and party management. According to a story which circu­ lated in Portage at that time, both Garland and Taylor consulted Rogers, who always sought a voice in the nominations for federal ridings, about whether one o f them should run against Crawford. Rogers was reputed to have told them that Crawford could not be beaten and that Meighen should be put up as the victim. (Meighen, according to the tale, had incurred Rogers’ dislike by showing “ inde­ pendent” tendencies.) Rogers is said to have remarked in effect, “ Crawford will bury Meighen and he will be out o f the way.” The story may be apocryphal; Meighen was quite unaware o f having done anything at that stage to cause Rogers’ displeasure. But there is no doubt that before long Rogers bitterly resented Meighen’s rising influence in the party. The latter in the years to come was to taste the fruits o f that bitterness more than once. In any event, when the party convention was held at Portage in December 1907 Meighen presented himself as a candidate and was nominated by M ax Wilton, a pioneer settler from H igh Bluff. The other prospective candidates withdrew and Meighen was chosen unanimously. As he could spare little time away from his office to be out and around the country campaigning, the new Tory standardbearer was not very active during the next few months. However, when Parliament was dissolved and writs were issued for polling to take place on October the twenty-sixth, 1908, the battle was on in earnest. In those days the newspaper business had not yet acquired the monopolistic tendencies it now displays and that characteristic emas­ culation o f political opinion which is euphemistically termed “inde­ pendence.” Portage la Prairie, like many other small Canadian towns, had two papers. These, in accordance with the custom o f the

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time, stored up large supplies o f rather muddy but, they hoped, highly explosive ammunition, which they proceeded to hurl at one another’s forces with the onset o f every campaign. The cause o f John Crawford and Reform was zealously (its enemies drought fanatically) upheld by The Graphic, which was edited by Meighen’s good friend and former fellow lodger in the McLenaghan Block, Charles D. McPher­ son. Meighen was supported by The Review, whose editor, the bril­ liant but erratic J. J. Gow, praised his favourite candidate as one who, though still a young man, “ has by sheer intellectual worth and indus­ try attained a high rank in his chosen profession and is recognized as one o f the cleverest and most astute lawyers in the west.” The scribe could not forbear adding a sly jibe: “ In the conduct o f criminal cases Mr. Meighen has gained special prominence. His skill in this branch o f the profession will make him a valuable lieutenant o f Mr. Borden when the timber frauds come to be investigated. . . .”2 To which The Graphic might have replied, but did not, that Meighen was more accustomed to defendi?ig criminals than to prosecuting them. The new life into which the young lawyer now plunged was one to tax the endurance o f his frail-looking body. To his ordinary work, which already kept him almost fully occupied, were added the rigours of a strenuous campaign. Without the time- and labour-saving means of mass communication which are now available, political campaigns were much more demanding then than today. I f the voters were to be reached, they had to be reached personally, not by radio or tele­ vision. Long, tiring trips had to be made over rough roads in an uncomfortable wagon or buggy. One had to meet the people, speak to them not only as an audience but as individuals, make small, polite conversation over the food and drink they kindly provided. One had to parry demands for this or that promise, inspire the wayward, encourage the loyal, woo the malcontents. This was the intimate, vital stuff o f politics by which, more than by ringing pronouncements, elections were to be won. It was tiring work but to a person with Meighen’s restless energy it was also exciting and rewarding. To come down from the platform at the end o f a meeting to mingle with a crowd o f people who believed in him and whose confidence he had, people prepared to entrust him with the responsibility o f representing them in Parliament, made him proud and confident o f the future awaiting him. He had no expectation o f winning that election, though he always spoke and acted as though he thought he would,

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but he was sure that eventually his day would come. He believed in himself, in the Conservative party and in the ultimate good sense and judgment o f the voters. His day came sooner than he or anyone else expected. W hen the campaign neared its climax Conservative hopes rose somewhat as reports came in o f how so-and-so was going to vote and o f how opinion in such-and-such a division was running. Further encour­ agement was afforded by rumours o f dissension in Liberal ranks and o f dissatisfaction with Crawford’s campaign. But neither Meighen nor his more experienced advisers expected a victory. W h y should they ? John Crawford was a good man and i f his four years at Ottawa had not been especially noteworthy he had at least done nothing to offend his constituents. Allegations o f corruption and mismanage­ ment freely hurled at the Laurier administration could not obscure the abounding prosperity and rapid development which the entire country, and the West in particular, was enjoying. The Government seemed almost impregnable and Crawford and most o f the Grits of the Portage riding basked in that supposed security. Indeed, Craw­ ford felt so confident o f the outcome that he refrained almost entirely from making speeches, sticking doggedly to his work o f selling farm implements in Neepawa. Meighen, on the other hand, travelled the length and breadth o f the sprawling constituency, delivering addresses wherever he had the chance and meeting as many people as he could. Crawford’s weapons were his own inoffensiveness and the prosperity o f the country; Meighen’s weapon was the spoken word, which he handled with a skill very few Canadian politicians have been able to command. On the evening o f polling day Meighen waited anxiously for the hoped-for word that he had reduced Crawford’s majority; instead he heard that he had won by a majority o f 250. A result so unexpect­ edly sweet called for a large celebration and the Tories o f Portage rose nobly to the occasion. The town rink was commandeered and soon filled up with the faithful come to cheer and the hangers-on hoping to be diverted. A band blared patriotic airs and the member-elect entered and was greeted with great enthusiasm. He mounted the platform and gave a short speech, thanking those who had supported him and pledging him self to serve his constituents and his country to the best o f his ability. W hen he had finished speaking three rousing cheers were given and the conquering hero was lifted from the plat­ form to the shoulders o f some stalwarts and carried outside, where in

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the cool autumn air a parade o f several hundred people formed. Many o f them carried brooms which they had dipped in kerosene. Matches were touched to these and in the orange torchlight glow the procession set off, with the band noisily leading the way. Up and down the avenues they went, singing boisterously and shouting goodnaturedly at the discomfited Grits, who stood in little groups on the corners or watched glum ly from their windows. A t last Meighen’s house on Dufferin Street was reached and he was released by the admiring crowd to sleep, or perchance to dream o f Ottawa and Parlia­ ment. But in neither his dreams nor his imaginings could he foresee the triumphs and the tragedies that lay ahead. It was decided that Mrs. Meighen, Ted and Max (the second son, born in June 1908) should accompany the new member to Ottawa, unlike the wives and families o f most members, especially those from distant parts, who stayed home during the sessions. Isabel Meighen knew it would be good sport to be in Ottawa when Parliament was sitting— certainly better to be there than alone with the children in Portage, missing the parties, the dinners and receptions that were certain to enliven the session. The family trip between Portage and the capital became an annual event, not without its inconveniences— such as having to walk to the Portage station to catch the train in the small hours o f the morning when no conveyance could be hired— but well worth the trouble for the excitement and variety it brought into their lives. Parliament was to be opened on January the twentyfirst, 1909 and the four Meighens arrived in Ottawa two or three days earlier. They lodged briefly at the Russell House and then moved to the Alexandra Hotel on Bank Street, farther from Parliament H ill but still within walking distance. Meighen took his oath as a mem­ ber, was assigned an office in the buildings and a seat in the Commons Chamber. He attended a caucus o f the Conservative members and on the day o f the opening was in his place, an interested observer o f the ceremonial formalities. He watched as Charles M ardi o f Bonaventure in Quebec was unanimously elected Speaker and, in accord­ ance with tradition, was escorted to the Chair, feigning reluctance. The next day he waited with the others for Black Rod’s knock and when that messenger had performed his errand Meighen joined in the procession to the bar o f the Senate Chamber to hear the speech from the throne. This pronouncement was read by His Excellency Earl Grey, resplendent in vice-regal regalia, and flanked by his

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ministers, confident and complacent men with twelve years o f office behind them and still no considerable spots on their sun. And filling the galleries, listening or perhaps not, there not to listen but to be seen, were the élite o f Ottawa society for whom this was the great event in their season, an occasion which allowed them, though briefly, to flee the stodgy realities o f life in the capital and imagine themselves a part o f the haut monde. It was a glittering and impressive scene for a novice from the prairies and the young member for Portage la Prairie was no doubt proud to be a part o f it, however inconspicuous. But this, after all, was only a ceremony, valuable as it might be in signifying the preser­ vation o f traditional values and associations. The real business of Parliament could not begin until the Governor-General had retreated to Rideau Hall and the invited guests to their housekeeping or offices and shops. Then the consultations could begin, explanations and criticisms could be exchanged, decisions made; only then could the work o f His Majesty’s Canadian Parliament begin in earnest. Meighen’s first House o f Commons contained a large quota of colourful and able men possessing a remarkable amount o f adminis­ trative skill, debating talent and political sagacity. Some were new­ comers like himself, as yet untried; others were political veterans of long experience. As he sat on his rear bench seat to the Speaker’s left on that opening day, commanding a view o f all, he could study them and begin to take their measure. W ith some o f them he would tilt many a lance; others were men with whom long associ­ ation would help to weave die fabric and the pattern o f his life. There, gracing the Prime Minister’s place, was the incomparable Laurier, whose parliamentary experience went back to 1874, the year Meighen was born— Laurier, urbane, elegant and dignified, with a courteous gesture and a genial nod for all his friends on both sides o f the House, a master o f men rather than o f measures, a distinguished amateur in government given to captivating visions and great conceptions which he could express with graceful eloquence, a leader beloved o f his followers and admired by his foes. Beside him sat his veteran Minister o f Finance, William S. Fielding, competent and sure o f himself, with the confidence that success in office alone could give. For diese two central figures o f the Government Meighen before long acquired a high respect, which, however, never inhibited those devastating, ana­ lytical criticisms o f their measures which soon distinguished his interventions in debate. Along the Treasury benches and behind

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them thronged their colleagues and supporters, many o f them non­ entities, o f course, as were not a few o f those across the aisle, but many others distinctive and vigorous individuals. There sat men o f such diverse personality as the rabidly partisan D. D. M cKenzie o f Nova Scotia, the colourful Frank Oliver o f Edmonton, the immensely able but deeply inscrutable Clifford Sifton. There, too, among the Liberal majority was the handsome and gifted but sometimes indolent Hugh Guthrie, destined by the vagaries o f politics to become in time Meighen’s colleague and still later his temporary successor as leader o f the Conservative party. The sharp-tongued Ernest Lapointe, not yet the dominating force in the Quebec Liberal party he was to become, was on hand as was the irrepressible Michael Clark, doctor, rancher and orator, with his thatch o f red hair, his Irish wit and his indestructible faith in the doctrines o f Cobden and Bright. Perhaps of all the Liberals in the House Meighen came to like “ Red Michael” most o f all, despite their many differences o f opinion. Last but not least there was William Lyon Mackenzie K ing, an insignificant­ looking little man whose looks belied his future, a future which would impinge with heart-breaking effect on Meighen’s own. Then, if Meighen took his eyes off those on the other side and looked around him, he saw men with ideas and loyalties more like his own. Facing Laurier across the way was Robert Laird Borden, the solid, stolid, able and courageous Conservative leader, making up in integrity, persistence and industriousness what he may have lacked in natural brilliance. He was flanked by Sir George E. Foster, a tall, spare, scholarly-looking relic o f the Victorian age, friend and colleague o f Sir John A . Macdonald and a master, at times, o f ornate eloquence. Not far away was the quixotic Sam Hughes, Meighen’s room-mate in that Parliament o f 1909, an extraordinary, flamboyant egotist who would soon be faced with the task o f raising “his” army to fight “his” war against the Kaiser. Also in evidence was the ven­ erable George Taylor, chief whip o f the Conservatives, who had first been elected to the House in 1882 and had been successful in the six general elections since. These were but a few o f those who filled the Commons Chamber when Meighen entered it for the first time. Before long, in lucidity o f expression, in the marshalling o f argument, in the mastery o f fact— in short, in all the techniques that constitute the art o f the parliamentarian— he rose above them all. There was, however, little indication during that first session that he would do so. His interventions in debate were few and not very

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startling. Indeed, he was so inconspicuous that some o f his constitu­ ents, expecting him to capture Ottawa by storm and fretting that Portage la Prairie was receiving so little publicity, took him to task for his inactivity. But he knew, even i f they did not, that a young newcomer like himself, with more time than experience at his dis­ posal, should conduct him self in a discreetly reserved manner, leaving others to monopolize the limelight. From the shadows he could watch and listen, becoming familiar w idi the ways o f the House. He felt at home there immediately. He liked the atmosphere o f the arena and he had ample confidence in his gladiatorial abilities. But though he was ambitious he could be patient. Know ing that he had much to learn, he contented him self for the most part with occasional questions placed on the Order Paper or put verbally to ministers in Committee o f Supply. He made only two brief speeches, each in its own way foreshadowing the manner and method o f debate he was to display later on innumerable occasions. The first was in support o f a resolution presented by a fellow Conservative from Manitoba, W. D. Staples, that “ an able and prac­ tical farmer o f the West” be appointed to a vacancy on the Board of Railway Commissioners. Meighen’s contribution was an ironic com­ mentary on speeches by various Liberals opposing the resolution, including the speech o f the friendly enemy, Michael Clark. Clark, Meighen observed, told us that the hon. member for Macdonald (Mr. Staples) proved too much: he says that the hon. gendeman proved that the Minister o f Agriculture (Mr. Fisher) was not capably administering the depart­ ment over which he presides; that the Minister o f Agriculture is a farmer, and therefore this proof should act as a warning against the appointment o f farmers.. . . It may be that the Minister o f Agriculture is a farmer, but it is impossible to argue from that that a man could not be selected from among the farmers o f Canada who would be a good Minister o f Agriculture.3

Meighen’s odier brief speech in his maiden session was on railway policy, a field in which he was to perform herculean labours during the next ten years. The Government introduced a Bill providing for a loan o f ten million dollars to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, that grandiose and premature product o f the optimism then prevailing about Canada’s immediate future. The Conservatives strenuously but fruitlessly opposed the Bill throughout its progress and on the motion for third reading introduced a series o f amendments, de-

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signed to protect the country by giving it tangible security for the loan. Meighen moved the last o f these, demanding that as a con­ dition o f the loan the Dominion o f Canada should receive paid-up preference stock o f the company to the amount o f ten million dollars. His plea was that, as the state shared so heavily in the liability o f the company, it should also have a monetary interest in it. This was the first o f those cogent, rational, dispassionate presentations, free from rhetoric, brief but logically unassailable, which he was to scatter lib­ erally through the pages o f Hansard.4 I f politics is intelligent dis­ cussion about facts and their meaning, as he thought it should be, here was a young politician to the manner born. Parliament was prorogued on May the nineteenth and with his wife and children Meighen boarded the first train for the West. There was another session to look forward to, and he did look forward to it, but after being away for four months he was eager to get back to his practice and to the familiar atmosphere o f Portage. The office, with which, o f course, he had kept in touch during the session, had been left in the charge o f Andrew Hogg, his new partner. Ewan McPherson and Meighen had parted company in 1906. Shortly after­ wards H ogg was articled in Meighen’s office and when he was called to the bar just before the 1908 election Meighen formed a partnership with him. This event, hardly o f earth-shaking significance, somehow came to the notice o f Bob Edwards, the West’s most famous journalist, who made a joke in The Calgary Eye-Opener about the firm o f “Mean and H og.” H ogg was young and as yet inexperienced and, while Meighen had much confidence in his ability and good sense, he was nevertheless glad to be able to look after things him self once again. N ow that his career had taken a new turn, life was somehow dif­ ferent and more complicated than it had been before. As a lawyer he had worked hard, striving to build up his practice; as a lawyerpolitician he had to work even harder. He had to concern himself with the affairs o f his constituents, as well as with those o f his clients. He had to report on the last session (this he did with his usual incisive clarity to a large audience that filled Pratt’s Opera House in Portage) ; he had to listen perforce to advice about what should be done at the next one whenever and wherever someone buttonholed him. There were now more political meetings to attend and political letters to write. Matters that would be discussed at Ottawa when Parliament

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met again had to be studied in advance so that Meighen might listen to the debates with understanding and participate in them with intelli­ gence. This was true in particular o f those subjects on which he intended to speak. For these he prepared him self with minute care, using his immense powers o f concentration to ward off all distrac­ tions while he immersed him self in the matter at hand. The next parliamentary session, which was opened on November the eleventh, 1909, is remembered chiefly for the debate on Laurier’s policy o f building a Canadian navy. Meighen made only one brief intervention in that argument and it was not on the merits o f the naval question. F. D. Monk, one o f the Quebec Nationalists who strenuously opposed the building o f a Canadian navy on the grounds that its possession might help to involve Canada in Britain’s wars, proposed that the question should be submitted to the voters in a plebiscite. Meighen was quick to point out the incompatibility of plebiscitary democracy with parliamentary government. There were, he thought, occasions when major questions should be submitted to the people “ in a constitutional way,” that is, in a general election, but I conceive that before we appeal to the people on any question we must first assert our own position on that question. I believe that we have a delegated duty, and the responsibility on us to say, yes or no, on every proposition that comes before this House. . . . We cannot until we vote unload that responsibility on our constituents or on the people o f this country. That is the principle o f responsible govern­ ment as I understand it.5

Here was an issue which, i f anything, was o f greater significance in the long run than naval policy itself. Meighen could not then imagine how often in the future, especially during his long duel with Macken­ zie King, he would have to reiterate and uphold the principles of parliamentary government and parliamentary supremacy against the plausibly democratic allure o f plebiscitarianism. Though the Conservative guns were manned by others at Ottawa during the session o f 1909-10, Meighen’s part in the session was note­ worthy in two respects : he engaged in his first skirmish with Macken­ zie K ing and he delivered his first major speech. His encounter with King, typical o f the many to follow, was over the question o f the adoption o f the eight-hour day for those engaged in federal public works. K ing, a student o f the social characteristics and problems of an industrial economy and the only man in the House with a Ph.D.

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(a rare distinction!), was the former Deputy Minister o f Labour and had become the first full-time minister o f that department in the spring o f 1909. The 1908 election brought him and Meighen together for the first time since their university days, but they were to find no more in common in Parliament than they had as undergraduates. The differences between the two men in appearance, temperament and character were utter and complete and it was this fact, in part, which lent fascination to their long struggle for supremacy. The Minister was short and chubby; there was a certain softness about his appearance, a certain priggish self-righteousness, a clucking fussiness about his manner. He seemed immensely satisfied with him self and yet somehow he looked quite out o f place in the company o f Laurier. To his enemy, the lean, angular, brooding prairie lawyer, K ing soon came to be an object worthy only o f contempt. W hen the Minister o f Labour was on his feet Meighen, i f he stayed to listen, gazed down on him with unsmiling scorn, like a hawk poised to swoop on a defenceless pigeon cooing endlessly and contentedly in the park. The contrast in appearance was reflected in a contrast in speech. The rotund man was given to the orotund phrase. There was a flabbiness, a lack o f discipline about the way he used words: his principle apparently was that there was no point in using ten when twenty would do just as well. W hen he spoke it was frequently oracular declamation that fell from his lips and it was maddeningly difficult to pin him down to a clear statement o f set purpose or intention. Meighen’s speech, on the other hand, was streamlined like his body. N o words were wasted; there was always a conclusion and it was always reached by the shortest possible route and stated with the greatest possible clarity. He was sure that two and two equalled four and that a straight fine was the shortest distance between two points. I f K ing, on the other hand, was asked for his opinion on these matters he might reply, “Parliament will decide.” It seemed to those who listened to the two men in the House that Meighen strove to state his position with the utmost exactness while K in g strove equally to compound confusion about where he stood. Their passage at arms over the eight-hour day brought out some of these contrasts. The subject was opened when Alphonse Verville, Labour member for Maisonneuve, introduced a private member’s Bill for the adoption o f the shorter work day on Dominion public works. In the debate preceding the second reading K in g endorsed the general principle o f lowering hours o f work but suggested that

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the Bill should be sent to a special committee for further study. Verville, after the second reading, obligingly moved for the appointment o f the committee with the Minister o f Labour to be its chairman. At this point Meighen jumped in. He remarked that the House had had the great privilege o f listening to two addresses on this subject from the Minister o f Labour (Mr. K ing), and at the close o f the second address I think that every hon. member is as much in the dark as he was at the first o f the debate as to what the policy o f the government is in regard to this Bill. W e may have learned a great deal about the principle o f the eight hour day and about many features o f the Bill, but I can state one thing that we have not learned . . . and that is the policy o f the government. The hon. member for Dorchester . . . con­ tends . . . that the Minister o f Labour has endorsed the principle of the Bill. N ow if the principle o f the Bill is something that can be taken as endorsed by the speech o f the Minister o f Labour, then I, for one am utterly at a loss to see any principle whatever in the Bill. Throughout the course o f his address, the Minister o f Labour expressed antagonism to the general principle and to the extended adoption o f the principle o f the eight hour day. Mr. k i n g : Would the hon. member . . . kindly give to the House any statement o f mine from which he can draw such an inference? Mr. m e i g h e n : W ill the hon. minister . . . state that he is in favour o f the absolute unequivocal adoption o f the eight hour day through­ out Canada? Some hon. m e m b e r s : Oh, oh. Mr. k i n g : I did not hear the question. Mr. m e i g h e n : W ill the hon. minister state that he and his govern­ ment are in favour o f the absolute unequivocal adoption o f the eight hour day throughout the country? Mr. k i n g : i f any member o f this House will introduce a measure which will make possible the eight hour day to the advantage o f the working people o f this country, a Bill which it will be within the jurisdiction o f this House to pass— Some hon. m e m b e r s : Oh, oh. Mr. k i n g : — He will find this government ready to support any measure o f that kind. The hon. gentleman knows very well that the provincial legislatures have the power to enact laws in regard to the hours o f labour generally. Mr. m e ig h e n : The Minister, I can see, was even less successful than he was before. The House will understand one thing; and that is the extreme capaciousness o f his ifs in the answer he gave me. . . . The ingenuity o f the Minister was taxed to the extreme to find objections

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to this Bill, but all the while he was engaged in pious affirmations o f what is known vaguely as the principle o f the Bill. . . . I am not impressed very much with the sincerity exhibited so far in this House by the Minister o f Labour. . . . I would like him definitely to . . . let us know once and for all where the government stand on the question o f whether they are prepared to adopt an eight hour day for labour on government works.®

The special committee was duly appointed and later in the session King, its chairman, brought in an interim report requesting approval of the appointment o f Professor O. D. Skelton o f Queen’s University as an expert adviser to the committee. Several Opposition members objected, laying severe strictures on K ing and his department, and arguing that departmental officials and K in g himself, an expert on labour matters, should possess all the specialized knowledge necessary. Edgar Rhodes, Meighen’s desk-mate, asked K ing whether Skelton’s researches for the committee would have to do with the merits o f the eight-hour day or with the drafting o f a measure giving effect to the principle. After some equivocation K ing replied, “With both.” This brought Meighen to his feet again. He argued that the principle o f the eight-hour day on federal works had already been accepted on the second reading o f Verville’s Bill and reminded the House that when he had accused K ing o f antagonism to the eight-hour day he had been contradicted by the Minister. Well, if he has accepted the principle o f an eight hour day, in so far as government work is concerned, why employ an expert now? I took the position that night that the reference o f the Bill to a commit­ tee was simply a convenient method o f shelving it for the rest o f the session, and I now find that not content with shelving it to a committee, the chairman o f the committee asks that it shall be referred to Kingston College. The only purpose the Minister o f Labour has in view is . . . to shield his responsibility behind the august imprimatur o f a Presby­ terian professor.. . . I challenge the government to now declare whether they are in favour o f the principle o f the eight hour day in govern­ ment works.7

The challenge was not met, Skelton’s appointment was approved and the Bill was not heard o f again. Meighen’s major effort in this session, though, was not devoted to twitting the Minister o f Labour, diverting as he found that pas­ time. Rather, it concerned a large field o f public policy— railway policy— with which he was to have more to do during the next decade

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than perhaps with any other. In 1903 the Laurier government had made an agreement with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Com. pany, a newly formed subsidiary o f the Grand Trunk Railway, which provided for the construction o f a new transcontinental line. The company was to build the section between Winnipeg and the Pacific coast while the government assumed the task o f constructing the portion connecting Winnipeg with the eastern terminus, Moncton, N ew Brunswick. Upon completion, this section was to be leased for fifty years to the company, which would then acquire it outright. The announcement o f this plan evoked a storm o f criticism on many counts, not only from the Conservative Opposition but, to a lesser extent, from some Liberals as well. Undeterred by these objec­ tions, the Government proceeded to appoint a commission which, with its subordinate officials, was to supervise the building o f the National Transcontinental, as the line from Moncton to Winnipeg was called. In June 1909 H ugh D. Lumsden, the commission’s chief engineer, resigned, charging that some o f the engineers on the job were guilty o f over-classification, that is, o f submitting accounts for solid rock and loose rock excavation where in fact they had had to remove only earth and gravel. The effect o f this alleged dishonesty was to raise the cost o f the work greatly. On January the twenty-fifth Laurier announced Lumsden’s resignation and moved in the House the appointment o f a special committee to investigate his charges. The Conservatives promptly moved an amendment, giving the committee power to investigate the entire operations o f the National Transcon­ tinental Railway Commission. Meighen’s first major speech in Par­ liament was in support o f this amendment. It was a lengthy, closely reasoned, richly documented presentation, a masterly marshalling of fact and argument.8 W hen it was over, Laurier left the chamber to keep an appointment with a close friend, K irk Cameron, who had come to report on a political mission he had just completed in western Ontario. “ Well, Cameron,” said the Prime Minister, as they sat down in his office, “ Borden has found a man.” Cameron asked who it was and Laurier explained that Arthur Meighen o f Portage la Prairie had just delivered a speech which for destructive power recalled those o f Edward Blake and Sir Richard Cartwright at their best.9 To be compared as a parliamentarian with those two gentle­ men was a compliment indeed. Blake’s years in the House had stamped him as the most learned and intellectual o f Canadian poli-

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ticians, while Cartwright, w ho then in 1910 was closing out his long career in the uncongenial calm o f the Senate, was above all remem­ bered for his great debating skill and his talent for crushing critical analysis. Laurier was not alone in noticing Meighen. Here obviously was a newcomer o f distinctive personality and unusual ability. There was, to be sure, just a touch o f the gauche and the rustic about the member for Portage, or so it seemed to some o f his colleagues in the House. There still hung about him a certain almost awkward shy­ ness, a reserve that kept people at their distance. He did not join easily in the camaraderie o f the parliamentarians, but preferred to spend his time in his room or the library. Let the time-servers (and there were enough o f them) indulge in idle political gossip and fruitless reminiscence. That way led nowhere except to futility and oblivion and those were not Meighen’s goals. His forgetfulness about more or less trivial things, as distinct from things that really mattered to him, became a byword in Ottawa as it had in Portage. “ I must ask you,” he ruefully wrote Borden, “ to accept my apology for so stupidly forgetting my invitation to your dinner to-day, but tender it is all I can do now. Long ago I adopted in self-defence a policy of advising my wife o f my engagements and relying on her less treacherous memory but in this case I omitted that precaution. The circumstances in this case are so exceptionally unfortunate that I am utterly disgusted with m yself May I ask you to give my sincere apology to Mrs. Borden.”10 And his dress! It was hardly fashionable, hardly suitable to an up-and-coming, ambitious politician— or so thought some o f his con­ ventional and conforming friends. His clothes had a kind o f homespun, unstylish quality which reflected his casual indifference to them. He had few suits and he wore them until they were thread­ bare. Clothing, in his opinion, was worn for warmth and to cover one’s nakedness; it had no other purpose. He neither noticed nor cared what others wore, nor was he at all aware o f the dictates o f fashion. Thus to some, especially to sophisticated easterners to whom Manitoba was only a name, he seemed a true son o f the West, o f that uncouth frontier where civilization had barely penetrated. Curiously enough, though Jack Garland, one o f his best friends in Portage, was a tailor, Meighen for some reason habitually bought his suits from an English tailor who had settled in the town. That craftsman inex­ plicably chose to cut his trouser legs so that they ended prematurely

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above the ankles. But this troubled Meighen not in the least. There was, after all, nothing indecent about a male ankle and he wore the suits heedless, perhaps oblivious, o f the fact that they were not exactly in style. Once the tailor outdid him self when he got an order for a new suit from his customer in Ottawa. Perhaps thinking that a glit­ tering career would be furthered by a garment to match, he fashioned a suit o f a spangled material that glistened brightly in the light. Meighen tried it on but his wife refused to allow him to wear it out o f the house; so the ill-advised experiment resulted in a lamentable waste o f cloth and money. He did, however, wear out (in both senses o f the phrase) an over­ coat o f weathered, rusty green, which was so long it reached almost to his ankles. That coat and the possibility o f its disappearance became a subject o f lively discussion among some o f his friends. One day he and another Conservative member from Manitoba, William Sharpe, were steaming into Ottawa on the train. During Meighen’s brief absence from their seat Sharpe decided to get rid of the coat. He did so by opening the window and throwing it out. Meighen, who probably left more personal articles behind him in railway cars and hotel rooms than any other Canadian politician in history, failed to notice the absence o f the coat even when he got off the train, and was surprised to receive it in the mail a few days later along with a note. The writer had found the coat beside the tracks and, discovering Meighen’s name on the label, had returned it. What had happened was now immediately apparent. With great enjoy­ ment Meighen donned the coat, wore it into the smoking room shortly before the afternoon sitting o f the House and triumphantly paraded it before Sharpe, whose astonished expression unmistakably betrayed his guilt. But whatever gaucherie, whatever rusticity there was about tliis earnest newcomer, vanished when he stood up to speak. His diction, his sonorous voice, his knowledge o f whatever subject was being discussed and his remarkable memory for facts and figures all com­ manded attention. He spoke without notes and without gestures, except for the occasional pointing o f a forefinger or the placing of hands on hips. He spoke dispassionately and with unsmiling serious­ ness (punsters noted his “ serious mien” ). The words fell from his tongue with measured precision, building brick by brick an argu­ ment o f architectural symmetry and perfection and demolishing the arguments o f his opponents with a merciless, devastating logic, gen-

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erously laced with a cutting wit. Though he was still a tyro in politics, it was clear that he had studied and already mastered the art of parliamentary debate better than most ever did. Borden had indeed found a man, young, ambitious, hard-working and with a talent far beyond the ordinary. As yet it was too soon to know how far he would go but there was no doubt about one thing: he wanted desperately to go places, to rise from the ranks and to become something. He was determined to devote him self single-mindedly to the task o f making himself useful to his leader, knowing that i f he succeeded in this the door o f opportunity would open and that each time it did, he must enter. Parliament was prorogued on May the fourth and once again the Meighen family hastened back to Portage on the first train. There was a special reason for getting home with all possible speed this time: another child was expected in June and things must be put in readiness for its arrival. Ted was now four and a h alf and Max would soon have his second birthday. Their father, who kept his emotions always under a check-rein, was not a demonstrative man but he was o f a genuinely affectionate nature nonetheless and was immensely proud o f his sons. W hen a baby girl, who was to be christened Lillian, was born on June the second, there was great rejoicing and Meighen’s cup o f happiness was full. There was not only an addition to his family during this stay at home between sessions, but another change in his law partnership as well. Meighen was well satisfied with the way Andrew H ogg had conducted him self and looked after the practice during his absences in Ottawa. However, not long after his return to Portage in the spring o f 1910 he was approached by W. J. Cooper, K .C., who some years earlier had given up his long-established practice to become Registrar o f Land Titles. N ow Cooper desired to return to private practice and proposed that he and Meighen should join forces. He had substantial financial resources and made an offer to Meighen for a share in the business which H ogg was unable to match. As a result, the latter moved on to Lethbridge, and the firm o f “Mean and Hog” now became that o f Cooper and Meighen. Meighen accepted these new arrangements with misgivings and regret, for he liked and respected H ogg. It was too bad to exchange this able and conscien­ tious partner for the erratic and irascible Cooper, who, though a good lawyer, drank immoderately and could make life difficult for

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those with whom he associated. But the financial gain was too con­ siderable to be refused and Cooper’s long experience might compen­ sate for his personal idiosyncrasies. After he had attended to all the matters involved in these changes and taken up the threads o f the practice once again, Meighen settled back quickly and easily into the routine o f court and office duty which the parliamentary session had temporarily disturbed. But time had to be found, too, to prepare certain matters in which he and his constituents were interested for presentation to the House next session. There was to be a resolution calling for a reduction o f the customs duty on agricultural implements, which Meighen thought was desirable and possible without violating the principle o f protec­ tion to which he was committed. There was to be a bill to secure the farmers further against destruction o f their livestock by railway trains, and a plea that land scrip be issued to settlers who had entered the Northwest between 1836 and 1870, or to their descendants. Finally, there was to be a motion for the return o f all information available respecting the nature and effect o f the operations o f trusts and combines in the United States. These were all good, solid proposals from a western point o f view and in preparing to deal with them Meighen was no doubt aware that another election could not be far away. Not that they were merely window-dressing decked out to impress his constituents: Meighen was less concerned than most politicians with espousing the popular cause simply because it was popular. He could not ignore, though— nor would it have been right for him to ignore— the wishes and interests o f those he represented and he was well convinced that the suggestions he would make and the warnings he would offer were also in the national interest. O f them all the most important was the resolution for lower farmimplement duties. W hen notice was given in a Conservative caucus meeting o f Meighen’s intention to present this resolution, an objec­ tion to it was raised on the grounds that the Conservative party was the tariff party and an effort was made to have the resolution with­ drawn. Meighen, however, was supported by Borden, who opposed the conception that whenever the tariff was to be revised by a Con­ servative government it must be revised upwards. Meighen’s speech in support o f his resolution, while it was very carefully prepared, probably did not completely disarm the Conservative critics to whom the protective tariff was the A rk o f the Covenant, though he did sue-

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ceed in justifying his proposal as being entirely consistent with the National Policy enunciated by Sir John A . Macdonald. The gist o f his argument was that the National Policy, while protective in spirit and intent, was based on the principle that as domestic industries flourished they required and should receive less in the way o f pro­ tective tariffs. Manufacturers o f agricultural implements, he argued, were now in this stronger position, but the Laurier government, de­ spite all its talk about freer trade and its few gestures o f tariff reduc­ tion in deference to the western farmers, had in effect continued to give the industry more protection than it needed. The Government had, he said, in this class o f goods “ allowed protection to run rampant; and have, for reasons which are only too obvious, become the slaves o f those who helped diem into power and who now maintain them there behind ramparts o f gold.”11 This kind o f talk had overtones o f American Progressivism and o f the Populist tradition o f the western states, which may well have disturbed some o f Meighen’s fellow Conservatives from Ontario and Quebec, however much they enjoyed hearing the Liberals so incisively convicted o f insincerity. The same was true o f his motion concern­ ing trusts and combines and the language in which he supported it. In raising the matter he was perhaps inspired by the trust-busting example o f the much-admired Roosevelt and by a desire to prevent Mackenzie K in g from reaping all the advantages o f anti-trustism with his brand-new Combines Act, but there was conviction behind his motion and behind the speech he delivered in presenting it. The state had a responsibility, which government and Parliament must discharge, to preserve the rights and promote the welfare o f the com­ munity at large as against the concentrated economic power o f interest groups. After observing that a remarkably rapid consolidation o f industry had occurred in Canada during the past decade, he declared : “At present our great industries are coming together, and more and more we are being brought industrially under the power o f mergers and combines. . . . I f matters go on as they are, absolutely unhindered, absolutely uncontrolled . . . the powers o f the corporations w ill be more absolute, more despotic than w ill be the power o f Parliament itself.” 12 O f course, this sort o f those days and in voicing to the prevailing climate came. Here, apparently,

thing was meat and drink to westerners in such sentiments Meighen was well attuned o f opinion in the section from which he was a progressive Conservative. Nothing

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came o f his resolutions and motions o f that session, however. The resolution on farm-implement duties and the Bill concerning the depredations upon farm livestock by railway locomotives were de­ bated briefly and died. The plea on behalf o f the settlers o f 1836-70 was denied by Frank Oliver, Minister o f the Interior, on the grounds that the matter had been disposed o f by a previous Parliament. The motion for information about trusts was agreed to, after Mackenzie K ing intimated that his Combines Act would take care o f the prob­ lem, but Meighen was not heard on that subject again. In the great debate o f the session— on reciprocity with the United States— he did not participate. The announcement that the Govern­ ment had reached a reciprocity agreement with the Americans fell like a bombshell on the Conservative ranks. This evidently was what both parties and every government since Confederation had been trying to obtain— a limited measure o f free trade between the two countries. There was gloom in the Conservative caucus after W. S. Fielding had explained the agreement to the House; the western Tories in particular felt that they would have no chance with their low-tariff-minded constituents i f they opposed the measure. Before long, however, their viewpoint changed and, when diere was some evidence o f public opposition to the agreement, the Conservatives found new heart for the fight. A decision was reached to obstruct approval o f the Government’s policy by Parliament with every avail­ able means and this strategy met with such success that at length Sir Wilfrid Laurier decided to appeal to the country. On July the twenty-ninth, 1911 the eleventh Parliament came to an unexpected and premature end. For Meighen this meant that the years o f his parliamentary apprenticeship were over. He had now to present him self for the verdict o f his masters, who would judge his conduct thus far and decide whether his political career would continue.

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w a s , of course, no doubt in his m ind that he would seek the nomination— and the seat— again, nor was there any question about the stand he would take on reciprocity. It had been prudent to stay out o f the recent debate, as he and most other western Conservatives had done; it would be safer and better in every way to wait to declare him self until he was face to face with his electors and could appeal to them directly with all the force o f his intellect and personality. He knew that many o f them were professed free-traders and that the reciprocity agreement would be generally popular in the West. As for him, by every instinct, tradition and loyalty implanted in him in his younger days, to which he still clung and would always cling, he was a protectionist devoted to the prin­ ciple o f the National Policy. He was not averse to any downward revision o f the tariff, as his resolution on farm-implement duties had shown, but he was firmly persuaded that a country like Canada, situated next door to the United States, must protect most o f its indus­ tries with tariffs for a long time i f it were to have any secondary industry at all. He thought o f himself as a protectionist o f the Macdonald type, as he conceived that type to be, who would use the tariff as an instrument o f industrial development and national co­ hesiveness without imposing unnecessary burdens on the consumer in the form o f higher prices. Later on after the election, when one o f the Liberals in the House proclaimed that the battle was now on between the moderate and the high protectionists o f Canada, Meighen answered: “Well, I can assure my hon. friend, i f that would give him any encouragement, that i f the battle is on between the moderate and the high protectionists, he w ill find me in the army o f the moderates.” 1 The election was to be on September the twenty-first, and as soon as he arrived back in Portage Meighen applied him self to the task o f mastering the extensive subject o f trade with the United States. Every moment he could spare from his clients and their problems was here

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devoted to arming him self with facts and figures that would demon­ strate the dangers o f lowering the trade barriers too much. . . Never in my public life,” he wrote many years later, “ did I make such thoroughgoing effort to completely encompass a subject as I did that o f Reciprocity.”2 His nomination was uncontested. The Liberals put up against him the Reverend Robert Patterson, a Presbyterian minister from Neepawa. Patterson was an effective speaker and his calling may have given him a certain prestige among many people in the riding. As a campaigner, however, he was no match for Meighen. The latter made a point o f attending Patterson’s meetings in order to find out at first hand what his opponent was saying and occasionally subject him to cross-examination. Patterson did not follow suit and Meighen’s own meetings were uninterrupted. Furthermore, the Liberal candi­ date refused all invitations to speak in the town o f Portage la Prairie, where a substantial proportion o f the votes was concentrated and where reciprocity was less popular than in the countryside. In the nation at large the campaign o f 1911 was exceedingly bitter and fraught with emotion. Charges that reciprocity was a seli-out to the United States, o f which Canada would become a mere appendage, and that it might well lead to the severance o f ties with the mother country were the stock-in-trade o f many Conservative candidates, especially in Ontario and to a lesser extent in the Maritime Provinces. But out on the prairies one had to use a more substantial argument i f one were to convince a people hard-headedly aware o f the apparent economic handicaps imposed on them by the tariffs between the two countries that those tariffs ought not to be abolished. Meighen, as always shunning emotionalism in his speeches, did not try to hide his conviction that reciprocity might well derange the delicate balance o f Canada’s position between Great Britain and the United States and bring the country too much into the American orbit. For the most part, though, he relied on showing, by reasoned argument and the use o f statistical data, that the benefits o f the agreement, confined in the main to natural products, would be more illusory than real for the prairies as for the rest o f Canada, and that any serious inter­ ference with Canada’s traditional east-west orientation o f trade might have deleterious effects on its national development. As for the alleged political danger, it was highlighted more dramatically than he or any other Conservative could hope to have highlighted it by the tactless remarks o f such prominent Americans as President William

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Howard Taft, who spoke o f Canada as being “ at the parting o f the ways” and becoming “only an adjunct o f the United States,” and o f Speaker Champ Clark o f the House o f Representatives, who expressed the hope that he would “see the day when the American flag w ill float over every square foot o f the British North American possessions, clear to the North Pole. . . . That is the way things are tending now.” Being still a relatively obscure back-bencher, Meighen was left free for the most part to remain in his own riding, and he and his campaign managers mapped out a schedule o f speaking engagements which took him to every part o f its large extent. Sometimes he was away from home for days at a time, speaking each evening at a dif­ ferent place. Other engagements could be kept without staying away overnight. On these occasions he would hitch his horse to the buggy and ride out over the rutted roads, sometimes alone, sometimes with a party worker or his wife. Once, for his initiation into politics, Ted was allowed to go along to a meeting in the schoolhouse at H igh Bluff. Meighen was introduced and began to speak. Before long he was interrupted by the furious barking o f a dog, evidently o f Liberal persuasion, which had slipped into the room. This caused a good deal o f commotion and the speaker paused in his remarks until the dog was evicted. Afterwards as they were untying the horse, his mother said to Ted: “Well, Teddy, what part o f Daddy’s speech did you like the best?” The reply was prompt and unequivocal: “The part where they put the dog out.” On election night the returns showed a majority o f 675 for Meighen, almost three times as large as the one he had received in 1908. More than that, there was a national victory for the Conserva­ tive party to celebrate as well. Celebrate the Tories o f Portage did, in much the same fashion as they had three years earlier but with even more enthusiasm and rejoicing. A boisterous victory meeting was held in Pratt’s Opera House, followed by the inevitable parade. Again the brooms were dipped into kerosene and set ablaze. Again the crowd formed up and, headed by the drum and fife band playing “The British Grenadiers” and other appropriately patriotic airs, marched through the streets, the torches casting an eerie glow over the faces o f the singing, shouting marchers. The A ge o f Laurier was over: the A ge o f Borden had dawned. Small wonder Conserva­ tives exulted that night in Portage and in hundreds o f other places, large and small, across the land. The light o f the burning brooms, held triumphantly aloft, signified more than their joy over a battle

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won: it also symbolized their hopes and expectations o f a bright future for party and country alike. But the light was not strong enough to illumine the dark corners o f the future. N o one on that happy night could know that a time o f troubles approached which would be grievous for them all, or that an end and a beginning far more momentous than those they were celebrating were almost at hand. Although his party was now in office Meighen knew there was not the slightest chance o f his being given a place in the new Cabinet — not for the present, at any rate. After fifteen years o f forming the Opposition the party did not lack men who yearned for office and who felt that the claims o f long service and seniority should come first. As far as Manitoba was concerned, there were at least two men who on these grounds had a better claim to preferment than Meighen. One was Robert Rogers, who had chosen this propitious moment to translate him self from provincial to national politics and whose serv­ ices to the party as its organizing mastermind in Manitoba could not be ignored. The other was W. J. Roche, a physician from Minnedosa, an excellent man and an excellent member who had sat in the Commons since 1896. Ordinarily, Manitoba could not expect more than one seat in the Ministry, but Borden, grappling with the compli­ cated art o f Cabinet-making, felt compelled to take both o f these men in. Rogers became Minister o f the Interior, and Roche, Secre­ tary o f State. Consequently, Meighen’s chances o f entering the charmed circle seemed to be indefinitely postponed. Still, a private member could play a useful, possibly even a leading, role in the House i f he worked hard and kept his wits about him. After all, that door o f opportunity, on which Meighen always kept his eye, was bound to open again sooner or later. As always, he intended to enter it when­ ever he could. In the session o f 1912-13 the door opened wide for the first time since Meighen had gone to Ottawa and he walked through it to find him self in a position he was to occupy almost constantly from then on— at the centre o f bitter controversy. The new government was determined to repeal Laurier’s Naval Service Act o f 1910, which had provided for the establishment o f a Canadian navy. Borden believed that such a force, i f and when it came into existence, should be merged with the British fleet in time o f war. But it would take years to build up a Canadian navy, and at best it could comprise no

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more than a few small ships. The Conservatives had argued to no avail in 1910 that the growingly uncertain situation in Europe, and particularly the rapidly mounting size and power o f the German navy, required that Canada should make an immediate contribution o f funds for the strengthening o f British naval forces. This view was sedulously encouraged by the British Admiralty, which was under­ standably obsessed with the German naval menace. Shortly after becoming Prime Minister Borden visited England, and in several talks with the First Lord o f the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, he had had forcibly impressed upon him the necessity o f rendering immediate assistance.3 The most important measure submitted to Parliament in the ses­ sion that commenced on November the twenty-first, 1912 was designed to meet this need. The Naval A id Bill provided for an appropriation o f thirty-five million dollars, the cost o f three battleships o f the Dreadnought type. Immediately it became apparent that some o f the Government’s Quebec Nationalist supporters, who had formed a marriage o f convenience with the Conservatives during the recent campaign, would defect on the issue, and indeed one o f them, F. D. Monk, resigned as Minister o f Public Works. Even more serious than this regrettable internal division, however, was the soon evident determination o f the Opposition to obstruct the passage o f the Bill by every means in their power. They would do with naval aid what the Conservatives had done with reciprocity in 1911— try to force the Government to appeal to the country. Not surprisingly, the long debate, which at one stage went on day and night without interruption for two weeks, generated a great deal o f heat. Tumultuous disorder frequently prevailed and at times the authority o f the Speaker seemed virtually to disappear. Tempers became frayed and passions mounted as the Liberals resourcefully moved amendments and subamendments, harried Government sup­ porters with argumentative interruptions and raised endless points o f order. The issues involved were inflammatory, o f course. Basically, it was not a matter o f whether to spend thirty-five million dollars, a large sum but not impossibly so. Rather, it was a question o f coming to a decision about the Imperial relationship, about the realities o f the world situation and about the role Canada should play in events beyond its borders— all points on which there were widely differing opinions.

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In all this argument about naval policy and the large questions it raised Meighen took no part, aside from a few brief interjections. The debate brought him to the forefront o f Parliament for the first time but not, as is often thought, because o f anything he had to say about naval affairs or Imperial relations. W hen it became apparent that the Liberals would obstruct the Bill and that they had the skill and the numbers to do so successfully, he began to urge Borden and the other ministers to adopt a form o f closure. This, he argued, was the only way to save the measure. The British Parliament had found it necessary to use this means o f shutting off debate. W h y should not the Canadian Parliament do likewise, now that a situation had arisen which made the need evident? I f parliamentary government were to function and the will o f the majority to prevail, as it ultimately must, then surely the Rules o f the House had to be amended, not to prevent all debate, but to make a termination o f sheer obstruction possible. Borden required much persuasion to take this step and even after he had agreed to appoint a committee to formulate the necessary changes in the Rules he did not consent to carry the scheme through until the intransigence o f the Opposition was fully revealed. The committee consisted o f four private members— Meighen, R. B. Bennett, J. A . Currie and Clarence Jamieson— and was appointed about the middle o f February. It met a few times but its work was done by Meighen and by him alone. The task was, first o f all, to frame the necessary new rules and then devise a strategic plan for their presentation to the House. The strategy had to be planned with extreme care in such a way as to preclude the possibility o f amend­ ments to the new rules being offered by the Opposition. I f the Lib­ erals were allowed to jump in with amendments the Government would remain in its prison, for debate on the rules might become as protracted as the debate on the Naval A id Bill itself. W hen Meighen had done his work he went before the Cabinet with his recommenda­ tions, which were subjected to prolonged and thorough scrutiny and at length approved. The new rules, consisting o f three clauses to be added to Rule 17, carefully defined the circumstances under which closure m ight be applied and the procedure for doing so. The strategy Meighen planned to assure that these changes would be debated and voted upon without amendments being moved was ingenious and, to the Opposition, infuriatingly effective. In the first place they were not to be submitted to the Committee on Rules and Procedure for consideration, as was customary, but were to be simply

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accepted or rejected by the House itself. Use was to be made o f two existing rules o f the House, Rule 17, a revised version o f the former Rule 11, and Rule 44. Rule 11, which had been in effect since Con­ federation and before that in the Province o f Canada, provided that when more than one member rose to speak, the Speaker should “ see” the one who rose first. A motion could be made, however, that another member who had risen “be now heard.” In 1906, at the instance o f Laurier, Rule 11 was amended, becoming Rule 17 in the process, by the addition o f the stipulation that the motion that some other member “be now heard” should be non-debatable and must be put immediately. The rule had never before been invoked. Rule 44 set forth the procedure for moving “ the previous question.” As a means o f preventing amendments to a motion before the House, it might be moved that “ this question be now put.” Rule 44 stated: “The previous question, until it is decided, shall preclude all amend­ ment o f the main question. . . . I f the previous question be resolved in the affirmative, the original question is to be put forthwith without any amendment or debate.” The application o f this rule, which had been used only three times before, would mean in the present instance that no amendments to the “main” or “original” question, that is, Borden’s motion that the closure rule be adopted, could be offered while the motion that “ this question be now put” was before the House. It also meant, o f course, that i f the latter motion were approved, the main question would be voted upon at once without amendment or discussion. In other words, the House would have ample opportunity to debate closure while “ the previous question” was before it, with every member having the right to speak once, but no opportunity to move amendments to the proposed closure rule. The plan was that the Prime Minister should introduce the closure rule, explain it and move its adoption. It was anticipated that as soon as Borden sat down Laurier would seek the floor. I f he obtained it all might be lost, for the Opposition might again set the merry-goround o f amendments and subamendments whirling. Thus, argued Meighen, at the risk o f seeming discourtesy, Laurier must be momen­ tarily denied the floor so that “ the previous question” might be moved as soon as Borden had finished. Once that was done closure could be lengthily debated but no amendments could be brought in. The dramatic moment came on April the ninth. In a Conservative caucus preceding the afternoon sitting the members were told only that the closure rule would be presented that day. The strategy was

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not explained to them and they were merely enjoined not to interrupt the proceedings in any way.4 Shortly after the three o’clock opening Borden introduced die new rule. As soon as he took his seat, Laurier and J. D. Hazen, Minister o f Marine and Fisheries, rose simultaneous­ ly. The custom in such circumstances was to recognize the leader of the Opposition, and this the Speaker did. N ow the strategy came into play. W. B. Northrup o f East Hastings, one o f the few who were privy to the scheme, moved under Rule 17 that Hazen “be now heard.” Instantly, there was an uproar on the Opposition benches as die Liberals realized what was afoot. Furious shouts, discreetly reproduced as “Shame!” by the Hansard reporter, were hurled across at the Government. Even the urbane Laurier could not contain his wrath. His face flushed with anger and indignation, pounding his desk and shaking his fist at the Tories, he cried: “W hen you have a majority in this House, that is what we have to expect from you— shame!”5 With difficulty, Hazen (who afterwards had to deny a newspaper story that he had been forced to seek the sanctuary o f the chief whip’s room where he demanded protection against bodily injury) made him self heard through the bitter taunts o f the Opposition to move the previous question, and the debate on closure commenced. At the close o f that tumultuous afternoon sitting, when the Speaker left the Chair at six o’clock, the Grits sang “ O Canada,” punctuating their rendition with shouts o f “ Shame on the gagger!” and “Down with the steam-roller!” while a group o f Liberal senators in the gallery so far forgot themselves as to join in the noise. The debate went on that night and for two weeks afterwards. With one voice the Liberals condemned the stratagem o f using Rules 17 and 44, as an insult to their venerable leader and a denial o f fair play and free speech. Closure itself, they predicted, would be the death knell o f Canada’s free Parliament and they gloomily prophesied its frequent and irresponsible use by an unscrupulous government. Never again, they said, would Parliament be allowed to perform its true function o f full and free discussion, at least so long as the Con­ servatives were able to cling to power. The remedy lay in public opinion and the Liberals unhesitatingly professed their confidence that the majority o f voters would not again support a party guilty of such iniquitous behaviour. W hile die Opposition affected an attitude o f outraged virtue, and shrilly bewailed the rape o f liberty, the Conservative speakers adopted

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a most seductive air o f sweet reasonableness. They pointed out diat every other parliamentary democracy had some form o f closure, which in many cases was more severe than the one now proposed. They affirmed their belief that no government would use the amended rules to prevent debate but only to limit it, and they reminded the minority that the w ill o f the majority must at last determine the issue. As for the alleged discourtesy to Laurier, what had been done was entirely according to the Rules o f the House. N o one had been denied freedom o f speech but only the right to introduce and support in an endless succession o f speeches an interminable series o f dilatory amendments. Apparently it was an open secret, though he denied it, that Meighen was the author o f the new rules. “W ho made these rules?” asked Dr. H . S. Béland, in the midst o f a speech by Frank Carvell denouncing closure. “ I do not know,” replied Carvell, a vigorous and formidable N ew Brunswick Liberal. “ . . . Possibly, before the debate closes, we may find out who is the author o f this monstrous rule.” “ You mean, who is the ‘Arthur’ ?” interjected Rodolphe Lemieux. “That,” remarked Carvell, “may prove to be correct.” 7 Credence was given to the suspicion by the fact that Meighen, a mere private member, assumed the chief burden o f explaining and inter­ preting closure. W hen the revised Rule 17 had been adopted and the House plunged once more into discussion o f the Naval A id Bill, it was the member from Portage who time and again had to intervene to resolve the procedural wrangles that developed as closure was imposed. A t one such moment W. E. Knowles o f Saskatchewan said sarcastically: “ I think we w ill have to fall back on the hon. member for Portage la Prairie . . . who might get us out o f the mud­ dle. . . . He is the only one they have, and until some one else rises to lead them out o f the muddle in which they have got they will have to fall back on him. It is a puzzle to me how we ever got along in this House before he enlightened us with his assistance; we certainly must have made a great many mistakes. I suppose that where igno­ rance is bliss it is folly to be wise and we w ill not ask him to look over our former rulings.”8 Meighen, indeed, did seem to be the only one with a clear grasp ° f the matter and certainly none o f his three colleagues on the closure committee, not even the redoubtable Bennett, was o f the slightest assistance. Several Opposition members claimed that his explanations o f procedure were made at the behest and on behalf o f the Govern-

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ment, but M eighen w ould not admit this. “ I spoke as a private member o f this House,” he said. “ I endeavoured to speak with what intelligence I m ight on the rules. I had no authority in any official sense, or any other sense different from any other member o f this House, to speak for the Government. Let that be understood once and for all. I gave my ow n interpretation, an interpretation for which I asked the sanction o f m y own intelligence.”0 His opponents scoffed at this. “There has only been one hon. member in this House sitting on the other side,” declared H ugh Guthrie, “ who, during the whole discussion, expressed a single opinion as to the proper interpretation o f the rules. T h e Prime Minister him self did not. I do not believe that he felt on safe ground when he attempted to explain, his mind was a haze on the subject and he allowed the hon. member from Portage la Prairie to be his exponent, his chief exponent, his only exponent, as to the real meaning which should be placed upon these rules.” 10 Already the Liberals were beginning to show their annoyance with this young man, this upstart from the West, who was on the eve of his fortieth birthday when the events just described took place. He was undeniably clever, exasperatingly so. He was so very sure of himself, he spoke with such ease, he was so ready in debate. He seemed never to be nettled or flustered by Opposition jibes; he never lacked a quick answer, often barbed with his sardonic wit. Each time he stood up in his place and with calm, unsmiling patience looked across at the enemy out o f his brooding, deep-set blue eyes to explain once again the meaning o f the rules, there was about him still, even though Caledonia was far behind, the air and manner o f the peda­ gogue. The Liberals acted towards him as though he made them feel like a class o f not very bright pupils who lacked the w ill or the capacity to learn their lessons and they resented what they were certain was a feeling o f smug superiority on his part. After all, here he was, only a private member who had been in the House less than five years, presuming to lay down the law like a new Moses, even to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who had been a Cabinet minister before Meighen was a school boy! T hey could not gainsay his ability but how they resented it! And perhaps also many o f them resented the example he set o f indefatigable labour, concise, lucid speech and rational, pointed argument. They looked for some chink in his armour, some human frailty which m ight make his cleverness easier to forgive, but they looked in vain. H e was and long remained for his opponents a

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grim, forbidding warrior for whom the fight never ended. The Meighen they saw in these terms was not the whole man, not by any means, but for many years they lacked the opportunity to know the whole man. Respect him they might, grudgingly but genuinely; drey also feared and disliked him, not least because his intellectual quality and parliamentary talent were, in most cases, much greater than their own. His talent was first conspicuously displayed during the adoption and first use o f closure in 1913, which brought Meighen much closer to the front and centre o f the stage than anything he had done before. Assuredly, he came at that time more forcibly to the attention o f his leader than ever before and Borden was greatly impressed by his performance. Late one night, as the debate on the rule changes dragged wearisomely to its close, Meighen stood up to reply to certain charges and criticisms. He summed up the case for closure forcefully, puncturing the arguments from the other side with the needles o f his wit and the sword-thrusts o f his cold, matter-of-fàct analysis. As the Prime Minister sat there, listening, a resolve formed in his mind. Later, writing up his diary as he did faithfully each night, Borden put down words which promised a reward for the man from Portage and another opening o f the door. “Late at night Meighen made a mag­ nificent speech which greatly enthused all our men. Have decided to make him sol[icito]r Genferajl.”11 A few weeks later Meighen committed a faux pas, as a result o f which he dropped sharply, but temporarily, in Borden’s estimation. The House earlier in the session had sent to the Senate the usual decennial revision o f the Bank Act. W hen W. T. White, Minister o f Finance, moved concurrence in certain Senate amendments to the revision, Meighen, along with R. B. Bennett and W. F. N ickle o f Kingston, opposed the motion and divided the House. The substance of their complaint was that the action o f the Senate emasculated the measure approved by the House and left the statute substantially as it had been before. In addition, Meighen charged that the other House had been unduly influenced by a lobbyist for the Bankers’ Association, “ who sat within the rail o f that House or at all events immediately without it, and . . . went so far as to interfere with state­ ments made by Senators on the floor o f the House.” 12 As it happened, the “ lobbyist” was the brother o f E. W. Nesbitt, a Liberal member, who took indignant exception to Meighen’s remarks. Borden was no less displeased. Easily annoyed, he wrote in his diary that night:

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“W hite moved concurrence in Senate amendments to Bank Act. Bennett, Nickle and Meighen made foolish speeches and divided the House. A ll men o f very poor judgment.”13 The Prime Minister’s pique was short-lived, however, and he went ahead with the appointment o f the new Solicitor-General. He discussed it with his Minister o f Justice, C. J. Doherty, who thor­ oughly approved,14 and on June the twenty-sixth Meighen was sworn in. The following month, his seat having automatically been vacated upon his appointment to the Ministry, he was re-elected in Portage, this time by acclamation. W hen the next session began, Laurier, after directing a few left-handed compliments Meighen’s way, at­ tributed his selection, with more wit than accuracy, to the Bank Act incident. Meighen’s opposition to the Senate amendments, Laurier claimed, had alarmed and frightened the Government, which decided to tame the maverick by appointing him to office. It reminded him, Sir Wilfrid said, o f Sir Robert Walpole’s remark after the first speech in the British House o f a newly elected cavalry officer: “That warhorse must be m uzzled.”15 But the fact would seem to be that Meighen was promoted in spite of, rather than because of, his “ foolish” speech about the Senate’s treatment o f the revised Bank Act. In any event, he had well earned this recognition. Probably never since Con­ federation had any new member o f Parliament become so quickly and indisputably one o f its dominating figures. His promotion in 1913 confirmed the truth o f the great precepts that had been incul­ cated in him in his younger days and which experience since then had consistently proved valid: that one decided one’s own fate in this life; that whatever was undertaken should be done wholeheartedly, with all one’s might; and that success could result only and must result from undeviating diligence in the performance o f whatever task was assigned. In public life, as in everything, one must always do one’s best and, as power was o f prime importance in politics, selfrespect and the obligations o f duty compelled a quest for power, a desire to govern. Meighen wanted and sought power, not lustfully or as an end in itself, but in order to fulfil him self as a public man. He had taken a long stride towards that fulfilment in 1913. The Puritan in politics was on the way up. Meighen’s new office did not at that time give him the rank of Privy Councillor or a place in the Cabinet, and his ordinary duties were not very onerous. He was, however, kept busy with a great

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deal o f work which had no connection with his position and even before he was raised to the Cabinet in October 1915 he had achieved front-rank prominence among Borden’s colleagues. By all odds the most important o f his extra-departmental duties had to do with a railway problem which, shortly before the outbreak o f war in Europe in the summer o f 1914, assumed large and alarm­ ing proportions. Basically, the problem was that the country’s rail­ way facilities had been vastly overexpanded. To the original Cana­ dian Pacific, which since its construction in the 1880’s had sur­ mounted its early financial difficulties and had become a highly profitable enterprise, had been added not one but two additional main lines, now in 1914 on the verge o f completion. One o f these was being built by the Government and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway jointly. The other, the Canadian Northern Railway System, was the extraordinary creation o f two swashbuckling entrepreneurs, William Mackenzie and Donald D. Mann. By a combination o f financial ingenuity and derring-do, the generosity o f governments and the touching, childlike faith o f the bond-buying public, Mackenzie and Mann had parleyed a few short lines in Manitoba into a sprawling giant o f a railway which would soon connect the two oceans. Im­ plicitly, by the assistance it had given in the form o f cash subsidies and guarantees o f company bonds, and explicitly by A ct o f Parlia­ ment in 1911, the Dominion had recognized that the Canadian Northern would and should become a transcontinental system. By 1914, unfortunately for them and for the country, Mackenzie and Mann were in serious financial trouble. They had kept the com­ mon stock in the enterprise in their own hands but bond issues by the more than twenty companies making up the system had been sold throughout the world over the years and the proceeds o f these issues had been a fruitful and vital source o f capital. But the giant they had conjured up had a seemingly insatiable appetite for capital funds. New money had to be found constantly to finish building and to make improvements on existing lines. By 1914, even before the outbreak o f war shut off the supply entirely, the flow o f private capital into the system was drying up. A n economic depression commencing the previous year had created a stringency in the money markets and the two empire-builders (o f whom Mackenzie was the financial wizard) found with dismay that the good old eager readi­ ness o f private lenders to put up their funds had greatly lessened. A t the same time they were faced with the necessity o f having to

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meet ever higher costs o f construction, for higher wages and prices for materials had made laughable all their estimates o f the capital required to finish the job. The direness o f the straits into which Mackenzie, Mann and Com­ pany and the Canadian Northern Railway System had passed was starkly evident. Not only did they lack the wherewithal to complete the line from Edmonton to Vancouver and from Port Arthur to Montreal, but they could not even pay outstanding contractors’ accounts. They were, in short, on the verge o f bankruptcy, a con­ dition from which they begged the Government to rescue them in the name and for the sake o f Canada. Thus it was, not for the first time, that Mackenzie came hat in hand to Borden. The Government had not failed him in the past; it was unthinkable that it should do so now. The Canadian Northern had been recognized as a national undertaking; the nation was com­ mitted to its completion. That commitment now demanded a new substantial cash subsidy or aid in some other form— perhaps a guaran­ tee o f the interest and principal on a further bond issue.) Investors might be attracted i f the credit o f Canada stood fully behind a new series o f securities. But that the Government must at all costs come to the rescue o f the company was not as obvious to its members as it was to Mackenzie. Widespread popular opposition to granting further aid was much in evidence as the Prime Minister was bom­ barded with letters and resolutions from individuals and groups demanding that any further requests from Mackenzie and Mann be turned down. Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, President o f the Canadian Pacific Railway, warned Borden that “ the vast majority o f Cana­ dians would resent, in a most decided way, any further gifts to these gentlemen either in the way o f cash or guarantees.” 16 Although Shaughnessy’s opinion, as head o f a rival railway, was obviously biased, it was borne out to some extent by the firmly expressed views o f many boards o f trade, farmers’ groups and trade-union locals, as well as o f not a few private individuals. A committee o f the Cabinet was set up, which anxiously consid­ ered the alternatives, all o f them repugnant. I f aid were not granted, one o f two things could be done : the system could be left unfinished but this, Borden explained later to the Commons, had been rejected as simply unthinkable; or the system could be allowed to go into liquidation, as was urged from some quarters, and completed under other auspices. This was turned down on the grounds drat it might irreparably damage the credit o f Canada abroad. Such a result

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would be disastrous for a country which depended heavily, and would long continue to depend, on foreign investment capital. Con­ sequently, the Government concluded, not without regret and dis­ taste, aid must be given. The problem was to define the terms and conditions o f assistance and this responsibility was laid on Meighen’s doorstep. He had not been a member o f the Cabinet committee but it was decided, about the end o f March, that he should have the task o f devising a suitable measure to be laid before Parliament. W hile such work had no connection with his office, except insofar as legal considerations had to be taken into account, he accepted it gladly and eagerly, for the duties o f Solicitor-General were not enough to keep an able and ambitious man happily occupied. The main requirement, in the opinion o f the Ministers, was to exact for the taxpayers every con­ ceivable form o f security for the assistance they were about to give the railroad. In addition, the Canadian Northern had to be com­ pelled to reduce its labyrinthine capital structure and its chaotic accounting system to some kind o f understandable order. Upon receiving his assignment Meighen plunged into the trackless jungle o f Mackenzie and Mann’s financial operations. After several weeks of intensive research he knew his way unerringly through it, could identify every species in its luxuriant, all-enveloping foliage, knew the whereabouts o f every hidden pitfall, the source and direction o f every stream. He knew what was perhaps unknown to all other human beings, save Sir W illiam Mackenzie him self and his friend, solicitor and champion, Zebulon A . Lash: what the Canadian Nor­ thern Railway System was, how it operated and the true facts o f its financial situation. The fruit o f this labour was a set o f resolutions, possibly the most complicated ever presented to Parliament, which occupy nine pages of small type in Hansard. Their main provision was that the com­ pany was authorized to issue new four-per-cent debentures to the amount o f forty-five million dollars, a sum which Mackenzie was sure would be adequate to finish construction. Payment o f interest and principal was guaranteed by the Government. In return, the Dominion received a mortgage on the company’s assets and thirtythree million dollars’ worth o f its common stock.17 The resolutions were presented to the House by Borden but they were explained and defended chiefly by Meighen, whose authorship o f them, like his authorship o f the closure resolutions a year earlier, was an open secret. They were objected to with great vigour by the Liberals, first

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o f all by Laurier, who spoke after Borden. In the course o f his remarks Sir Wilfrid made the confession that he did not fully com­ prehend the resolutions, which brought from Meighen the acid comment that he was “ disposed to agree with the Liberal leader in that latter statement.” 18 The objections o f the Liberals were to be expected, even though it could be argued with much force that the whole railway problem, including the plight o f the Canadian Northern, was the result o f their policies while in office. But, and this was more disconcerting to the Government, opposition came from another source as well. Much to the delight o f the Grits, N ickle and Bennett, semi-profes­ sional Conservative objectors, who had sided with Meighen in the Bank A ct episode, now hotly and bitterly criticized the resolutions and denounced all further aid to Mackenzie and Mann. That there would be a protest from within his own party was known to Borden before the resolutions were presented to Parliament and he tried in vain to prevent a schism in the ranks on the floor o f the House. Bennett at least made known his intention o f speaking and voting against the measure and Borden committed to his diary anxious references to his troubles with the man from Calgary, who, he had noted earlier, “has much ability and great facility o f speech but . . . lacks common sense.”19 “ Conf[eren]ce with Bennett in afternoon and again at midnight,” the Prime Minister wrote, “but found him very intractable. Evidently greatly piqued because he was not called into consultation on legal questions.”20 And the next day ominous tidings : “ Bennett threatens to . . . take seat on die other side o f the House.”21 In addition to feeling that his legal talents had been wantonly neglected, it seems possible, though Borden did not venture the opinion in his diary, that Bennett may have been jealous o f the sudden prominence o f Meighen in the closure issue, and o f the latter’s promotion to the Ministry. For, after all, by 19x4 Bennett had a long and arduous career in territorial politics behind him ; i f there was to be a new man from the West in the higher ranks o f the party why should it not have been he instead o f this novice from Manitoba who had never even sat on a town council? It is also conceivable that his connection with the Canadian Pacific Railway as its legal counsel in Alberta may have caused him to look askance at a policy o f giving further aid to a rival system, aid specifically intended in part to enable the Canadian Northern to tap the lucrative trade into and out o f Canada’s two chief ports, Montreal and Vancouver.

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In any event, when his turn came in the debate Bennett set out, with his usual great velocity o f speech and his arms waving like windmills, to discredit Mackenzie and Mann and all their works and undertakings. The Opposition rejoiced, while, naturally, the reaction along the Government benches was somewhat less than enthusiastic. Before he had proceeded very far Meighen began to interrupt and soon Bennett’s speech turned into an argumentative dialogue between the two men. For some time Bennett suffered this, though with obviously heightening irritation, but after the supper recess, when he resumed his speech, another interruption from Meighen touched off an explosion which delighted the Grits and made wonderful copy for the reporters in the press gallery. Bennett referred to the SolicitorGeneral as having said that the last annual report o f Mackenzie, Mann and Co. Ltd. was false in some particulars. Meighen had not yet returned to the House but came in a few moments later, where­ upon the following exchange took place: Mr. m e i g h e n : Would the hon. gendeman oblige me by repeating what he said about me before I came in ? Mr. b e n n e t t : I would really like to oblige the hon. gendeman, but that is quite impossible. Mr. m e i g h e n : I s the hon. gentleman afraid to repeat it? Mr. b e n n e t t : If the gramophone o f Mackenzie and Mann thinks that I consider that as other than as [rzc] an insulting remark, he is much mistaken. I should like him to understand that I am perfectly prepared that he should hear anything I have said, but obviously I cannot take the time o f the House in repeating something he did not hear. If he was not here it was not my fault, but if he thinks I fear to make any statement before him he misjudges his man.

A few minutes later Meighen again tried to interrupt to correct Bennett on one point. Mr. m e i g h e n : W ill the hon. gentleman— Mr. b e n n e t t : I will not be diverted from my argument by the impertinent interruptions o f this young man.22 I listened to his speech and I listened to it with care. Mr. s p e a k e r : Order. Some hon. m e m b e r s : Order, order. Mr. s p e a k e r : The expression “impertinent interruptions” is scarcely permissible in parliamentary debate. Mr. b e n n e t t : If the use o f the word “impertinent” is unjustified I certainly withdraw it. But, having listened to the speech o f the Solicitor-General with care and having asked no questions, I do not

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propose that the thread o f my argument, as is obviously his intention, shall be broken merely by the hon. gentleman standing in his place and repeating the record that he has received from the gramophone. Mr. m e ig h e n : It is official from the Department o f Railways and Canals.23

“ The gramophone o f Mackenzie and Mann” ! In his anger Ben­ nett had coined a phrase that was to become part o f the currency of politics. W hat a tasty phrase it was for the Liberals! They rolled it on their tongues with relish, they taunted Meighen with it in debate and in time the notion that he was in a special sense the chore-boy in Parliament o f the Canadian Northern and the financial interests con­ nected with it became an established myth. That did not bother him very much; he had no personal connection with the Canadian Nor­ thern and no particular admiration for its promoters. The problem o f the railway, he was firmly convinced, was basically the result of the mistaken weakness and generosity o f the Laurier government in having allowed, nay, encouraged Mackenzie and Mann to expand their empire as they had done. But this had happened, it was a fact o f history, and the Canadian Northern could not now, at this late date, be denied the role o f a transcontinental railway system. Unfinished, it would remain dependent forever on outlets to the oceans over the lines o f another railway, probably the Canadian Pacific Railway. In liquidation, it might fall into the hands o f another railway, prob­ ably again the Canadian Pacific Railway, and this was impossible to contemplate for political reasons, i f on no other grounds. In the circumstances the guarantee had to be given and one could only hope that it would suffice to complete the building o f the railway and to establish it as a self-sustaining enterprise. This view o f the situation was held by the Government and its supporters in 1914 and the measure was carried in the House over all opposition and was accepted by the Senate. In June, when the debate was finished, the Conservative private members held a meet­ ing, at which the absence o f Bennett and Nickle was noticeable but not unexpected, and presented Meighen with a gold watch in recog­ nition o f his part in carrying the Canadian Northern Railway legis­ lation through the House. It was the second such reward that hard work had brought him. The first watch, given to him when he was a boy in St. Marys for enlisting subscribers to The Farmers’ Advocate, had been worthless, both as timepiece and ornament. The second he carried with him for the rest o f his life.

CHAPTER

FIVE

W A R T IM E POLITICS: R A IL W A Y PROBLEM S A N D N A T IO N A L DISCORD s i t turned out, the guarantee o f 1914 did not satisfy the needs o f the Canadian Northern and before very long Sir William Mackenzie again began to haunt die Parliament Buildings, both hands outstretched in supplication. Indeed, the entire railway problem, involving the future not only o f the Canadian Northern but also o f the Grand Trunk Pacific and its parent, the Grand Trunk, grew to such alarming proportions that at length drastic and distasteful steps had to be taken. In the meantime, however, the Government and the country found diemselves faced with an emergency o f even greater magnitude: war, on a larger, more terrifying scale than any country in the world had yet experienced. It was a century precisely since Canada had been actively at war with the only enemy her English-speaking people had ever known, the United States. True, there had been alarms and excursions during and after the American Civil War when the threats o f northern poli­ ticians and the hit-and-run raids o f the Fenians on behalf o f Irish independence had kept British North America on edge. It was also true that Canada had been officially at war with the Boers at the turn o f the century, when the Government raised a small expedition­ ary force and many Canadians served in South Africa under other auspices. War, however, had never touched the nation as vitally and as tragically as it was to do when the assassination at Sarajevo set the world aflame. As the beginning o f a war and the end o f an era approached, Meighen was at home in Portage. The family had returned there as usual in the middle o f June immediately after the session and Meighen had plunged once again into the oft-interrupted work o f his law practice. The death o f W. J. Cooper in 1913 had necessitated still another reorganization o f the firm and W. R. Sexsmith had become Meighen’s next and final partner. Sexsmith was popular in the community and loyal to his senior, and these were important

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qualities, but Meighen had less confidence in his professional ability than in that o f his earlier partners and was anxious to spend as much time in Portage as he could. He felt that his practice would be safer with his own hand on the tiller. N ot long after arriving home he was called back to Ottawa by Borden to assist in hammering out the final draft o f the mortgage the Government was taking on the Canadian Northern in return for the guarantee.1 That work occu­ pied several days and it was the third week in July before Meighen got home to Portage again. W hile it had been evident ever since the shots were fired at Sara­ jevo on June the twenty-eighth that a crisis o f unusually ominous dimensions was brewing in Europe, no one in Ottawa believed until the last moment that war was inevitable. There had been dozens o f crises in the past few years and they had all blown over. An atmosphere o f summer somnolence had settled down on the Cana­ dian capital with the end o f the session and the departure o f the politicians. Few ministers were on hand and the Prime Minister set off on June the twenty-third for a holiday in Muskoka. As late as July the thirtieth the ministers who were in Ottawa thought that the situation, diough increasingly serious, did not necessitate Borden’s return. For years the Conservatives, in opposition and in power, had been pointing to the danger o f war but when the dreaded moment finally came diey could not bring themselves to believe that there was no escape. In this, o f course, they were not alone. However, Borden cut short his holiday, returned to Ottawa on the last day of July and instructed his secretary to summon back his absent col­ leagues. So once again Meighen set out on the long, jolting ride to the capital. W hen he got there he found a new air o f nervous excite­ ment, o f hectic activity. Talk o f war and o f what Canada would do in its event was to be heard everywhere. Preparations were under way, plans were afoot, for no one doubted diat i f Britain became involved Canada would at once be at her side, in fact and deed as well as in law. T he Prime Minister on August the first had already pledged to the British government Canada’s every effort “to ensure the integrity and maintain the honour o f our Empire.”2 Though not yet a full-fledged Cabinet minister, the Solicitor-General attended most o f the almost continuous Cabinet meetings in those anxious early days o f August. N ew legislation o f a sweeping character would be needed to put the country in condition to wage war and the

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preparation o f such measures for the consideration o f Parliament would be to some extent Meighen’s task. The special war session o f Parliament was opened on August the eighteenth with none o f the usual pomp and circumstance. The Duke o f Connaught, in military uniform, read the brief speech from the throne and the members immediately settled down to the work of approving what the Government had already done and what it proposed to do. Partisanship was entirely absent; Liberals and Con­ servatives united in the resolve that their country should do its utmost in what was already looked upon as a war in defence o f civilization. “It w ill be seen,” said Sir Wilfrid Laurier in a characteristically elo­ quent speech, “ that Canada, a daughter o f old England, intends to stand by her in this great conflict. W hen the call comes our answer goes at once, and it goes in the classical language o f the British answer to the call o f duty: ‘Ready, aye, ready!’ ”3 His words epitomized the spirit o f the moment. In the five days o f the session there was no debate ; for a brief space o f time there was in Parliament and die nation at large virtual unanimity concerning Canada’s course. Meighen said not a word in the House during those five days and there was no reason why he should. W hile he had helped to frame the new laws which Parliament was asked to sanction, especially the War Measures Act which gave the Government almost unlimited powers o f legislation and control, there was no occasion on which his debating or explanatory talents were required, for the House accepted without demur everything placed before it. N or was he, in his place on the fringe o f the Government, directly and continu­ ously involved in the making o f war policy. That was, o f course, the work o f the Cabinet as a whole, to whose meetings he had thus far been infrequently invited, and it was especially the work o f a group o f senior ministers whose departments were most directly concerned. Meighen did not, however, remain on the fringe very long. As time went on he moved steadily into the thick o f things ; at the end o f the war he was acknowledged by everyone as one o f the Government’s three or four leading members. The extent and rapidity o f Meighen’s progress during the war to the centre o f the political stage was not measured by formal pro­ motion to higher office. Although he was sworn into the Privy Council at the beginning o f October 1915, and so was henceforth invited to attend Cabinet meetings as a matter o f course instead o f only on specific occasions, he was left in the lowly post o f Solicitor-

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General for two years longer. W hen promotion finally came in 1917, first to the joint offices o f Secretary o f State and Minister of Mines and a few weeks later to the post o f Minister o f the Interior, it did not give him charge o f any o f the departments which were vitally important in a wartime government. W hile no Prime Minister is free to choose a man for a position solely on the basis o f ability, it is perhaps also true that Borden had special reasons for preferring not to encumber Meighen with the heavy administrative work o f an important department. In any event, Meighen’s position in the Government was in one respect anomalous: though he came more and more to the fore, both in the Commons chamber and the Council room, he remained until the autumn o f 1917 the most junior o f the ministers. Never since Confederation has any other government possessed so active and influential a Solicitor-General. From Borden’s memoirs, and even more vividly from his papers, one receives an impression o f the endless variety and immensity o f the matters foreign and domestic, civil and military that demanded his attention during those hectic years. As the war progressed, the Government, struggling with the great, unfamiliar tasks o f raising, equipping and replenishing the armed forces, as well as o f maintain­ ing the production o f war supplies, was in addition beset by a host o f serious difficulties o f another kind. Some o f these bore little or no relationship to the war but all were aggravated by it, and all converged on the Prime Minister, who could and did share them with his colleagues but in many cases had to make the final, agonizing decision himself. Serious dissensions among his ministers, bitter strife between the parties, growingly violent antagonism between English- and French-speaking Canadians— these, coupled with the large immediate questions o f war and peace policy and o f foreign and domestic relations would have been enough to break the spirit o f a less persevering and courageous man. The restrictions placed on a party leader in constructing a Cabinet by the hard hand o f custom and necessity were all too evident in the limitations o f many o f Borden’s colleagues.4 Some o f his original ministers, notably F. D. Monk o f Quebec, had already departed before the war began. O f those who remained or had been recently appointed, some, like Sir George Foster, were long past their prime. Still others were amiable nonentities, chosen to satisfy this or that regional, religious or political pressure. Like most Cabinets, Borden’s was deficient in really strong men. Sam Hughes, Minister o f Militia,

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might in some respects be called strong, but he was also headstrong and his usefulness was vitiated by his almost unerring instinct for saying and doing the wrong thing. O f the rest, certain ones, such as Robert Rogers and Dr. }. D. Reid, were primarily managers and manipulators, practical politicians to whom the higher art o f state­ craft was quite unknown— men who were simply undistinguished department heads. There were some, too, o f the opposite type: ad­ ministrators first and last, less interested in party strategy than in the waging o f the war across the sea. Such a man was Sir Thomas White, the exceedingly able Minister o f Finance. He was entirely preoccupied with the affairs o f his crucially important department. Possessing a certain distaste for public life, W hite had neither the time nor the inclination to become Borden’s intimate confidant, counsellor and aide. In fact none o f the other ministers, however able, had quite Meighen’s peculiar combination o f qualities. Meighen was compara­ tively young (he had just turned forty when the war began) ; he was ^ eager to work and serve; he liked public life and looked forward to a long career there ; he was absolutely loyal to Borden, and had great faith in his leader’s capacity for making the right decisions. His skill in debate, mental acuteness, powers o f concentration, indefatigability, calmness under relentless pressure and courage in saying and doing the necessary but unpopular thing, all naturally appealed to Borden and caused him to rely more and more on the younger man’s judg­ ment and industriousness. Furthermore, Meighen moved easily and happily in both the realms o f party strategy and state policy. W hen political troubles threatened or difficult measures were to be devised and undertaken, Borden relied increasingly on Meighen for advice about what should be done and for assistance in getting it done. Thus it was that the latter came to be identified with many wartime policies that had little or nothing to do with his own office in the Government. As a result, Meighen often played a more important part in dis­ cussing such policies in the Commons than did the ministers whose departments were concerned with them. W hen a Bill was being debated or some aspect o f policy argued in committee, this or that minister would start in bravely as the Government’s spokesman. Then, as often as not, the Solicitor-General would intervene, and before long the minister would be sitting in his chair, forgotten, while Meighen answered questions, refuted criticisms and poked ironic fun at those

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across the aisle. He was, so to speak, a versatile extra minister of almost everything that mattered much: Railways, Trade and Com­ merce, Justice, Militia and Finance. With his prodigious memory, his tireless energy, and his unmatched gift for simple, forceful expres­ sion, he became, both in and out o f the House, the work-horse o f the Borden government, and in a sense its least expendable member. This is not to say that he was in fact the master o f the wartime ad­ ministration, or was mainly responsible through his personal influ­ ence on the Prime Minister for all its alleged crimes and follies, al­ though that was the propaganda picture o f him painted later on; on the contrary, Borden was ever in command o f his Cabinet and o f the situation. Nevertheless, before the war was over, Meighen, though junior in rank, was in a real sense at the right hand of Borden and by his efforts and achievements had staked out his claim as successor to the Conservative throne. H ow different all this would have been had he been able to take the chance to go overseas that was his in 19x5! In November o f that year, a few weeks after he became a Privy Councillor, a distant cousin, General F. S. Meighen o f Montreal, offered him the quartermastership o f a new regiment, the Grenadier Guards. T he idea of going to take part, however humbly, in the struggle against evil appealed to him. H e went to Borden with the news that he wanted to accept the offer and go to the Front. The Prime Minister abso­ lutely refused to approve o f this. He pointed out to Meighen that his services to country and Empire could and would be far greater as a member o f the Government than as a regimental quartermaster and argued that for him to forsake the one post for the other might be misconstrued by the public as a display o f mock heroics. Regretfully but loyally bowing to the wishes and logic o f his leader, Meighen accepted the fact that for him personally the Front must remain in Ottawa. On that front he saw, in all probability, more action than he would have in France. It was, too, the kind o f action that better suited his talents— hard mental work and verbal, rather than physi­ cal, combat. He could not complain during the next few years that he lacked either. T he truce between the two parties was o f far briefer duration than the war that caused it and the Manitoba Free Press was not far off the mark when it observed in the autumn o f 1915: “ There has been in reality no political truce in Canada since the outbreak o f war.

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A t best we have had a condition o f armed neutrality, breaking out from time to time in open war.” 5 Before many weeks o f war abroad and peace at home had gone by the Opposition began again to per­ form its normal and proper function o f criticizing the actions o f the Government. N ow , however, the usual rancours o f partisan conflict were seriously exacerbated by the emotional excitement o f the times and the session o f 1915, which opened on February the fourth, though it was quiet in comparison with those that followed, showed that the Government could indeed expect no respite from attack. This situation brought to the fore a question o f political strategy that was hotly debated in die Cabinet and in the country through­ out 1915: should Parliament be dissolved and a new House o f Com­ mons elected ? In fact, shortly after the outbreak o f war the Govern­ ment had seriously contemplated going to the country. A t the begin­ ning o f September 1914 Borden sent a coded cablegram to Sir George Perley, Minister without Portfolio and Acting H igh Commissioner in London: “Please decipher this yourself. We are considering elec­ tions about the first week November. W ill wire further particulars within a few days.” 6 Many years later Borden wrote that this course had been urged on him by “ the more active and aggressive” o f his colleagues.7 He must, then, have been surrounded By an active and aggressive lot for he informed Perley at the time that all o f them except Sir George Foster favoured an election.8 Their reasons for wanting a dissolution were mainly two: first, the government elected in 1911 had no mandate for the conduct o f a war and all that might involve in the way o f new and momentous decisions; secondly, the Conservative party might well entrench it­ self more securely by taking advantage o f the unity and enthusiasm which the war, at least temporarily, had produced. These were very compelling and tempting arguments but they were countered by others. N ot only Foster but many outside the Government and Par­ liament counselled against an election on the grounds that it would divide and distract die country needlessly, and would divert attention from the war effort which must be the first concern o f all. Constitu­ tionally, they argued, even though the last election had been fought over different issues, there was no need to seek a new mandate from a population wholeheartedly behind the prosecution o f the war. Finally, they pointed out, the Liberals had pledged their co-operation and had promised to refrain from partisan attacks ; i f dissolution were advised, could they not with some force denounce the Government

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for seeking political advantage at such a time ? It was this viewpoint that prevailed in 1914 and by the middle o f October Borden had made up his mind that there would be no general election just then.8 The revival o f critical opposition by the Liberals, however, put a new face on the matter and agitation for an election again gained strength. T he leaders o f the agitation within the Cabinet were Robert Rogers, who was never in his true element unless an election impended, and Dr. Reid. Borden him self was also now inclined to favour an appeal, feeling that, i f successful, it might strengthen the Government’s hand and that, since the Grits had broken the truce and were themselves trying to make political capital in various ways, a dissolution could not be regarded as an unjustifiable party manoeuvre. A few days after the 1915 session ended in April Borden again cabled Per ley: We have not finally considered elections. Practically all members and Ministers favour it immediately. During past six weeks Grits have utterly thrown off mask and attacked us both in debate and in com­ mittee. Present conditions o f Grit control o f Senate and active cam­ paign against us during war are becoming intolerable. Elections probable about seventh or fourteenth June. Indications favourable except some portions Quebec.10

One o f the minority opposing an election at that time was Meighen, who was not convinced that it would be as advantageous to the Government as some thought. Furthermore, Liberal control of the Senate and criticism in the House o f Commons would continue, even if, as seemed to him unlikely, the Conservatives were returned to power with an increased majority. A n election i f necessary, yes, but was there not a desirable, even essential, step to be taken first? Would not a coalition with the Liberals at once produce the desired harmony in Parliament and protect the Conservatives from the dangerous uncertainties o f an open party fight in the country ? From Portage, where he had gone after the session, he wrote the following letter to the Prime Minister: I have been in these parts now for about ten days, have visited our friends in Saskatchewan and endeavoured to size up the situation as well as possible. I saw Mr. Rogers yesterday and unless you think there is likely to be need o f me here, I am prepared to return and help at Ottawa almost any time. . . . I may add that my sizing up o f the situation is about this; m

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Saskatchewan our friends are very hopeful indeed, and working enthusiastically. There however, as here, they fear the Austrian and German vote. My reports on this vote from all sources are unfavour­ able. They are said to be somewhat sullen; I refer particularly to the Austrians. Our people seem fairly convinced, particularly in Mani­ toba, that the effect o f a campaign, such as the Liberals would un­ doubtedly wage; severely stirring them up to revile a Government that taxes them to fight Austria, would create a situation pretty hard to meet. In Saskatchewan our friends are hopeful o f getting, notwithstand­ ing this, a fair vote among them. O f course the local situation hurts Manitoba11 and no doubt that has helped to raise the volume o f objections to a contest now. The whole wave o f sentiment against it is, o f course o f Liberal origin and keeps clearly under their auspices. I still think, as I expressed it to you the last time I saw you, that you could land the Liberal leader pretty well on his back12 and rob him o f an advantage he would have among good English speaking people, were a contest to be called. However, if you disagree with me on this, I repeat, I have no objections at all to offer to whatever decision you may arrive at, and will throw myself, might and main into the contest. I quite agree with yourself and others, that what is adverse is not likely to improve with time. Mr. Rogers and I disagree simply on the prior step. If you think it worth while I will discuss this with you again, as I am firmly convinced it would do great good.’8

As the weeks went by others more and more shared Meighen’s misgivings, though as yet support from within the party for his idea o f coalition was insignificant. By the summer o f 1915 it was no longer clear to a majority o f the ministers and members that an elec­ tion was desirable even on the score o f party advantage. Besides that, many people questioned the propriety o f holding elections in war­ time. But time was running out and a firm decision would shortly have to be reached. The life o f the twelfth Parliament would expire m October 1916 and i f there was to be no dissolution its term would have to be extended. By constitutional custom this would require a joint resolution by the Senate and Commons requesting the Imperial Parliament to enact the necessary amendment to the British North America Act. Courtesy and political good sense decreed that this request from Canada should have the support o f both parties. Since individual Liberal spokesmen and the Liberal press had loudly in­ sisted that it would be almost a crime to hold an election at that time,

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there seemed to be every good reason to believe that that party’s consent to an extension o f tbe life o f Parliament would be forthcom­ ing i f requested. Whether it should be requested or the w ill o f the people consulted was anxiously and lengthily considered by a divided Cabinet while Borden was absent in England during the summer. The substance o f the conclusions reached was transmitted to the Prime Minister in a cable from his secretary: It is opinion majority o f Ministers that you should carefully consider advisability holding short session immediately after your return for purpose extension Parliamentary term for at least three years. Liberal press renewing agitation against general election. Manitoba Free Press advocating coalition. Political situation British Columbia very uncertain, foreign vote Western Canada and in Ontario adverse. British vote Manitoba, Ontario and Maritimes favourable. Quebec very uncertain. Ministers inclined doubt wisdom general election. Members largely o f same opinion but if Liberals refuse extension immediately dissolution would be popular.14

Shortly after his return from London Borden initiated a discussion o f the matter with Laurier, who intimated that he would favour an extension but asked Sir Robert to put his proposal in writing. There ensued an exchange o f letters between the two men during the first two weeks in November. Borden’s letters were framed in close consultation with some o f his colleagues and at least one o f them (the last, dated November the thirteenth) was drafted by Meighen at the request o f the harried Prime Minister, who was about to leave to attend the funeral o f Sir Charles Tupper in Halifax when a messenger brought another note from Laurier.15 N o agreement re­ sulted from this exchange o f views. Borden first proposed an exten­ sion until one year after the end o f the war, which Laurier rejected “for want o f definiteness,” and then for one year after the expiry o f the present term, to which the Opposition leader also refused to com­ mit himself. Sir Wilfrid had not been in politics for almost forty years for nothing. Even though he and his friends had inveighed mightily against having a wartime election, he was far too shrewd to accede to an extension o f the parliamentary term, so obviously desired by the Government, without trying to exact his price. In his letters to Borden he repeatedly demanded information concerning the extent and nature o f the Government’s pending legislative programme as the condition on which he would arrive at an understanding. Would

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that programme be confined to war measures or would there be “measures o f general policy” as well ? In particular, said Sir Wilfrid— and here was the rub— he wanted to be “exactly informed” as to the Government’s intentions with respect to railway affairs, for he under­ stood that both the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific might require legislation. Unless any steps being contemplated in that direction were announced in advance, die Liberal party could not agree to extend the life o f Parliament, even for one year. It was curious in a way that Laurier should thus deliberately call attention to a gaping public wound which was largely o f his own inflicting. He had always had the gift o f saying and doing things in the grand man­ ner and even his mistakes (in this case his misjudgment o f railway affairs) had usually been o f magnificently spacious dimensions. Now, of course, he was in the enviable position o f being free o f responsibility and at the same time able to demand that he be consulted in reaching decisions for which others would be answerable to the country. His demand was a neat gambit. He was saying in effect: Tell us what you propose to do about the railways and i f we like it we may allow you to avoid an election, as you so clearly desire. The difficulty was that the Government did not know what it proposed to do about the railways; it would have preferred a course of masterful inactivity and certainly it had enough else on its mind. In answering Sir Wilfrid, Borden could only say that neither o f the companies in question had applied for further assistance and that he would be glad to consult with him before reaching a decision should such applications be received. It was quite true at that moment that neither the Canadian Northern nor the Grand Trunk Pacific had directly asked for more help but that, alas, was not the whole story. It was all too clear that both would shortly go to the wall unless the Government stepped in. Neither was as yet completely built; neither enjoyed sufficient revenues to pay its fixed interest charges, let alone proceed with construction. And one o f the unhappy results o f the war was that the supply o f private capital, which the financial stringency o f the immediate prewar years had reduced to a trickle, had been completely shut off. Rumours o f the impending doom o f both concerns were freely circulated in the newspapers, along with prognostications o f what the Government would do, for every­ one appeared to take it for granted that the Government must and would act. But what action to take and how to take it ? That was the question

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that perplexed and bedevilled the Cabinet. W hat Laurier seemed to fear it m ight do and what had prompted his query to Borden was explained to the Prime Minister by Sir Thomas Shaughnessy o f the Canadian Pacific, who wrote that he had discussed the matter with one o f Sir W ilfrid’s lieutenants who had been shown the corres­ pondence concerning extension o f the life o f Parliament. Wrote Shaughnessy: The Railway question is giving him most concern because, appar­ ently, Sir Wilfrid has been approached by the Canadian Northern interests with a view to ascertaining what his attitude would be if the Government brought down a measure to aid the Canadian Nor­ thern by giving the Dominion guarantee to $65,000,000 more o f that Company’s 5% Securities. The idea that Parliament would give the credit o f the Country to aid this, or any other railway enterprise, to any extent whatever at a time when the indebtedness o f the country is being increased by leaps and bounds to meet war expenditures, is so obnoxious, that I am confident that it would not receive, at your hands, one moment’s consideration. I expressed this conviction to Sir Wilfrid’s friend, adding at the same time, that I was making the statement quite “off my own bat” and had no warrant from you to do so.16

The leader o f the Opposition, replied Borden, “ might well be con­ cerned about the railway situation for which he is primarily and directly responsible. . . . Sir Wilfrid Laurier was told as the fact is, that no application has been made to us. A n y application for a guar­ antee o f bonds could not be entertained. . . .” 17 Guarantees, then, were ruled out, at any rate as far as the Canadian Northern was concerned, but Borden knew as well as he knew any­ thing that aid in some form for both railways would have to be forth­ coming. Not long after his exchange o f letters with Laurier he noted in his diary: “Discussed with Meighen nature o f aid to C.N.R. and G .T.P.”18 His aim was to avoid seriously contentious railway legis­ lation, since the Government, most anxious to put off an election, proposed to move a resolution extending the parliamentary term one year. To be effective, the resolution would need general support from both parties in Parliament and the Liberals might well balk i f they were asked at the same time to approve large-scale financial assistance for the near-bankrupt companies. On the other hand, there would be an open rupture in the Cabinet i f enough assistance were not given to keep the Canadian Northern at least on an even keel and operating. The Finance Minister, Thomas W hite, an erstwhile Liberal who

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had bolted over the political fence on the reciprocity issue in 1911, was intimately connected with a group o f Toronto financiers, notably Sir Edmund Walker, Z. A . Lash and E. R. Wood, who controlled the destinies o f the Canadian Bank o f Commerce and the National Trust Company. Some o f them, Lash and Wood for example, were also directors o f the Canadian Northern. Moreover, the Canadian Bank o f Commerce had advanced to the railway very considerable sums o f money, which might well be irrecoverable if liquidation took place. Referring in his diary to a long conversation he had had with W. F. Nickle about the railway problem, Borden wrote: “ He is disturbed at danger to B[an]k Commerce and at thought o f W hite’s resignation. I told him W hite w[oul]d resign i f liquidation forced. T he B[an]k officers are becoming quite nervous about the account, and the general situation.” 19 Certainly Borden could not afford at that juncture to allow such a rupture to occur. W hite was too valuable to lose and i f he were lost the political repercussions might be considerable. In any case, liquida­ tion was undesirable on other grounds as well. Something must be done to keep the railways going but it should be held to a minimum in order to mollify the Liberals, in the hope that the country would not be distracted from concentration on the war effort by a great debate on railway policy and that the uncertainties o f a general elec­ tion might be avoided. As he lay awake in bed early one morning in November, a possible answer to the baffling conundrum occurred to the Prime Minister. “ Before rising got the idea that C.N.R. night­ mare might be dissipated by merely putting in an estimate to protect underlying securities. Long discussion with W hite to whom I even­ tually unfolded it. Then widi him and Meighen who called it ‘dia­ bolically clever.’ We worked at it for some time.”20 It was indeed a clever idea. To provide the needed funds by merely putting them in the estimates to be considered by Committee o f Supply would remove the necessity for any reference to railway legislation in the speech from the throne and would at the same time avoid the prolonged debate which the introduction o f a Bill would certainly precipitate. W hile the Opposition would undoubtedly criti­ cize the granting o f further loans to the two companies, no one would seriously object to a policy o f simply maintaining the railways while a thorough inquiry into the whole complex problem was conducted, as Borden and his colleagues decided should be done. The immediate policy, then, would be short-term loans on a relatively small scale

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and a commission o f inquiry to find a solution to the whole riddle of railway affairs and to recommend a long-term policy. The day before the opening o f Parliament on January the thirteenth, 1916 Borden informed Laurier o f these proposals and also o f his intention to seek a year’s prolongation o f the life o f Parliament. Thus it was that the Government in 1916 put off the evil day when more definite and conclusive action would have to be taken with respect to the railways, and at the same time postponed for one year the test o f strength in the country it wanted to avoid. The resolution requesting the extension was presented early in the session and adopted without serious dissent. The estimates granting loans to the two companies, not to exceed eight million dollars for the Grand Trunk Pacific and fifteen million dollars for the Canadian Northern, were presented late in the session and passed after spirited debate. A t the same time, the Government’s decision to submit the entire problem o f Canadian railways to an outside commission for study was approved and the session ended with the future o f the railways as much in doubt as it had been when Parliament assembled. However, while major railway legislation was avoided, the Government, Parliament and the country knew that, whatever the recommendations o f the commission might be and whatever decisive action were taken, as it would sooner or later have to be, vested interests would be antag­ onized, partisan rancours would be aroused and the financial resources o f the country would, in one way or another, be severely taxed. W hile the session was in progress the Prime Minister met fre­ quently with some o f his colleagues, anxiously pondering the alterna­ tives and conjecturing about the recommendations the commission, yet to be appointed, might offer. “ Long conf [eren]ce,” Borden told his diary, “with Foster, White, Rogers, Reid, Doherty, Casgrain, and Meighen as to G.T.P. and C.N.R. Not much agreement except that situation is difficult and almost impossible. I said I would personally prefer to resign and let the Grits clean up their own mess.”21 And again: “ In ev[enin]g Rogers, White, Reid and Meighen came to my house and we canvassed r[ailwa]y sit[uatio]n for 2 hours. . . ,”22 One thing was sure: the ministers did not want for advice— from within their own party, from the Opposition in the House and from outside Parliament. Indeed, their worries were caused in part by the outspoken resistance o f some Conservative members, o f whom R. B. Bennett was evidently ringleader, to giving any further aid to the railways, particularly the Canadian Northern. “Members rebellious

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about r[ailwa]y sit[uatio]n, especially C.N.R.,” the Prime Minister noted apprehensively.23 This rebellion had to be faced in a lengthy caucus where the atmosphere was heavy with tension and tempers smouldered. “ Caucus 3l/z hours,” Borden recorded; “ spoke on r[ailwa]y sit[uatio]n firmly and frankly and won great applause. Placed the facts pretty forcibly before them. It went off much better than I expected. Meighen s[ai]d that my speech settled Caucus. Nickle in good mood, Bennett in ugly mood. Many think his mind is becom­ ing affected.” 24 Besides this internal division, Borden had to contend with the exceedingly diverse views o f outsiders, who pressed their opinions upon him. Sir Thomas Shaughnessy was one who conferred with the Prime Minister. “ He earnestly advocates gov[ernmen]t owner­ ship o f all Canadian railways. . . .”25 Sir Clifford Sifton “ strongly urges aid to keep things in present condition. Opposes nationaliza­ tion.”26 And o f course, as the exasperated Borden noted, “Sir W. McKenzie [sic] reported his views. Pestered me for more help for his infernal r[ailwa]y.”27 In the House o f Commons there prevailed throughout the session an undercurrent o f perplexity and basic disagreement about the rail­ ways— about the reasons for their troubles and the future before them. In the throne speecn and Budget debates, the problem was referred to by speaker after speaker, especially on the Liberal side. Various aspects of the Government’s policy were criticized on several grounds ; diverse opinions as to what it should and would do were offered. The defence of the Government fell to Meighen in the main and, as often in the past, his performance evoked the praise o f his leader. During the throne speech debate Borden wrote: “ Frank Oliver continued for an hour in a rambling speech and Meighen followed. He is a wonder­ fully fine debater and scored all through his address.”28 Oliver, in fact, was one o f Meighen’s favourite adversaries in the House. The younger man had sufficient respect for Edmonton’s leading citizen to pay close attention to what he said but he could scarcely i f ever agree with it and found Oliver a tempting and vulnerable target. Later on in the session Oliver ventured to denounce the Government for acquiring certain short railway lines in Quebec, arguing that the money should be spent on construction in western Canada to relieve the blockade o f wheat there. This prompted a characteristically sarcastic rejoin­ der by Meighen:

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O f course we all know the railway policy o f the hon. member for Edmonton (Mr. Oliver). He was a member o f the late Govern­ ment. He, o f all men, has the right, o f course, to talk about a blockade in western Canada. The hon. member for Edmonton should know what a blockade in western Canada is, because every year during which he was a member o f that Administration we had a blockade of western wheat. . . . The Government, o f which my hon. friend was a member, spent millions o f dollars on lines that could not be o f service for many years to come. What was the railway policy o f my hon. friend from Edmonton? It was a policy o f waste and want. Not a dollar to assist 100,000 people on the banks o f the St. Lawrence, but millions for the wilds o f the north where no human being could live. A policy of freight without railways in one half o f the Dominion, and railways without freight in the other. Wheat rotting in Alberta, rails rusting in Quebec. An annual paralysis in western grain; an annual orgy o f eastern contractors. That was the railway policy to which the hon. member for Edmonton for seven years adhered.29

And what was the railway policy to which Meighen and the Gov­ ernment o f which he was a member adhered? Parliament and country awaited the answer. So, indeed, did the Government itself during the first two years o f the war. Its approach to the vexing difficulty was empirical rather than theoretic, compounded o f com­ promise, procrastination and a Micawber-like hope that something would turn up. Nothing did and the hand o f the Government was at length forced by circumstances beyond its control. The whole matter came to a head in the climactic, tragic year o f 1917, a year of crossed Rubicons and momentous, shattering controversy. W hen the final, irrevocable decision was taken and the basic policy decided upon, its implementation fell largely to Meighen. More than any other single individual he was the creator o f the Canadian National Rail­ ways System. In 1916 the Borden government had wished to avoid an election and had succeeded. It had desired to postpone what it knew could not be forever avoided— a final commitment to a definite railway policy and the political explosion that would inevitably touch off. In this, too, it had been successful. Those nightmares had faded away for the time being but there were more than enough other troubles to disturb the slumber o f Borden and his colleagues. With some of these, in the sphere o f military policy or o f relations with the mother

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country and the Allies, Meighen had little direct connection, except insofar as they necessarily required the attention o f the Cabinet as a whole. With certain others relating more especially to the situation at home in Canada he was very much concerned. Am ong these latter was one o f portentous significance for the immediate future and, indirectly, for Meighen’s career as well. The question o f bilingualism in the schools o f Ontario and Manitoba arose and created a serious schism within the Borden government. More important than that, it soon proved to be a factor o f great sig­ nificance in the breakdown o f national unity during the war and it was one o f the issues that burdened the Conservative party with the deep-seated animus o f French Canada which was to be in later years the most baffling and distressing problem Meighen had to face. In 1912 the Department o f Education o f Ontario, then under a Conserva­ tive government, issued a directive— Regulation 17— which restricted the use o f French as a language o f instruction, limited the time to be accorded to it as a subject in the curriculum, and gave to certain officials o f the department wide discretionary powers in enforcing its terms. Not unexpectedly, Regulation 17 provoked a storm o f protest from Ontario’s substantial and rapidly increasing French-speaking popula­ tion. The people o f Quebec were also roused to violent anger by what diey thought was unjust discrimination against their compatriots in the neighbouring province, and their anger was skilfully exploited by those who had political ends o f one kind or another to serve. The situation was somewhat aggravated early in 1916 when Manitoba’s new Liberal government introduced a Bill abolishing the system o f bilingual schools in that province. Flowever, for reasons best known to themselves but which may not be too obscure, the Liberals o f Quebec concentrated their fire exclusively on what was taking place in Ontario. One o f the centres o f the storm in that province was the city o f Ottawa, where a most unseemly squabble broke out in the Separate School Board between the Irish faction, which supported Regulation 17, and the French faction, which opposed it. A condition o f chaos developed in the separate schools o f the capital. Some were closed; from some others English-speaking pupils were excluded and in cer­ tain cases open defiance o f the Department o f Education and its directive was shown. Into this muddle stepped the provincial gov­ ernment. In 1915 it prepared and the legislature enacted a measure which gave the Minister o f Education power to appoint a commission

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to administer the separate schools o f Ottawa in place o f the Separate School Board, in order that the schools should remain open and the law be observed. These developments were watched with serious misgivings from Parliament H ill. It was bad enough when disputes o f this kind broke out in normal times, as they had periodically in the past, but that the country should be racked by them in time o f war, with all its demands on the energy and unity o f the people, was intolerable. The effect the Ontario School Question (its significance soon entitled it to capitalization) might have on French Canada’s attitude to the war was all too clearly shown by one incident in Ottawa and some o f the comments it aroused on the French-Canadian side. A chief centre o f resistance to Regulation 17 and to the authority o f the com­ mission was a school where two intrepid teachers, Mlles. Desloges, were employed. These latter-day St. Joans, attracting others to the cause, virtually turned their school into a fortress, repelled the police, intimidated the commissioners and effectively made heroines of themselves. Surveying this battlefield, the student newspaper of Laval University proclaimed : “ The frontier for us French Canadians and Catholics is not in Flanders, but at Misses Desloges’ school in Ottawa— that is, perhaps, the only place in the world where French civilization is menaced.”30 A few days later Ottawa officials o f the Patriotic Fund, established to look after the families o f enlisted men and supported by voluntary contributions, received a letter from seven priests, explaining that “ the French Canadians o f the capital, compelled as they are to bleed themselves to resist the Government in the matter o f schools, have very little savings left to contribute.” 31 The voice o f French Canada was certainly not that o f a student editor or o f seven priests but these were straws in a wind that threat­ ened to turn into a gale. The gravity o f the situation made it highly likely, in fact, almost certain, that the Dominion government would, willy-nilly, become embroiled, and, sure enough, Sir Robert Borden soon found him self cruelly impaled on the horns o f a dilemma all too familiar to Canadian politicians. From across the Ottawa River and from the French-speaking minorities o f Ontario and Manitoba came demands that the federal government assert its power to pre­ serve the use and teaching o f French in die schools. But what power had it in the circumstances? Unquestionably, it could disallow the Manitoba statute abolishing bilingual schools and the Ontario statute providing for the appointment o f a Separate Schools Commission in

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Ottawa, as it was urged from certain quarters to do. That it had the right, as some suggested, to disallow Regulation 17, an administrative directive o f a provincial department, was doubtful, to say the least. In any event, was this a case where the power o f disallowance could be exercised with propriety? T he constitutionality o f Ontario’s Act had been upheld by the courts o f that province32 and it had been laid down by no less a man than Edward Blake, the most eminent Liberal authority on the Constitution in days gone by, that there should be no disallowance o f education legislation “ for the mere reason that, in the opinion o f this Parliament, some other or different policy . . . would be a better policy.”33 N o educational statute ever had been disallowed since Confederation and the Borden government was naturally reluctant to create a precedent for disallowance in a field o f policy where provincial sovereignty was most deeply cherished and jealously guarded, in Quebec as elsewhere. I f disallowance was out o f the question, what about the power conferred upon the Dominion government and Parliament by Sec­ tion 93 o f the British North America Act to take remedial action for the preservation o f certain minority rights in education ? The reme­ dial power extended to the setting aside, not only o f a provincial statute, but also o f any “decision o f any provincial authority,” which might include an administrative order like Regulation 17. But Sec­ tion 93 was not applicable in the present circumstances since it had to do solely with the maintenance o f sectarian rights in education and was entirely silent on the matter o f language rights, which alone were at stake in 1916. Manitoba had had no publicly supported de­ nominational schools for more than twenty-five years while in Ontario the existence o f such schools was not affected by the restrictions on the use o f the French language. These constitutional arguments against interference by the Do­ minion government were reinforced by political considerations. Assuming that it had the right to act, could the national government afford politically to do so ? In one sense the answer was that it could not afford to act, in another, that it could not afford not to. Whether it did or not, an important sector o f public opinion would be outraged, but the weight o f argument was clearly against intervention. In correspondence with G. Howard Ferguson, Ontario’s Acting Minister o f Education, Borden sought vainly for some modification o f Regu­ lation 17. The policy, he was told, was supported by both parties in the province and by an overwhelming majority o f the people. I f this

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were true, the Borden government by mixing in the matter would only make itself unpopular in a province upon whose support it heavily depended. On the other hand, Quebec, whose people were already becoming restive under other grievances, was and would probably remain, no matter what was or was not done about the language question, a rampart o f Liberalism. Furthermore, the Conservative party had been badly mangled in attempting to intervene remedially in the violently contentious Manitoba School Question o f the 1890’s. H aving been once painfully bitten, it was now twice shy and the Borden government was no doubt glad to be able to base its inevitable non-interventionist decision on sound constitutional grounds. For all these reasons the Cabinet decided without much difficulty to do nothing. They would have much preferred, o f course, not to have been confronted with the choice but to most o f them disallow­ ance, or action in some other form, was manifestly impossible. The Minister o f Justice, an Irish Roman Catholic, prepared a twenty-page brief against intervention but there was no need o f Doherty’s elaborate arguments. With few exceptions the ministers had already made up their minds. Their decision, needless to say, did not solve a problem for which there was really no solution. The people o f Quebec tended to approach the matter from the standpoint o f natural right and justice and were unmoved by the references to provincial rights. Unfortu­ nately, the episode indicated, as similar ones in the past had done, that to Quebec, as to other provinces, the appeal to provincial autonomy seemed valid when applied to its own rights but not necessarily so when applied to the rights o f others. A decision to act would undoubtedly have caused a major, indeed fatal, rupture within the ranks o f the Borden Cabinet, but the handsoff decision did not prevent a minor one. It brought Meighen, at Borden’s request, to grips with a matter with which otherwise he probably would have had nothing to do. In the latter part o f April 1916 the Prime Minister received a long, discursive letter from his three French-Canadian colleagues, T. Chase Casgrain, P. E. Blondin and E. L. Patenaude. In it they propounded a novel and unacceptable plan for ending the controversy over language rights in Ontario schools. After adverting to various instances bearing on a sim ilar problem in the history o f Europe and the British Empire and to some aspects o f the question in Canadian history, they proposed that the whole matter should be submitted to the K in g in his Privy Council, according to a procedure described in a British statute o f the reign

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o f William IV. They had in mind a reference, not to the Judicial Committee o f the Privy Council, which could only advise as to points of law, but to a special committee, composed o f such members o f his Council as the K ing m ight choose, which could advise on matters o f policy. In other words, the three French-Canadian ministers sug­ gested, in effect, that the issue be referred to the British government for advice and counsel. If [they wrote] anxious minds in Canada are looking for some tribunal from which prejudice, bias or partiality are banished, where could they find one more suited to the present circumstances than the King in his Privy Council? We are willing to place our case at the foot of the throne and to ask His Majesty to review the whole situation; the claims o f his French subjects under the natural law, the custom and practice followed in this country, the legislative enactments which from time to time have been passed in relation to the subject and the general policy o f his Empire, and to determine what is the status of the French language in this his principal possession, and what recog­ nition is to be accorded to it throughout Canada. We are asking that . . . this our appeal to you may be regarded not with the critical eyes o f a lawyer, but from the broad and generous standpoint o f the statesman who, on great occasions, brushes aside the niceties and quibbles o f legal procedure to approve and adopt the plan which may have the most beneficial results.34

Borden at once discussed the proposal with Foster, the senior minister from the province concerned, and with Meighen. They “agreed that it could not be done.” 35 Sir Robert said he would frame a reply and asked Meighen to do likewise. The next day the two drafts were ready. “Meighen came in ev[enin]g with his draft and my draft o f reply to letter o f Casgrain & al. We discussed them and I redrafted it, using material from both.”36 These preliminary drafts do not seem to have survived in Borden’s papers but the answer that was sent bears all the marks o f Meighen’s sprightly, lucid style rather than o f his leader’s rather ponderous and pedestrian prose. Sir Robert had been invited by Casgrain, Blondin and Patenaude to shun “ the niceties and quibbles” o f the law in favour o f the allegedly higher ground o f statesmanship. But could a statesman do more than abide by the law and practice o f the Canadian constitution, which alone were at stake in the present issue ? The letter sent to the three ministers gave a convincing negative answer. The two points proposed to be considered by the special commit-

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tee o f the Imperial Privy Council were first, W hat is the present status o f the French language in Canada? and second, W hat should be ifs status? “The present status o f the French language in Canada province by province,” declared the Borden-Meighen reply, “is solely a question o f law. For the determination o f that question as o f all questions o f law, the proper tribunals are established. . . . So far there­ fore as the present status o f the French language may be in doubt, it would not appear that any interposition on the part o f the Canadian Government is required.” And what about the second inquiry ? This was

pose an alternative plan or some other idea “as to the manner in which the controversy might be ended and the agitation which tears the country in twain, threatens the destiny o f the Conservative Party and makes the position o f three o f your Colleagues untenable in their Province, made to cease.”40 Untenable their position may well have been, and for a time it looked as though they would resign. However, they relented and that particular Cabinet crisis passed without calamity. But the agi­ tation over Regulation 17 did not end. The fury o f Quebec was fanned from press, podium and pulpit and Ontario’s determination to adhere to its course became stronger the more bitterly that course was attacked from the east. In Parliament the French-Canadian Liberals, with Ernest Lapointe in the van, sought, not surprisingly, to turn the situation to the advantage o f their party in Quebec. On May the ninth Lapointe presented a motion that the House o f Com ­ mons “respectfully suggest to the Legislative Assembly [o f Ontario] the wisdom o f making it clear that the privilege o f the children o f French parentage o f being taught in their mother tongue ought not to be interfered with.”41 But the House was no more prepared to interfere than the Government had been and the motion was turned down by a large majority, including most o f the English-speaking Liberals. Meighen was among those who voted against it but he took no part in the debate. To him it was obviously and solely intended to make political capital and was hardly worth discussing. The law on the matter was crystal-clear and ought to put an end to all argu­ ment. Having helped Borden answer the suggestions o f the French ministers— having indeed, one surmises, actually written the answer himself— he ceased to be absorbed in the affair. But, as he was to learn, the question was by no means closed. The stage was being set for a tragedy, the collapse o f Anglo-French amity in Canada. Promi­ nently displayed on that stage as one o f the main properties o f the play was to be the Ontario School Question, and Meighen was to be reviled as author, director and star performer. The school issue, for which he was in no sense responsible, would return in the turbulent years ahead to haunt him and his party in the Province o f Quebec.

o f an entirely different character, . . . obviously . . . a question not of law but o f policy. . . . It is a question that concerns Canada and the provinces o f Canada alone, and therefore should be determined within this country. A ll steps whether provincial or federal designed to lead to a solution should be taken by those constitutionally responsible to our people. For this Government or for any Government to solicit advice from the Imperial Privy Council on a matter o f policy within Canada, not affecting the Empire as a whole, would be in my judgment a departure o f grave and far reaching import from proper constitu­ tional procedure.

After pointing out that the provinces “ are invested with sovereign rights in respect o f matters confided to them under our constitution” and suggesting that “the results which might flow from the course which you propose have possibly escaped your consideration,” the reply concluded: The purpose o f bringing about a more complete and cordial union o f the two great races in this country is indeed to be commended and commands my entire sympathy. I cannot, however, believe that either o f those races can hope to attain that end by an abridgement of our self-governing powers or by an abdication o f our constitutional responsibilities.37

H aving dispatched this, Borden sent a copy o f the correspondence to the Duke o f Connaught and from Rideau H all came an acknowl­ edgment, asking permission “to congratulate you on the very com­ pelling and lucid character o f your reply.”38 From the three ministers came “a foolish letter as to which I consulted Meighen Rogers Foster and Reid. . . . N o French Minister or member on our side in house today.”39 The “foolish letter” deplored in veiled language the legalistic tone o f the answer Borden had sent and lamented his failure to pro-

The palace revolt o f Messrs. Casgrain and Company threatened the Government at the very moment o f the incipient rebellion against railway aid by the private members, led by R. B. Bennett. But this was not all the internal dissension Borden had to contend with in that

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bleak early spring o f 1916. The members could be and were swung into line on railway policy; the entreaties and scoldings o f the FrenchCanadian ministers could be countered with the firm, unmistakable facts o f the law and the Constitution. But how was he to deal with the perverse temperament o f the most difficult o f his ministers (per­ haps o f all ministers), General the Honourable Sir Sam Hughes? This was by no means the least treacherous current to navigate in the Prime Minister’s sea o f troubles and here again Meighen made him­ self useful as a kind o f unofficial first mate. The nature o f Hughes’ trouble can be simply stated: he suffered from a severe case o f chronic megalomania. N ot content to be merely civilian Minister o f Militia and Defence, he aspired to be military commander in the field, too. A militia colonel when he entered the Government in 1911, he demanded a lieutenant-generalship after the war broke out and was much put out by having to make do with the lesser rank o f major-general while the matter o f his further pro­ motion was hotly disputed for the space o f a year among the authori­ ties in London.42 In the hope o f appeasing his huge conceit and making him easier to get along with, Borden arranged a knighthood for him, and this did give Hughes much pleasure. Shortly after the honour was announced, a delegation from Elgin County waited upon him to discuss a matter affecting his department. The spokes­ man began his presentation, very tactfully, by congratulating the minister. The conferring o f a knighthood on Hughes, he said, had caused much satisfaction in the county o f Elgin. Sir Sam interrupted him: “ Just a minute, Dave. It has caused satisfaction not only in the county o f Elgin but all across Canada. In fact, His Majesty said that there had never been an honour it had given him so much pleasure to bestow. G o ahead, Dave.”43 However, neither rank nor title could satisfy Hughes’ craving for power and recognition. Unquestionably, he had a certain brilliance, a great flair for getting things done, and there can be no doubt about his remarkable achievement in raising and organizing troops in the early stages o f the war. But the manner in which he did things never failed to antagonize people. He was constantly at odds with some­ body— the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the War Office, high-ranking British officers at the Front, or with many o f his own officers and men. Some o f his tactless and indiscreet policies gready contributed to the growing estrangement o f Quebec. “ He imagined,” Borden recalled in his memoirs, “ that he was extremely popular in

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the Province o f Quebec, but this was only one o f many delusions from which I found him suffering on various occasions.”44 The difficulties o f the Government in that province can unquestionably be traced in some degree to Hughes’ impulsiveness and wealth o f prejudice. Vain, opinionated and impetuous, he did not understand, or i f he understood often chose to ignore, the conventions and niceties o f Cabinet government. Frequently he made important decisions with­ out consulting his colleagues and flouted other decisions reached in Council; in general, he regarded him self as an independent despot— enlightened o f course— radier than as a member o f a constitutionally and collectively responsible Ministry. It was not surprising that Hughes was under incessant heavy fire from the Opposition in Parliament and from the Liberal press. N o other minister except Bob Rogers (also an inviting target) was hounded and harried so unmercifully. This abuse Hughes attributed to jealousy, malice or petty partisanship; he was positive, as positive as he was about everything, that no word or deed o f his could justify it. Indeed, he seems to have thought his critics quite unpatriotic. After all, he was in charge o f the war effort and to hamper him was to give aid and comfort to the enemy. Once, denouncing The Globe o f Toronto for a virulent attack on himself, Hughes unconsciously cast a piercing light on his own colossal egotism. “ ‘Cursed be ye Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites !’ ” he proclaimed. “ That’s what our Lord said and I agree with H im .”45 There is ample evidence o f Borden’s increasing distress over Hughes’ infinite capacity to involve him self and the Government in awkward situations. Most o f his other colleagues shared the Prime Minister’s distrust o f this errant knight and the demands for his replacement, which before long were voiced across the country, found an echo in the Council room. By the beginning o f April 1916 Borden realized, as he wrote in his diary, that it was “ quite evident that Hughes cannot remain in the Government.”46 N ot only had Borden and many o f his ministers lost patience with Sir Sam’s high-handed arrogance and deplorable lack o f judgment, but serious charges o f misconduct had Been made against him in the House. A Royal Commission was appointed to investigate these and while it was sitting the Prime Minister in effect suspended Hughes and administered the Militia Department himself. In these developments Meighen had a hand. He was among those who counselled the suspension o f Hughes and the appointment o f the Commission, a fact which Sir Sam evi­

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dently understood, for in a stormy meeting with Borden at the time he cursed the Solicitor-General.47 Meighen’s opinion o f Hughes was not different from Borden’s. He admired his energy and his obvious sincerity and zeal in the prosecution o f the war. But for Meighen reasonableness was a chief criterion o f a man’s worth and he was appalled, though at the same time highly amused, by Hughes’ emo­ tional instability. Sir Sam was an incurable romantic who idealized him self as the hero in an epic tale; Meighen was a stoic for whom the facts o f a life that was real and earnest must be accepted and made the best of. Had the two men been on opposite sides in Parliament one can imagine the cruel, satiric scorn with which Meighen would have attacked the swaggering General. As it was, he was forced to share and suffer the embarrassment that Hughes was continually causing the Government. From time to time Meighen was brought into contact with Sir Sam and made forcibly aware o f his peculiar and capricious methods. He was not reassured by these experiences. A t the outbreak o f war the militia unit at Portage, known as the 18th Mounted Rifles, was com­ manded by M eighen’s old friend, Charles D. McPherson, who was now a Liberal member o f the Legislative Assembly in Manitoba. W hen hostilities commenced McPherson and the other officers of the unit energetically recruited men and by the end o f August 1914 the 18th Mounted, five officers and one hundred and sixty men o f other ranks strong, were encamped at Valcartier, that mushrooming monu­ ment to the energy and initiative o f Hughes. They had not been there long when a contingent o f the Fort Garry Horse arrived from Winnipeg, numbering five or six hundred men and blessed by the patronage and paternal interest o f Bob Rogers. Soon an order was issued by Hughes, who was personally in charge at the camp, that the 18th Mounted Rifles were to be absorbed by the Fort Garry Horse. It was made clear, however, that the Portage officers would not be required and could return home. McPherson was convinced the order was issued at the instance o f Rogers, in order to strike at a political opponent. In any case McPherson and his colleagues found it hard to stomach, filled as they were with martial ardour and pride in the small force they had recruited. Other units had been sim ilarly treated and their officers left stranded (usually to give preferment to Conservatives, it was darkly rumoured) and there was much resent­ ment. Shortly after the amalgamation o f the Fort Garry Horse and the

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18th Mounted Rifles, Meighen visited Valcartier. Hearing o f the grievance o f his Portage friends, he got in touch with McPherson, who explained the trouble. Meighen urged Hughes to allow the officers to accompany their men overseas, but to no avail. Late in September all the officers o f the 18th Mounted and other units who had been detached were called out on parade at six o’clock in the morning. They were addressed by Hughes, who told them that they could all go back home and raise new units, though he did not say whether these would also be sent overseas under other leadership. There was gloom among the five officers from Portage, who muttered that Rogers had had his way and who lamented Meighen’s lack o f influence. However, a few days before the first contingent sailed, Borden and Meighen appeared at Valcartier. The previous decision was countermanded and it was announced that those officers hitherto despised and rejected would proceed across the ocean, after all. Meighen had successfully enlisted the aid o f the Prime Minister, no doubt to the chagrin o f both Hughes and Rogers, for Hughes was deeply offended by any interference with his decisions and desires and Rogers resented the growing influence o f the “boy politician” from Manitoba with Borden and in the councils o f the party.48 A fortnight after the first contingent set out from Gaspé on its perilous voyage, Meighen, this time at the direction o f the Prime Minister, made another intrusion into the domain o f Hughes. Huge orders for war supplies were being placed in Canada, not only for the Canadian forces but for those o f Great Britain and France as well. The bulk o f these orders was filled by suppliers under contracts issued by the Department o f Militia and Defence. Before long stories of favouritism and o f other irregularities in the letting o f contracts were being spread and charges that the Government had been de­ frauded by some o f the suppliers were made. In October Borden directed Meighen to investigate these charges and to prosecute any persons against whom there was evidence o f fraud. The investigation, which disclosed indiscretion and poor administrative methods in the department rather than outright corruption, was one o f the events which led to the formation o f the War Purchasing Commission in May 1915. Hughes was greatly offended by the creation o f this body, and sought to circumvent its authority whenever possible. It took out o f his hands the power o f letting contracts, for which, henceforth, tenders were to be called. Since these reforms were strongly advo­

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cated by Meighen, they did not make him any more popular with the Minister o f Militia. Hughes was exonerated by the Royal Commission which was appointed in 1916 to consider charges o f misconduct against him, but this did not save him from dismissal. In November he addressed to the Prime Minister a letter couched in terms o f such effrontery that in reply Borden demanded his resignation. Thus the tempestuous ministerial career o f Lieutenant-General Sir Sam Hughes, K.C.B., M.P., came to an end. His departure was welcome in many ways but it also raised the difficult question o f whom to appoint in his place. The Department o f Militia and Defence was one o f crucial importance and the duties o f the office in wartime were such as to tax the capacities o f the ablest man. A t least one influential and respected observer urged Borden to promote Meighen to the post. That was P. D. Ross o f the Ottawa journal, who wrote that Hughes, with his knowledge o f the department and his gift for misrepresen­ tation may be able to do large political damage, or to assist other opponents o f the Government to do it, unless he is countered by an alert and vigorous intelligence possessing a first class gift o f expression. Mr. Meighen has that sort o f brain and has that gift o f expression. . . . W hat is wanted as Minister o f Militia now, is a man who can fight for the Conservative Government. My notion is that no other member o f the Cabinet could do that as powerfully as Mr. Meighen, as a successor to Gen. Hughes. H e is liked by everybody; his record is untouchable; everybody believes in his sincerity, and he is one o f the best speakers in the country.

To this Ross added a postscript: “Privately I hardly know Meighen— haven’t spoken to him personally five minutes all told in my life. But I’ve listened to him a good deal.”49 The advice was not acted upon. There is no question that Borden admired Meighen’s ability and it is hardly likely that he doubted Meighen could do the job. Since in Borden’s mind winning the war came before all other considerations, he may have had mental reser­ vations about Ross’s opinion that “what is wanted as Minister o f Militia now, is a man who can fight for the Conservative Govern­ ment.” Meighen could do that incomparably well and he was cer­ tainly more than equal to the administrative tasks o f the position. But other factors had to be taken into account. For one thing, the representation o f Ontario in the Cabinet had to be considered; if

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Meighen took Hughes’ place that province might not be satisfied with the offer o f the Solicitor-Generalship to one o f its members, and, as it was, Manitoba already had two full-fledged ministers. Further­ more, Meighen was still young— only forty-two— and his promotion to one o f the three most important portfolios might cause jealousy. The overriding thought in Borden’s mind, though, may well have been his disinclination to tie Meighen down with a heavy depart­ ment. As Minister o f Militia he would be fully occupied ; as SolicitorGeneral he would have time to tackle this or that special project or problem. The railway riddle was as yet far from solved and in this thorny field particularly Meighen must be left free to labour. And no doubt other matters would arise, some as yet unforeseen, to demand the attention o f “ an alert and vigorous intelligence possessing a first class gift o f expression.” So Sir Edward Kemp o f Toronto was appointed to succeed Hughes and Meighen was left in the lowliest ministerial position. Nevertheless, in the stormy, decisive year that lay just ahead, his pre-eminence in the House and, next to Borden’s, in the Government, would be decisively established. To some Canadians 1917 was a year that still lives in infamy; certainly it was a year that shook the foundations o f Canadian politics and even o f Canada itself. Now, more than ever, Meighen, the controversialist par excellence, would find him self in the position he loved best— busy, embattled and beleaguered.

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was a year that saw a series o f new departures in national policy and political developments o f far-Areaching significance. It marked the beginning o f the na­ tionalization o f privately owned, publicly supported railways; the adoption o f conscription, accompanied by outbreaks o f violence in Quebec and loud protests from other places; the formation o f a coalition government; and a national election— fought under a dras­ tically altered franchise— which was to leave its scars on the country for many years to come. In all these Meighen played an important, in some cases a leading, part and more than anyone else he was to suffer from their political consequences. The parliamentary session o f that memorable year, destined to be the longest and bitterest in Canadian history to that date, opened on January the eighteenth. The Duke o f Devonshire, who had arrived in November to succeed the Duke o f Connaught as Governor-General, presided at the opening for the first time. The speech from the throne, though lengthy, did not portend the acrimonious controversies that were soon to erupt. In fact, when the session commenced the Govern­ ment had not yet formulated most o f the measures that were destined to provoke violent contention during the next eight months. The throne speech referred to David Lloyd George’s invitation to the Dominion prime ministers to attend the Imperial War Cabinet; it mentioned the forthcoming golden jubilee o f Confederation; it fore­ cast the introduction o f a resolution calling for a further extension o f the parliamentary term. There was nothing about conscription, for the very good reason that the Government still desperately hoped that the voluntary method o f recruitment would prove adequate. There was nothing about changes in the franchise because o f the equally vain hope that an election could again be avoided. Nor did the speech refer to the nationalization o f the Canadian Northern Rail­ way. Pending receipt o f the report by the commission o f inquiry, ~y

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still busily investigating, the Government was not in a position to commit itself. Yet all these matters were being discussed freely and with mount­ ing heat in newspapers across the land. Policies not yet announced, nor even decided upon, were being urged or predicted and prema­ turely praised or denounced. The flow o f reinforcements for the troops overseas had dropped off alarmingly and outside Quebec rising public pressure for conscription was making itself felt. Anticipating the report o f the railway investigation commission, newspapers joined battle with one another to argue the merits o f public ownership or sundry other solutions o f the railway problem. The Manitoba Free Press was now supported by a number o f other journals in demand­ ing the formation o f a coalition government, and the perennial, bothersome question o f whether there should be an election in war­ time was raised anew. In general, an atmosphere o f increasing ten­ sion lay heavy over the land— a pregnant, highly charged calm before a storm that everyone sensed must soon break. This, too, was the mood o f Parliament in the first weeks o f the session. The address in reply to the speech from the throne was approved unanimously but only after ten days o f acrid debate, during which the Government was hotly attacked from across the aisle for the sins it had allegedly committed in the past and those it was accused o f intending to com­ mit in the future. The feeling o f unquiet apprehension was pro­ longed by the adjournment o f the House from February the seventh to April the nineteenth to permit the Prime Minister to represent Canada in the Imperial War Cabinet. Major decisions had to await his return and the members retired to their homes, uncertain o f what might face them when they came back. The ministers, equally uncertain but bearing the awesome responsibility o f having to decide, repaired to the Council chamber for a series o f prolonged Cabinet meetings with Borden, before he sailed away on St. Valen­ tine’s Day to breathe the more rarefied atmosphere o f the high-level discussions at Dow ning Street. O f all the intricate, distressing questions that faced Government and country in the early weeks o f 1917, the problem o f military man­ power was the one most highly charged with emotion and therefore potentially most explosive. The stark fact o f the matter was that the war, which everyone had thought in the beginning would quickly end in a glorious victory for the Allies, now appeared likely to drag on indefinitely. On the Western Front, in a devastated corner o f

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France, had shaped up a war o f attrition, o f attack and counter­ attack, offensive and counter-offensive, in which the prize at stake seemed to be not final victory but a small stretch o f desolate terrain. This type o f battle was extremely wasteful o f men. On the Eastern Front the army o f Russia, indeed the entire Russian empire, was in a state o f collapse and the Germans seemed on the threshold o f a momentous triumph. On the Southern Front, in Italy, the forces of that uncertain ally were almost continually, sometimes disastrously, on the defensive. A ll in all, from the Allied viewpoint the outlook was bleak and forbidding. In France the Canadians had done their full share, in fact, some people at home were prone to argue, more than their share, in stand­ ing off the armed might o f Germany. Their casualties had been heavy; their need o f reinforcements was great. It was, however, all too clear that the rate o f enlistment in Canada was lagging behind that need, and that either it must be increased or some alternative to the voluntary system adopted. Otherwise the Canadian forces could not be maintained at strength, let alone expanded, and most o f the Canadian people apparently still believed that their country was obliged to go on fighting as best it could until the war was won. The adoption o f conscription by the Borden government has been widely condemned as a calamitous folly which broke the nation asunder and contributed nothing to the war effort. It is easy to be wise with the wisdom o f hindsight but it is only fair to take into account the facts that had to be considered at the time. The end o f the war was not in sight; the discrepancy between the number of troops lost overseas, as casualties or for other reasons, and o f men enlisting at home was increasing. I f the trend continued the army corps o f which Canadians were so proud might wither away, lose its identity and cease to be an effective, distinctive fighting force. Not only that, but the clamour for conscription, both at home and among the troops in the line, could not be ignored. It was widely argued that compulsion in some form would distribute the burdens and responsibilities o f war service more equitably, even i f it were not the only way to find the required men. This belief, expressed with ever greater vigour in English-speaking Canada, was not confined to supporters o f the Conservative party. Many Liberals, both politicians and private citizens, as well as certain Liberal newspapers, were out­ spokenly in favour o f conscription. Nor, on the other hand, was anti-conscriptionist sentiment confined to Quebec, as is sometimes

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thought. Large numbers o f people in other provinces were also strongly opposed, for reasons noble or selfish. But the tragic, irre­ futable fact was that as the controversy over manpower waxed it revolved more and more around the English-French suspicions and antipathies always latent in Canadian life. Unquestionably, Quebec was the heart and centre o f resistance to conscription. Disillusion­ ment and war-weariness were more pronounced in that province than elsewhere. Emotional attachment to the cause o f the British Empire and its allies was less strong there, and there was less sense o f identity with the European world, from which French Canadians had long felt themselves estranged. To them the war seemed more and more only a struggle between rival imperialisms, between vested interests contending for wealth and power, and less and less a fight for justice and freedom to which Canadians should be asked to respond with the nobility o f sacrifice. Disillusionment was reinforced by resentment over certain griev­ ances felt in French Canada, grievances seized upon, magnified and exploited with venomous skill by French-Canadian Nationalist agi­ tators and publicists, o f whom Henri Bourassa, editor o f Le Devoir o f Montreal, was the ablest and most influential. W h y should the sons o f Quebec, so ran the Nationalist argument, be expected to fight Prussianism abroad when they were the victims o f an equally odious Prussianism at home ? Was it not true that French-Canadian children in Ontario schools were being denied instruction in their own tongue ? Was it not true that heretic clergymen had been sent out to persuade young French-Canadian men to serve under alien officers who spoke no French and despised those whose language it was?1 Was it not true that French-Canadian officers had been denied rightful promo­ tion so that preference could be given les Anglais?— and so on and on. And all for what ? The defence o f Canada ? Preposterous ! No, for the defence, more probably the aggrandizement, o f the British Empire. Let English Canadians, supine colonials, die for the Empire if drey would but let French Canadians not be compelled to do so against their will. This kind o f propaganda enraged many people in the rest o f the country and there were replies in kind. The French Canadians were reviled as slackers and worse. Their religion, charac­ ter, culture and history were held up to ridicule. They were accused o f enjoying dre benefits o f membership in the Empire without being prepared to discharge its obligations. A detriment to Confederation,

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a disgrace to free men, they must be compelled by the force o f law to bear their share o f the burdens o f war. On both sides o f this sad and sordid domestic quarrel it was the extremists who made the most noise and did the most damage. The moderate majority were not truly represented by Bourassa on the one hand, with his rabid Anglophobia, or by the professional haters and baiters o f French Canada on the other. But despite conciliatory moves from both sides, despite the formation o f organizations express­ ly intended to promote good w ill and understanding, the moderates were inarticulate and ineffectual against the shrill-voiced vendors of rancour and prejudice. War, which in most nations unites the popu­ lation in a common purpose, in Canada appeared to be fast severing the slender ties that held this improbable confederation together. The Borden government was caught squarely in the cross-fire from the two camps. It was, in fact, in a position from which it could not extricate itself without suffering grievous wounds. N o matter what policy it decided upon, conscription or no conscription, its own strength and the unity o f the country were both bound to suffer. It cannot be said that the ministers, confronted by these bleak alterna­ tives, were in an unseemly haste to commit themselves. They tried every desperate expedient they could devise to make the voluntary system o f enlistment more productive. In October 1916 a National Service Board was established. The powers o f the board were some­ what nebulous and its purpose was not very clearly defined, but evi­ dently one o f its functions was to take inventory o f Canada’s man­ power so that Canadian workers could be more efficiently utilized in essential productive work and a greater number o f them could be made available to the armed services. The board, with the ambitious and energetic R. B. Bennett as its director-general, sent out registra­ tion cards to all Canadian men with the request that they answer certain questions on the card and return it to Ottawa. There was criticism o f this step from some who thought it timid and ineffectual and from others who regarded it as the thin edge o f the wedge of conscription. However, after some time Bennett announced that eighty per cent o f the cards had been filled out and returned. The information thus gained, assuming that most answers to the questions were honest, was no doubt interesting but its usefulness would obvi­ ously depend upon the willingness o f the Government to resort to compulsion in directing the labour force into essential occupations and conscripting those available for military service. The Govern-

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ment held back from these drastic measures in the late months o f 1916. Instead, early in December Borden and Bennett set off on a speaking tour across the country designed to stimulate recruiting. During this tour the Prime Minister disclaimed any intention o f introducing conscription in the immediate, indeed the foreseeable, future, but he left the door open by refusing to give a guarantee that under no circumstances would military service for overseas duty be made compulsory. Before long he came to the conclusion that circumstances had altered so as to compel him to take the last resort. He knew that since the spring o f 1916 the enlistment rate had declined very sharply and that all efforts to increase it by the Government, private organizations and individuals had been unavailing. His own arduous tour across the country in the company o f Bennett had had little appreciable effect. Exhortations to duty, appeals to patriotism fell largely on deaf ears while the troops in France continued to suffer heavy losses and their officers demanded action by those at home to fill the de­ pleted ranks. This was the discouraging situation when Borden left for England in February 1917. As a result o f his discussions o f the war situation with British leaders and o f his visit to the Front where he talked with Canadian officers and men, he returned from that trip convinced that conscription was no longer avoidable. Two days after his return to Ottawa on May the fifteenth Borden called the Cabinet together and revealed his intention to abandon the voluntary system in favour o f compulsion. According to one o f the French-Canadian ministers, Postmaster-General E. L. Patenaude, he and some o f the others were taken completely by surprise; this was the first intimation they had had that such a step was contemplated. The Council re­ cessed for luncheon and Patenaude, along with P. E. Blondin, Secre­ tary o f State, sought out Borden, told him they were dumbfounded by his determination to impose conscription, that they could not support it and that, since the matter transcended party and threatened the basic unity o f Canada, he must consult Sir Wilfrid Laurier before taking the final plunge.2 The Prime Minister, however, was not to be deterred by these entreaties. T he great majority o f his ministers were neidier surprised nor displeased by his decision. Some o f them, including Meighen, had been energetically pressing for conscription for months past. Moreover, Borden apparently believed when the meeting ended at six o’clock that he could count on the solidarity o f his Cabinet. He put it down in his diary that night that conscription

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had been “ debated at great length” and that everyone, including all the ministers from Quebec, had agreed that it was necessary.3 In the House the following day he gravely announced that compulsory service would be resorted to. Very closely related to this sovereign problem o f manpower and recruiting policy, indeed inextricably entwined with it, was the subject o f coalition. For a long time certain elements in the Liberal party had been demanding that a national bi-partisan government be formed. They had insisted, loudly and rather rudely, that in this supreme urgency the country deserved and required an administra­ tion o f all talents. Real talent for statesmanship, for honesty, for imaginative and vigorous leadership, they averred, was sadly lacking in the Borden government. A large infusion o f healthy Liberal blood would remedy this dangerous situation, which indeed was intolerable at a time o f war. In the country at large there was sub­ stantial support for the idea that the resources o f the whole nation could not be most effectively mobilized as long as party government and party opposition along traditional lines were allowed to operate. In the Conservative party as a whole, however, there was strong sentiment against union with the Liberals until the spring o f 1917 and even after the union was effected, a sizeable core o f die-hard Conservatives remained who felt that coalition was not only needless but wrong. Until the manpower crisis o f 1917 Borden him self was very doubtful that a two-party administration was desirable and he did not make up his mind to seek it until after he had announced the coming o f conscription. In February, shortly before he went to England, he wrote to Sir John Willison, editor o f the Toronto News, who had deprecated the idea o f coalition: The situation is not free from difficulties. I can realize some advan­ tages from the union o f both parties in a Government. Not so much in connection with the conduct o f the war but in solution o f the rail­ way situation which is o f extreme urgence and difficulty. So far as the war is concerned I believe the present Government can carry it on more effectively than would be possible under the administration o f a Coalition Government.4

Whether it was the railways or the war that caused it (and not­ withstanding Borden’s statement it was more probably the latter), the Cabinet began to consider coalition seriously on the very day that the

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letter to Willison was written. Borden found many o f the ministers in favour o f it.5 Undoubtedly Meighen was one o f them. As we have seen, he was thinking o f a coalition with Laurier as early as May 1915 but was then almost a lone voice in his party. From time to time thereafter he had put the idea forward, only to realize that the natural disinclination to join with the Grits and the lack o f over­ powering urgency in the war situation made the notion as yet imprac­ ticable. W hen the matter was raised in Council on February the second, 1917 he used all his persuasive powers in support o f the view that coalition was essential in both the national and the party interest. Unity was necessary for the most vigorous prosecution o f the war and especially for the implementation o f conscription, which Meighen believed must and would come. And i f an election were in the offing, as appeared almost certain, prudent common sense dictated that the Conservatives should ally themselves with like-minded Lib­ erals in order to withstand the voting power o f anti-war and anticonscriptionist elements in the population, which Meighen, like many others, recognized and feared. The discussion in the Cabinet, however, was inconclusive. Since Borden was about to be absent in England it was impossible to come to a decision about matters o f such moment. There still was the hope, forlorn though it may have been, that some miracle would occur to make the voluntary system productive o f more recruits. I f that hope were realized conscription might be avoided and i f there were no conscription the party might manage to weather an election storm. Coalition and conscription seemed to many people to go hand in hand ; the first did not appear imperative until the second had become inescapable. But even after the die had been cast for conscription in May there was far from unanimity in the Government as to the advisability o f coalition. A majority now favoured it but an influential minority o f the ministers, including some for whose judgment Borden had high regard, still believed that the Conservatives should carry on alone. This disagreement was related to another one concerning a further extension o f the parliamentary term. I f the life o f Parliament were to be prolonged again, a resolution requesting the Parliament at West­ minster to enact the necessary constitutional amendment would once more be required. Some o f tbe ministers held that it would be enough if the resolution were approved in Senate and Commons by a simple majority vote; others contended that, as before, the resolution should

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receive virtually unanimous support from both parties in Parliament. There were, then, two distinct factions in the Government: the first accepted the necessity o f conscription, was opposed to coalition and favoured postponing an election by sending to Westminster a resolution adopted by majority vote, should the Liberals fail to sup­ port an extension o f the term. The other, to which Meighen be­ longed, also believed in conscription but thought that its introduction must be accompanied or closely followed by the formation o f a coalition government. These did not agree that the vote o f a mere majority in both Houses should suffice to prolong the span o f Parlia­ ment another year. I f the Liberals refused to support the resolution, an election there must be. It should be added that the division of opinion in the Cabinet was not quite as clear-cut as this description suggests. A t least one minister favoured coalition and extension by majority vote i f necessary.6 By and large, though, these were the two camps into which Borden’s colleagues were divided. It must be added, too, that the Conservatives were running scared in 1917. “ Our ministers,” Sir Robert wrote in his diary, “afraid o f a gen[era]l elec­ tion. T hink we w[oul]d be beaten. . . .” 7 They could agree on the danger but not on how to meet it. Some desired to escape an election altogether and preserve a purely Conservative government. Others were prepared to have an election but only after certain precautionary steps had been taken: union with the Liberals— with Laurier i f he would come in and, i f not, with others who would— and a revamping o f the franchise to ensure as much electoral support as possible for a government, whether Conservative or coalition, committed to con­ scription. It was this latter view, supported vigorously by Meighen as well as by others, that carried the day. On May the twenty-fourth— no day for national rejoicing that year— Borden reached his decision. W hile he listened to his colleagues arguing the matter in Council word came o f a riot in the city o f Quebec. His Quebec ministers expressed alarm over the situation in their province and worriedly disagreed among themselves as to whether even Laurier’s vast influ­ ence among his compatriots, should he choose to exercise it, would suffice to end the disturbances.8 The news that open violence had broken out may have tipped the scales in favour o f union. In any event the Prime Minister made up his mind that afternoon to propose a coalition government to the Liberal leader. A t six o’clock he went to Sir Wilfrid and arranged an interview for the following morning.

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Meanwhile the Military Service Act had been drafted. A t the Cabinet meeting on May the seventeenth when conscription had been discussed and approved, it had been decided to bring in a new measure rather than proceed under the existing Militia Act. The Militia Act, which had been on the statute books since shortly after Confederation, provided that when insufficient numbers volunteered for active service in the militia all male British subjects in Canada between the ages o f eighteen and sixty were liable to be “drafted by ballot.” A n amendment to the Act, introduced by the Laurier gov­ ernment in 1904, empowered the Governor-General in Council to “place the Militia, or any part thereof, on active service anywhere in Canada, and also beyond Canada, for the defence thereof, at any time when it appears advisable to do so by reason o f emergency.” That the Militia A ct gave the Government adequate legal power in the circum­ stances seemed clear enough. Many contended, it is true, that the fighting in Europe had nothing to do with the defence o f Canada but under the terms o f the statute that was for the Government to decide. The ministers, however, shied away from choosing men by ballot; they preferred a system o f selective service instead. Certain classes o f men were to be liable; certain others were to be exempt. Obviously some could be better employed in industry or agriculture and others could with justice expect immunity on various personal grounds. The object o f the newly written Act was to find enough men and at the same time to work as little personal injustice and as little harm to the country’s productive capacity as possible. The new measure was Meighen’s handiwork and his alone. On the basis o f certain general principles laid down in Council, he went ahead at Borden’s request to frame the Bill. One week later, after many long hours o f feverish labour, he had it ready. A t the meeting on May the twenty-fourth it was considered clause by clause by the Cabinet and certain revisions were incorporated in it, Borden noting with irritation that the Bill was “very verbose and badly drafted.”9 When Sir Robert waited for Laurier to appear at his house at eleven o’clock the next morning, he was in a position to tell him the terms of the new manpower law upon which a bi-partisan government, i f such there were to be, must be based. Borden has been severely criticized for thus presenting his oppon­ ent with a fait accompli. Laurier him self and many others at the time complained that the proposal for coalition should have been made to him before, not after, it was decided to adopt conscription

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and this complaint has been frequently echoed since. Laurier put the point this way in the Commons: I may be told that I was asked . . . to be a party to a coalition govern­ ment. Sir, I was asked to form a part o f a coalition government when the policy had been framed, when the Bill had been prepared as a party measure, by a party government; and when it had been framed, deliberated on in Council, determined upon, and launched before the public. When the Government could not retrace their steps, my poor assistance, such as it might have been, was sought. If, Sir, the Govern­ ment had been in earnest, they would have consulted me before they determined on their measure. But they did not consult me, they did not ask me what would be my opinion upon its possibilities, its results, and its dangers; they did not ask me to discuss with them the situation against which they were determined to close their eyes; but when they had concocted a measure, then they were kind enough to ask me to carry on what they had devised in their wisdom. As in the play of children, they asked me: close your eyes and open your mouth and swallow. I refused.10

There was certainly something petulant about this, just a trace of wounded vanity showing through Laurier’s ironic eloquence. But did he refuse to enter a coalition just because he was not consulted beforehand about conscription? I f so, he was not as big a man as everyone, including his adversaries, thought him to be. No, the real reason, presumably, was his dread o f the political consequences of conscription, French set against English in Canada, and especially his fear that were he to join a Government with a conscriptionist policy he and his party would surrender their power and popularity in Quebec to the dangerous Henri Bourassa and his noisy Nationalist followers. Had Borden consulted Laurier about the new policy first o f all and then coalesced with him, could conscription have followed ? Judging by Sir W ilfrid’s own words in the House in the course o f the long debate on the Military Service Act, it could not. Meighen, in replying to Laurier’s complaint, was quick to seize upon this point and drive it home. We are told by the leader o f the Opposition: You have brought in your policy o f conscription and then you have asked for coalition! He says: I do not like the priority; I do not like the order o f precedence; you should have asked me for coalition first and then brought con­ scription in next. . . . But the leader o f the Opposition himself says that no matter when we consulted him upon coalition he never would

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have come into coalition upon a policy o f conscription. . . . Had we gone to him and said: We do now know where we stand, but we would like you to come in and help us in this matter o f getting soldiers; his immediate reply, and that o f his followers would have been: have you not the courage to take your own position, to pronounce your policy?— pronounce your policy first; that is the duty o f a Govern­ ment; then we will say where we stand.11

Meighen’s rejoinder had force i f one were to judge Laurier’s atti­ tude by the position he adopted in the House as the foe o f compulsion. If he was, as he claimed, unalterably opposed to conscription, then he could not have joined a Government bent on that policy, no matter when the invitation was extended. Be that as it may, however, one can see, looking back, diat the Prime Minister may have moved a little too hurriedly. From his own standpoint it would have been better to consult Laurier first before announcing conscription, to ask him to join a coalition government with a policy o f compulsory service. In this way Sir Wilfrid would have been left without his talking point, the lack o f prior consultation; the onus o f refusal would have been placed more squarely on his shoulders; and the invitation could not have been regarded, as it was by some, as an empty, cynical gesture, extended only because there was little chance o f its acceptance. In fact Borden seems sincerely to have desired a union with Laurier but die manner in which he started to pursue it laid him open to the charge o f insincerity. In any event, belatedly or not, the two men got together on May the twenty-fifth and four conferences took place before the abortive negotiations ended on June the twenty-sixth.12 Borden informed Laurier o f the impressions he had gained during his stay overseas and o f the reasons why he thought conscription essential; he showed him the Military Service Bill; he proposed a coalition government in which, not counting the office o f Prime Minister, the two parties should be equally represented, and urged the advisability o f putting off an election. In reply Laurier regretted that he had not been consulted earlier and argued that diere should be no conscription until after a referendum or a general election, his reason being that the existing Parliament had no mandate to pass such legislation. Borden re­ sponded with the suggestion that the coalition should be formed and the Military Service Bill passed but that conscription should not come into effect until after a general election. Sir Robert thought Laurier was much impressed by this proposal. The latter “ took out his notei

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book and asked me to repeat it while he set it down in writing.”18 Within a few days word seeped through to the Tory camp that this latest proposition had caused a serious rift in the Grit ranks. Laurier had gone to Montreal to discuss it with certain men there, especially Sir Lomer Gouin, Premier o f Quebec, a highly respected, i f somewhat enigmatic, power in the land. He had then returned to Ottawa to explore the subject with his parliamentary followers. The result o f his discussions in Montreal was unknown but, accord­ ing to reports reaching Borden, the deliberations o f the parliamentary Liberals produced little but hard words and violent disagreement. Rumour had it that George P. Graham and F. F. Pardee o f Ontario, as well as Frank Carvell o f N ew Brunswick and even Laurier him­ self, had stood strongly for coalition; while opposed had been Rodolphe Lemieux o f Quebec, Charles Murphy o f Ontario, Frank Oliver o f Alberta, E. M. Macdonald o f Nova Scotia and William Pugsley o f N ew Brunswick.14 Reporting all this to George Perley in London, Borden cabled: Much will depend on final answer o f Gouin which Laurier expects to receive today. He thinks it indispensable that Gouin should either enter Coalition Government or support it. If Laurier finds himself unable to join I shall offer representation in Cabinet to other Liberals. If no Liberals will accept then Government will be reconstructed along best lines possible. In either case I think we must go to the country after passing Conscription Bill.15

Whether because o f an adverse opinion from Gouin or for other reasons, Laurier informed Borden on June the sixth that he could not come in. Thus a tantalizing, unanswerable question was posed for posterity: had Sir Wilfrid been a member o f the government that administered conscription, would Canada have been spared the bitter French-English antagonism that reached a climax in 1917? We shall never know. Laurier was a man o f moderation and the influ­ ence o f moderate men is apt to decline in time o f war. It may be that his strength in Quebec was still great enough to calm passions and make reason prevail. But the emotional appeals o f Bourassa and Company were heady and infectious; fighting words had more allure than sweet reasonableness and it is conceivable that Laurier, had he joined with Borden, might have lost the affection, respect and loyalty o f his people. A t all events, it can hardly be wondered at if, at the age o f seventy-seven and with his hitherto unrivalled prestige

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in Quebec at stake, he had not the stomach for new and hazardous adventures. It was tolerably clear when Laurier gave his final answer to Borden that certain elements in the Liberal party were not prepared to be bound by his decision. Even before negotiations between the two leaders were concluded, tentative but important intimations o f a willingness on the part o f some Liberals to enter a coalition without him had reached the Government. On May the twenty-seventh Frank Carvell visited Borden. “ He was much concerned about the attitude of Quebec, and agreed that the strongest possible Government should be formed.”16 Carvell had been for years one o f the most pugnacious and uncompromising enemies o f the Government in the House, as well as one o f the most resourceful and effective debaters, but he had evidently been convinced that conscription was necessary at all costs. A few days later he and A. K . Maclean o f Halifax asked Meighen to come to see them so that they might discuss the situation with him and explore the possibilities o f union. Meighen’s surprise at being thus approached, especially by Carvell with whom he had exchanged so many sharp barbs, was equalled only by his pleasure and after talking with the two Maritimers he urged Borden to pursue the matter seri­ ously with them. On the morrow o f Laurier’s refusal the Prime Minister began to do so. In addition, there were indications from Ontario and the West that leading Liberals from those quarters might be prepared to join in forming a national administration, and, despite Laurier’s stand, Borden had not yet given up hope o f finding support for a coalition even in French Canada. Sir Lomer Gouin, he thought, might still be persuaded to lend his undoubtedly great influence to the movement and Borden asked Shaughnessy, who was close to the Quebec Premier, “ to see Gouin and urge him to cooperate.” 17 There were, indeed, signs that the federal Liberal party was dis­ solving under the pressure o f events. A profound schism over con­ scription and coalition had opened up within its ranks; loyalty to Sir Wilfrid Laurier was now in doubt, not only among many o f its prominent men, but also in the rank and file and that venerable figure was to suffer in his closing years the heart-breaking loss o f many o f his oldest friends and most trusted lieutenants. But the disagreements within the Conservative party were scarcely less seri­ ous. On June the ninth the Prime Minister received the resignation o f Patenaude, who wrote that he had refrained from hasty action as long as he thought there was hope that Borden might change or

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modify his decision about conscription. He believed, he went on, that it was the duty o f Canada “ to give to the cause o f the allies, its heartiest support. But to do this I cannot concur in any measure which, in my estimation, imperils national unity. The proposed law, I have every reason to fear, threatens to destroy this unity, and to give rise throughout the country, to deep divisions, o f long duration, and even detrimental to the needs o f the present moment. Indeed it is better to keep the country united in the present effort, than to attempt a still mightier one at the cost o f national disruption.” 18 The other two French ministers, Blondin and Albert Sévigny, elected to remain with the ship and ride out the tempest but Patenaude’s sentiments were undoubtedly those o f most o f the party’s supporters in Quebec. Elsewhere, o f course, Conservatives supported conscription over­ whelmingly, though some, especially among the farmers and work­ ing men, had serious doubts, but when it came to coalescing with the Liberals there was a strong divergence o f opinion in the party. Borden was well aware o f this. A week after his first overture to Laurier he admitted in his diary: “ Considerable uneasiness among our men as to coalition and they may not be w illing to accept.” 19 W hen the negotiations failed Sir Robert reported in caucus what had happened. “A resolution approving my action was carried by unani­ mous standing vote. A ll our supporters were in wonderfully high spirits, but I felt that caucus would have been less enthusiastic if coalition had been accepted.” 20 As discussions were commenced and carried on with other Liberals during the following months until the Union Government was finally formed in October, a disturbing under­ current o f resentful dissatisfaction flowed and swelled in a substan­ tial segment o f the Conservative party. They accepted coalition for the time being but with poor grace and their sullen antipathy to the policy was a disheartening and demoralizing factor which was to plague Borden and Meighen after him alike. W hile these preliminary attempts to bring the two parties together were under way in late May and early June, Meighen had been busy putting the Military Service Bill in final shape for presentation to Parliament. On June the eleventh the Prime Minister introduced the measure in the House and the stage was set for one o f the most dramatic debates ever heard on Parliament Hill. The debate was remarkable for a number o f reasons. For one thing, o f course, the intensity o f emotions aroused on both sides o f the issue gave the

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discussion a tension and excitement unusual even in those days o f acrimonious dispute. For another, the debate was greatly long-drawnout. The principle o f the Bill was argued, on the motion for second reading, from June the eighteenth to July the sixth, when at five o’clock in the morning the weary, exasperated members finally approved it by the large majority o f sixty-three. In Committee o f the W hole the Bill was explored and dissected in minute detail for almost two weeks and it was not until July the twenty-fourth that it was read a third time and sent to the Senate. Certainly the Govern­ ment could have shortened the time by imposing closure, but it wisely refrained from doing so. To have used drat expedient m ight have made an already explosive situation far worse. Not only that, the Conservatives were hopeful o f gaining the votes o f a substantial number o f English-speaking Liberal members for the measure. Those men had to be given time to find a way out o f their dilemma and to feel the impact o f public opinion in their ridings. I f con­ scription were rammed through, the Liberal party might close its ranks in opposition and the Government would be condemned for its method, even by those who believed in the measure. The length o f the debate on second reading was, needless to say, caused by the fact that a very large number took part in it. There were no fewer than ninety-nine speakers. O f these, forty, far more than the usual proportion, were French Canadians, fourteen o f whom spoke in their own tongue. Seldom i f ever had so much French been heard in a single debate. On both sides o f the House and for both sides o f the question there were a good many excellent speeches, oases scattered across the desert o f platitude, declamation and hypocrisy o f which the debate, like most, was largely made up. One other feature o f that memorable occasion must be mentioned: the debate went on to the accompaniment o f an unexampled public clamour. The atten­ tion o f the nation was focused on what was taking place in the Com­ mons chamber as hardly ever before or since. The echoes o f aroused public opinion resounded in that room; its occupants were never more aware o f what the people they represented thought and felt. It is, o f course, impossible to reconstruct that historic moment here in its complex entirety, to explain fully the divers pressures brought to bear on Parliament from one end o f the country to the other, or to describe akj the arguments uttered in the House for and against con­ scription, occasionally with high-minded, majestic eloquence but more often in feeble phrases and an unworthy spirit o f recrimination. It

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is, however, necessary to look rather closely at the part Meighen played in the discussion, especially in view o f the loathsome picture o f him later painted by Quebec Liberals. In that province he was to find him self depicted as the leader o f a vicious conspiracy to enslave and decimate the French-Canadian people and conscription was ever held up against him as the vilest o f his many crimes. N ow Meighen, to be sure, believed firmly, even ardently, in the principle o f compulsory service, and although he was not the sole or even the chief author o f the policy, he was the author o f the Act which gave it effect. Never­ theless, the image o f Meighen held up for execration by the people o f Quebec was a monstrous fabrication o f falsehood and misrepresen­ tation. N o man in Canada ever suffered more unjustly than Meighen was to suffer in Quebec, mainly because o f conscription. During the debate on the Military Service Bill none o f the French-Canadian orators in the House singled Meighen out for particular odium and certainly nothing he said then or ever could convict him o f animus against French Canadians. But he was to pay the penalty o f his connection with conscription later when he had become the Conserva­ tive leader because appeals to the identity and the prejudices o f one section o f the people happened to suit a party which proclaimed its deathless fidelity to the principle o f national unity. In the debate on the Bill Meighen delivered two speeches, one on the second reading and one on the third. Between times he acted as chief spokesman for the Government while the Bill was in Commit­ tee, with sporadic help from Borden and to a lesser extent from Sir Edward Kemp and Justice Minister Doherty, whose department would administer the Act. Here again, as sometimes in the past and often in the future, he shouldered the heaviest burden o f debate. He was quite willing to do so and it was virtually necessary that he should. He was much the best debater on the Government side and, having written the Bill, was the only minister who had mastered its terms sufficiently to explain and defend them in detail. In Commit­ tee he gave a masterly exhibition o f parliamentary prowess, demon­ strating as on so many occasions that in that particular phase o f the battle he had no peer. The ready, accurate answer, the crystal-clear explanation o f a complicated point, the retort courteous or crushing as the moment demanded— these were ever on the tip o f his tongue. His mind working with the speed o f lightning, his mordant wit flashing like a sword, he took on the enemy almost single-handed as they doggedly stormed the bridgehead o f conscription. They did not

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pierce his armour; they hardly even dented it. Calm and passionless, asking no quarter and giving none, he awaited, sometimes invited, their attacks, turning them aside with the deft agility peculiarly his own. He relished this sort o f infighting where one could come to grips directly with an opponent and he conducted it with consum­ mate artistry. His two formal addresses were remarkable in a somewhat different way. In a debate where words and emotions overflowed in a mighty, muddy torrent, Meighen’s speeches sang out like the pure clear waters o f a stream running swiftly, directly, inexorably along their well de­ fined course. One might know in advance the destination o f that stream, and one might want to avoid that destination, but once launched upon those waters there was no turning aside, no stopping. One was carried along irresistibly until the stream o f words, the logical argument, reached at last its predictable, inevitable conclusion. The first speech was delivered on June the twenty-first. A few days earlier, on the motion that the Bill be read a second time, Laurier had moved an amendment “ that the further consideration o f this Bill be deferred until the principle thereof has, by means o f a refer­ endum, been submitted to and approved o f by the electors o f Can­ ada.”21 W hen Meighen rose in his place he set out to discredit this amendment and also to refote certain criticisms o f the measure and o f conscription which had been advanced earlier in the debate. He began by stressing the need for a foil and high-minded examination o f the Bill:22 . . . we must so conduct ourselves as to insure that the largest possible preponderance of public support accompanies the enforcement o f this measure. Enactment o f law is only a beginning; it is obedience to law which determines its value. That is why this Bill o f all Bills should be thoroughly considered and why this debate should be conducted in such a spirit and upon such a plane as will afford an example and inspiration to our people everywhere. . . . The highest duty of members o f Parliament is to spare no effort to make plain to every reasonable man and woman in all parts o f Canada that we pass this measure and enforce it only because it is right and honourable; that we do so for no unworthy reason or out o f any spirit o f vindictiveness, but because in this crisis o f our country it is the only course we can take which has the sanction o f both mind and conscience.

Considerations o f honour and national security alike, he went on, required that reinforcements be found and dispatched to France.

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No one has seriously argued in this House— and in solemn truth no one seriously believes— that we can despatch, as we have done, 350,000 men overseas, commissioned by us to stand between our country and destruction, pledge them the undying fidelity o f a grateful people, watch them through harrowing years o f suffering, bathe ourselves in the reflected glory o f their gallantry and devotion, and then leave them to be decimated and destroyed. Surely, surely, an obligation o f honour is upon us, and fortifying that obligation o f honour is the primal, instinctive, eternal urge o f every nation to protect its own security.

Furthermore, the country had the men and could afford to send them. Does anybody dispute that? It is argued feebly by some that we require all our men for industrial, commercial and agricultural pur­ suits. True we can use them all at home; there are opportunities in Canada to occupy them. But, Mr. Speaker, a reasonable mind must agree that we need them far more sorely in France. It is true we cannot send them without some inconvenience. The soldiers—-millions of them— who represent France on that 350-mile battle line are not there without inconvenience to their people at home; neither are the soldiers who represent Great Britain. When men are sent away, necessarily more women will be employed in factories, more elderly persons will be employed on street cars, more boys will be employed on farms during summer instead o f passing their time at lake resorts. There might even be a small diminution o f production. But all this we can afford infinitely better than we can afford to allow our lines in France to be abandoned, weakened or destroyed.

The men, then, must be found and they were available. Was there any way to secure them other than conscription ? F. F. Pardee, who spoke just before Meighen in approval o f the new policy, had sug­ gested that the mere existence o f the law would, without the actual exercise o f compulsion, cause many men to volunteer. Meighen agreed. But that emphasizes— it does not destroy— the necessity for the Bill. Withdraw the Bill and its shadow vanishes; on the other hand, enact it into law, and before an organization can be set up to give it effect over the length and breadth o f Canada, thousands upon thousands will flock to the colours, knowing what is certain to come.

But the voluntary system itself had been defended in the debate. It had been asserted, on the one hand, that it had produced enough men and, on the other, that it could be made to work better than it

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had thus far. Both assertions Meighen vigorously denied. citing the recent excess o f wastage over enlistment, he said:

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. . . it is as plain as a rule o f arithmetic that further reliance on the voluntary system will in time— perhaps in a very short time— so reduce our forces that we shall have no substantial representation in the war. We are told over and over that everything has not been done which might have been done. Perhaps that is so; all I know is that we have done everything that we have been able to devise. . . . Has there been, during the whole course o f this debate, a suggestion o f any practical step which might have been taken and which was not taken? I have not heard one. Was there not a sufficient number o f recruiting officers ? Were the recruiting officers not the proper men? In some cases, quite possibly, they were not; no Government and no minister who ever existed could select in every particular case the proper man. There may have been— there no doubt was— an English recruiting officer in Montreal and such an appointment has been scornfully attacked. If memory serves me aright, there is a considerable English population there, and from it has come a creditable supply o f troops. But there were French recruiting officers as well in Montreal. One would think, listening to the hon. member for Rouville (Mr. Lemieux) that the only man commissioned to recruit in that area was the Methodist minister o f whom he complained. I asked from the Militia Depart­ ment a list o f recruiting officers in the province o f Quebec and in the city o f Montreal. W hen I received today a long tabulation, I really thought for a moment they had sent me a list o f French Canadian recruits; the number was almost legion.

In any case, the Government had as long and tenaciously as possible clung to the voluntary system, “ rather than disturb domestic una­ nimity.” The Prime Minister had at no time promised that there would never be compulsory service but he had expressed a most ardent hope that compulsion would never be necessary. To have that anxious hope fulfilled, I can think o f no resource which was not exploited, no honourable appeal which was not made, no worthy exhortation that was left unuttered, no decent pressure that was not applied. Yes, I know, or can imagine, what is in the mind o f hon. members. They are thinking o f extremes resorted to which went away beyond these limits and, truth to tell, their thinking is absolutely right. The system became, at last, one which could be called volun­ tary enlistment only in a corrupted and attenuated sense. It became a system rather o f conscription by cajolery— and not creditable to Canada. This so-called voluntary principle is illogical, it is unjust, it

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is cruelly unjust to many who volunteer to go; it is shamefully unjust to many who decide to stay. It provides no tribunal authorized to separate in public view two classes o f men, the eligibles and the inéli­ gibles, for a fighting war. It leaves everything to caprice. There is method and rationality in the plan before us now.

It had also been urged by the Opposition that the Dominion gov­ ernment had not the constitutional power to conscript men for service overseas. Meighen retorted: There is no need o f a long, wire-drawn argument as to our powers. Everyone who wants to face this issue rather than evade it will admit that there is no question whatever o f jurisdiction; all talk o f doubt is pusillanimous. If jurisdiction is not with us it is either in the Imperial Parliament or in the provinces. To suggest the first is an affront to Canada; to suggest the second is nonsense.

The old Militia Act, he continued, gave power to conscript men for service anywhere in the world. Ernest Lapointe had claimed earlier in the debate that, not only was this not so, but until a few days before no student o f Canadian constitutional matters had ever argued that it was so. This statement, replied Meighen, addressing himself particularly to the members from Quebec, would be “in days to come scattered through the homes and laneways o f your province in the hope that it w ill incite your compatriots against the Military Service Act.” W hen the Militia Act had been amended in 1904 none other than Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, then Minister o f Justice, had stated explicitly that in time o f emergency and for the defence o f Canada conscripted troops could be sent anywhere. The existence o f an emergency and the needs o f Canadian defence were to be determined by the Governor-General in Council. O f the present Government’s jurisdiction there could be no doubt. It was abandoning the Militia Act only because under it the men would be “chosen by lot, by chance, by hit and miss— a method abounding in inefficiency and injustice.” Thus far Meighen had built his case in his usual fashion, step by logical step following one upon the other in orderly array. Men were required and they were to be had; despite all efforts, the voluntary method had failed and latterly, as well, had degenerated into an intol­ erable “conscription by cajolery.” The Government’s constitutional and legal powers were crystal-clear, beyond dispute. This was the essence o f the Government’s case but there was still much more to be said. Meighen proceeded to say it.

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W hat about this amendment the leader o f the Opposition had moved, that until the people had given their favourable verdict in a referendum further consideration o f the Bill should be postponed? Always a foe o f plebiscitary democracy, Meighen set about to de­ molish this desperate, plausible proposal. It has been a matter o f much interest, and indeed o f curiosity, to observe the wonderful variety o f opinions collected behind this refer­ endum amendment. A referendum amendment is really not an amend­ ment at all. Very definitely it is not a policy; it is a negation o f policy. W hy has it been adopted as party tactics? Merely as an expedient to avoid facing the issue and to gather behind the Opposition leader all support, however incongruous, that can be got together. . . . Here is an amendment moved by the leader o f the Opposition because he himself is against conscription. It is seconded by the hon. member for Edmon­ ton because he is in favour o f conscription. And its first sponsor is the hon. member for Bonaventure (Mr. Marcil) who does not know whether he is in favour o f conscription or against it. . . . The amend­ ment is a refuge o f discord— a haven o f the disunited. It is not a declaration o f faith, it is a declaration o f despair. We cannot win a war by referendums. . . . Do not hon. gentlemen in their hearts admit that the passing o f this amendment would bring joy to friends of Germany in every part of the world? It would be welcomed at Pots­ dam. It would be supported, were he here, by the head o f the German nation himself. It would make headlines o f elation in every German newspaper on this and other continents. Such is the company hon. gentlemen are in who support this proposal. Its passing would be a cause o f rejoicing to every pool-room loafer, to every movie veteran, to every sporting fan, to all who have shrunk from duty; but it would be a subject o f resentment, regret and pain to men who have nobly done their part to preserve the liberty, and uphold the honour, of Canada.

If a referendum were held, he went on, the entire Bill would have to be submitted to the electorate. To ask them simply whether they favoured conscription would not be enough. They would demand to know, and would have a right to be told, what kind o f conscrip­ tion there was to be. A nd not only would those opposed to the prin­ ciple o f conscription give a negative vote; many o f those who approved the principle but disliked this or that feature o f the measure would too. It surely could not be right “ that this Bill, on which so largely depends [sic] the honour and security o f our country— should be exposed to such improper hazards, to such unfair opposition, as it

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would encounter under a conscription referendum.” The time for a referendum, i f ever there was such a time (which Meighen denied), had come and gone. The real question was whether Canada should prosecute the war with her whole capacity. The answer had been given in August, 1914. We have committed ourselves as a nation, we have signed the bond, it is for us to discharge the obligation. . . . 300,000 living men and 20,000 dead are over there, hostages o f our good faith. A ll that remains for us is a choice between fidelity and desertion, between courage and poltroonery, between honour and everlasting shame. We must rise to the level o f our responsibilities. We must not be afraid to lead. Ministers o f the Crown have been execrated from end to end o f Canada for failure o f leadership and all the rest. . . . Well, here is leadership. . . . The people o f Canada, we have oft been told, call out to Parliament, to members o f this House, for strong and fearless leadership. Are we going to answer that call with our hands in the air crying back to those people: “For heaven’s sake, lead us.” Such is the amendment we are now asked to support.

And now Meighen came to the great, pregnant question o f the effect o f conscription on national unity. Lastly the shadow o f disunion is raised and we are pressed to turn back. . . . There will inevitably be difference o f opinion, but quite plainly there will be nothing in the nature o f schism unless hon. gentlemen are determined to create it. I am as confident as I have ever been o f anything in my life that if members o f this House . . . will go to their constituents and tell them the meaning, purpose and spirit o f this Bill, there will be no possibility whatever o f discord or resist­ ance. W hy should there be? There is not a clause that is unjust as between provinces, or races or creeds. Very positively and very obvi­ ously there is neither intent, nor possibility, o f unfairness to the province o f Quebec.23 I want to say something else and I do so with especial earnestness. It may be that in the heat o f the discussion I do not avoid animosities perhaps as carefully as I should, but I say this to those hon. gentlemen opposite whose position with regard to this Bill is surrounded by embarrassments much heavier than those that surround us, I say to them that this Bill is not designed and is not framed to be unjust to the province o f Quebec or to any other section o f this country. I point to the provisions o f the Bill. This is not the time to discuss it in detail, but a few words will, I think, make my meaning apparent to every­ body. It is framed and it is advanced in no spirit o f recrimination

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whatsoever, in no spirit o f petty jealousy, because the real men o f the country, from end to end, are not o f that feeling and do not want that feeling expressed by this Bill. We o f English-speaking Canada have the kindest feelings towards our French Canadian compatriots. We realize that there are certain considerations having to do with this sub­ ject o f recruiting that apply to them that do not apply with the same force to us. I want to say to the members from Quebec that this Bill as drafted is not intended to, and will not if I understand the Bill, work unfairly in that province. Rather, on the other hand, for just and good reasons— not because that province deserves any favouritism and it gets no favouritism but for just and good reasons, this Bill in its results will work more lightly on the province o f Quebec than on any other province in Canada.

In support o f this contention Meighen drew attention to two features o f the Act. In the first place, he said, a larger proportion o f the people o f Quebec were engaged in agriculture than was the case in any o f the other older provinces and hence Quebec would benefit more than the other provinces from the exemption granted farmers. In the second place, the young men o f Quebec married at an earlier age than did other Canadians, “ a custom that deserves commenda­ tion.” Under the Act the first three classes o f men to be called up would comprise unmarried men between the ages o f twenty and thirty-four. It was not impossible, he thought, that this group might supply all the men needed, “ and, in that case, the Act w ill apply to a smaller proportion in the province o f Quebec than in any other province.” 24 In this speech were contained all the essential elements o f the Government’s case. It was a strong case and Meighen had presented it superbly. It is doubtful, however, that he persuaded any who were not already convinced conscriptionists. Certainly the French Cana­ dians, to whom he had especially appealed, were unmoved. With two exceptions every French member who spoke, Liberal or Conserva­ tive, condemned the Bill— not so much its actual terms as the prin­ ciple o f conscription itself. Uttering invocations to national unity, imprecations against Ontario’s Regulation 17, and denunciations o f the Government’s earlier recruiting policy in Quebec, they put them­ selves squarely on the record as the undying enemies o f coercion. They expatiated on the various grievances o f French Canada, irrele­ vant however real, such as the alleged exclusion o f her sons from the top positions o f the civil service. Canada, some o f them argued, had

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done enough in what had turned out to be a senseless, ruinous, imperialist war. The burden o f their cry, reiterated over and over again, was that this measure, unacceptable to one o f the two chief language groups o f Canada, would do irreparable harm to the cause o f domestic amity and peace. W hen the motion for second reading was at last put to a vote it was carried by one hundred and eighteen to fifty-five. O f die minority about forty were French Canadians but there were only five o f that race among the majority, four Conserva­ tives and one Liberal. The latter, Albert Champagne, represented Battleford, Saskatchewan where conscriptionist sentiment was strong. O f the odier French Canadians, Conservatives, who voted for the Bill, Albert Sévigny and P. E. Blondin were ministers; and F. J. Robidoux sat for the N ew Brunswick riding o f Kent. Only one French-speaking private member from Quebec, J. H. Rainville, voted for the Bill and he had been until very recently Deputy Speaker o f the House. A t the same time, among the one hundred and eighteen were not a few English-speaking Liberals who separated themselves from their leader on this issue. The debate and the vote afforded a disturbing revelation o f the ominous g u lf that had opened up between the country’s two main ethnic groups. Support for con­ scription was not entirely lacking in Quebec nor, certainly, was opposition absent in the rest o f the nation, but the most serious division was unquestionably one o f race and language.25 It was, how­ ever, not fear o f what the schism would bring about in the immediate or the more remote future that was uppermost in Meighen’s mind, as he walked home that morning while the sun’s light appeared in the eastern sky, but satisfaction that the honour o f Canada had been upheld by the decision o f the House. He was content. W hen the House went into Committee o f the W hole on the Bill, and commenced the tedious but vital examination o f it section by section, most o f the French members lapsed into their accustomed silence. The leading exceptions were Laurier, who continued his indomitable, unflagging opposition, and Charles M ardi. For the Government, as has been remarked already, Meighen did most of the hard, necessary work o f explaining and defending the measure in detail. His most vocal, persistent and violent antagonist was not Laurier or any other French Canadian, nor, indeed, any opponent o f conscription, but Frank Oliver o f Edmonton. Oliver’s position in the matter was interesting, and his support o f Laurier paradoxical. He made no secret o f his belief in compulsory service. Properly

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formulated and administered, a conscription policy, he thought, was the only fair way to raise and maintain an army. But the type o f conscription now proposed was not fair. Fairness demanded that there should be equality o f contribution by all provinces. He appar­ ently concluded that i f this could not be ensured, that is, i f what he thought was the best sort o f conscription was impossible, there should be no conscription at all. W hat should be done, according to Oliver, what a courageous government would have proposed, was that Quebec, which had failed to supply a proper number o f volun­ teers, should be made to do its duty by being given a proportionately larger quota o f conscripts than the other provinces. Repeatedly Meighen explained that there were no provincial quotas under the proposed Act, that the men would be taken wherever they could be found. Oliver was not satisfied widi this. Again and again, “for the purpose,” Meighen charged, “ o f currying favour in his own prov­ ince,”20 he reiterated the principle that laggard Quebec must be made to toe the line. He went farther than that. The Solicitor-General, he alleged, had said that “ it was intended to give special favours to a particular prov­ ince in this country.”27 Meighen at once denied this and demanded a retraction, whereupon Oliver proceeded to read a lengthy quotation from Meighen’s explanation that the Act would in its operation bear less heavily on Quebec than on die rest o f Canada. “ I . . . wish to thank my hon. friend from Edmonton,” Meighen retorted, “ . . . for extracting and quoting so generous a portion o f m y speech o f the 21st June which formed a very fertile oasis in the dreary desert o f his own address. . . . His method o f interpreting words is that when I stated that the Bill makes no favourites o f provinces, he takes that to be a statement that it makes a favourite o f the province o f Quebec.”28 Not only should provincial quotas be set in such a way that Quebec would be forced to make a contribution o f soldiers commensurate with her population, but, Oliver claimed, choosing men by ballot was preferable to the elaborate system o f selection boards, exemption tri­ bunals and appeals judges provided for in the Bill. The basis o f this belief was evidently his fear that in Quebec exemptions would be granted more liberally than elsewhere and diat there would be whole­ sale legal evasion o f the law. Meighen was not impressed by this point. Oliver, he said, had been in a state o f cerebral distemper or something lately— I do not know what is wrong. He seems to have no faith or confidence in any

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one. This is a selective compulsory service Bill. We want to apply a process o f selection to get those men. In working that out I should like to have employed the finest analysing and selective instrument in the world, which is the human mind. The hon. member for Edmonton on the contrary, would rather commit that task to a box o f dice or to some instrument o f chance, having lost faith in human nature. I have not lost faith in my fellow men. The hon. member wants to substitute blind chance for human judgement. H e has no confidence in two men, but all kinds o f confidence in two straws.29

In advancing these objections Oliver was clearly out o f step with the other opponents o f the Bill and they were perhaps uneasy about tactics which caused Meighen, in defending the Bill, to become also in a sense the defender o f Quebec against the slings and arrows o f the outraged Edmontonian. But there was another feature which Oliver and the anti-conscriptionists could denounce with one heart and voice, a provision aimed at nothing less, they alleged, than the destruction o f freedom o f the press. Section 16 empowered the Gov­ ernment, with the approval o f the Central Appeal Judge, to suppress for not longer than the duration o f the war any publication containing matter deemed prejudicial to the operation o f the Military Service Act. Several Liberals, chiefly Oliver and William Pugsley, strenu­ ously opposed this in Committee o f the Whole. A t one point the former held forth eloquently on the manifold, horrendous sins o f Arthur Meighen: I recall that it was my hon. friend the Solicitor General who brought in provisions to incarcerate a free citizen o f this country in the tower o f the Parliament buildings.30 I recall that it was my hon. friend the Solicitor General who introduced the closure into Parliament, and I direct the attention o f the country to the fact that it is the Solicitor General who makes himself sponsor for this provision under which he and his colleagues during the election that is about to take place can hold out the threat o f suppression against every newspaper in Canada, and make the threat good.31

Promptly from across the aisle came the unrepentant reply o f that sinister, monstrous official, the Solicitor-General: Perhaps I should apologize to the Committee for daring, after so long a series o f crimes against the liberty o f the people, to rise to speak before a free Parliament. I am depicted by the member for Edmonton . . . as author o f the incarceration o f one Miller, who, against the law o f the land, refused to answer questions respecting his conduct as a beneficiary o f the moneys o f this country and took the punishment

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which the law o f the land entailed. I am not the author o f the pro­ visions under which he received that punishment. They are older than myself, older than the hon. member for Edmonton, as old as the British constitution. I trust that they will be in full force and buoyancy when both o f us shall have passed from the earth. Mr. O l i v e r : That is a good Tory wish. Mr. m e i g h e n : I had something to do with, though I did not intro­ duce, the closure resolution to which the hon. member refers. I took some small part in the debate and my memory is green enough to enable me to recall some o f the incidents that took place during that debate. I remember that the member for Edmonton was, perhaps, the loudest among many in proclaiming to what he thought was an outraged country that Parliament was to be throttled; that free discus­ sion was to be murdered; that he spoke for the last time in a free Cana­ dian Parliament. . . . Free discussion was to be a thing o f the past. Parliament was to be gagged just as he says now the press is to be gagged. . . . He looked forward to a time when he would not be allowed to stand in this House and discuss the subjects o f the day as he had done in days gone by. The member for Edmonton himself is the very best o f many illustrations o f the folly and the failure o f his own prognostications.32

The arguments in Committee continued in the same vein for nearly a fortnight, as the Opposition strove mightily to pick the Bill to pieces and amass whatever political capital could be gained in the process, while Meighen almost alone defended it against all comers. W hen the final quarrelsome exchange across the floor had died away, when the last questions had been asked and answered and the measure was at length reported back to the House, he confidently believed that it would pass easily, and that he had said his last word on its behalf. This, however, was not to be the case. On July the twenty-fourth Borden moved third reading o f the Bill. In turn three Liberals, J. G. Turriff o f Saskatchewan and F. F. Pardee and H ugh Guthrie o f Ontario, gravely explained their support o f conscription. Laurier then followed with an eloquent, impassioned defence o f his position, pointing to the effect the introduction o f the Bill had already had in Parliament and the country and predicting yet again that its enact­ ment would bring about the collapse o f national unity. I find myself on the present occasion estranged from friends who' were just as near and dear to me as any o f my own brothers.. . . I respect their consciences; I would not attempt to bring any o f them around to my way o f thinking. I have my conscience and they have theirs; but the situation shows that we are face to face with a cleavage which,

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unless it is checked, may rend and tear this Canada o f ours down to the very roots. Such is the situation and no one can be blind to it. . . . . . . I oppose this Bill because it has in it the seeds o f discord and disunion; because it is an obstacle and a bar to that union o f heart and soul without which it is impossible to hope that this Confederation will attain the aims and ends that were had in view when Confeder­ ation was effected. Sir, all my life I have fought coercion; all my life I have promoted union; and the inspiration that led me to that course shall be my guide at all times, so long as there is a breath left in my body.33

This last appeal by Laurier might well have ended the debate. In all probability he and almost everyone else in the House thought it would but before the cheers and desk-thumpings by Sir W ilfrid’s fol­ lowers had died down, Meighen was standing in his place waiting for the eye o f the Speaker and the ear o f the Commons. He then delivered an extemporaneous speech which was at once a hard-hitting attack on everything Laurier had just said and an appeal to the Liberal leader to use his influence on behalf o f the Bill and o f that unity for whose future he professed such fear. Meighen began by saying that nothing had been farther from his mind when he entered the chamber that afternoon than to speak on the third reading o f the Bill. He felt constrained to do so, neverthe­ less, “because o f the most remarkable performance o f the leader o f the Opposition. . . . I am afraid that his many thousands o f erstwhile friends in Canada who have been so profoundly disappointed at the course o f his public life in recent years, and more particularly in recent weeks, w ill not gain very much encouragement or increased admiration o f the right hon. gentleman to-day.” Laurier had re­ affirmed his desire for a referendum, pointing out that Parliament had passed an Act in 1915 giving the vote to soldiers, who thus would not, as some contended, be disenfranchised were a referendum held. N ot so, Meighen replied. True, Parliament had passed that Act but in practice, owing to conditions at the Front, a great many soldiers, perhaps eighty per cent o f the 330,000 overseas, would find it impos­ sible to cast ballots. “ Is it any wonder,” he asked, “ that a great pro­ portion o f the red-blooded sons o f this country say that the reason the right hon. leader o f the Opposition now wants to take a referen­ dum is because that forward portion o f our population is overseas, and because, in the turmoil and stress that prevails in France, the proportion o f our population that is there cannot vote at all ?” Ignoring the fact that i f conditions in France would in effect dis-

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enfranchise the soldiers in a referendum they would presumably do the same in a general election, Meighen proceeded to another argu­ ment: that the moral influence o f those serving in other lands could not be brought to bear in a poll o f that nature. W hy should we to-day attempt to determine what is the average opinion o f the Canadian people when the vast and virile influence o f 330,000 men is stripped from this country and cannot make itself felt? I know men o f that 330,000— men from my own constituency; I can name them— o f strong, vigorous personalities and surpassing intellects; I would rather be without fifty ordinary voters than without one o f those men. Shall we strip citizens o f that type o f their votes, strip them o f their influence, and then read the measure o f the patriotism and aggressive war policy o f this country? I denominate such a pro­ posal as an outrage, and I indict the authors o f that outrage as the leader o f the Opposition and those who vote with him.

Meighen now turned to another point on which Laurier had touched. Sir Wilfrid had evidently heard rumours o f the Govern­ ment’s plans concerning the civilian franchise, which were to be embodied in the forthcoming Wartime Elections Act. “Are we to be told,” he had inquired in the course o f his remarks, “ that in this year 1917 we are going to deny a vote to the men whom we have made British subjects under the law? That is not British policy.”34 This, indeed, was to be done in the case o f those o f alien enemy origin, though at the moment Meighen answered, “ So far as I know, there has been nodiing in the proceedings o f this Parliament to give rise to his fears or predictions.” But he remarked that Laurier’s concern for the rights o f those people stemmed from the fact that they were the ones upon whom he can best rely in the position he takes towards the war policies o f Canada. . . . Is that the reason for his solicitude for the franchises o f those o f alien enemy origin in Canada? N o one would regret more than I do that there should be interference with the votes o f those men, but it ill becomes a politician to be so solicitous about the franchise o f persons o f alien enemy origin who are [nV] so little concerned about the franchise o f the red-blooded men who are to-day fighting in his defence and mine. I am more concerned for the fran­ chise o f the soldiers than I am for the franchise o f those o f alien enemy birth or . . . o f any other class whatsoever. I am more anxious for the franchise o f the soldier in a war election or war vote than I am for the franchise o f even the British population o f this country. It is better to get the word o f the soldier as to what should be done in this war than that o f any other man.

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Laurier had charged that the Military Service A ct would be coercion. “ It is,” Meighen admitted, “ coercion in the same sense that every law o f the land is coercion, and in no other sense at all. Unless there is coercion, that is to say, power, behind a law, there might as well be no law. . . . Where is the coercion in a restricted, a modified, a moderate application o f a principle that has been our law for fifty years ?” N ow what about this threat o f disunion o f which Laurier had made so much ? Must it be that the enactment o f conscription would entail the dire consequences that its opponents so freely prophesied ? Meighen refused to believe this and offered some other thoughts on the matter as well. I deplore that cleavage should even be predicted. . . . I do not believe it will exist; but I repeat now what I have said before, that I would prefer— infinitely prefer— to have disunion between the forward and backward portions of this country where we can settle it within our own borders than to have disunion between this nation on the one hand and this nation’s defenders on the other. That is a type of dis­ union, a kind of disintegration, a tearing up by the roots of Confeder­ ation to use the words of the leader of the Opposition— that I do not want to see. There is a backward and a forward portion of the popu­ lation of every country that ever existed in this world. . . . Does the leader of the Opposition believe that the only way in which we can get on harmoniously is to move just as fast as the slowest? . . . If we can only produce union by walking at the speed of and abreast with the backward portion of the Canadian people, then I do not want union in Canada; I am ready rather to face disorder and dissension. Is our arm in this conflict in which our liberties, our very lives are involved to be measured by the strength of the arm of those who do not want to be in the conflict at all? Laurier had spoken much about disunion but i f it threatened was not he him self to blame ? Meighen thought he was and said so bluntly. If there is one man between the shores of this country who is respon­ sible for the shadow of disunion I say it is the leader of the Oppo­ sition. It is only two months ago since an offer was made to the right hon. gentleman, which, if it had been accepted, would have cemented together all, or almost all, in this House and throughout Canada who stand behind this war. . . . It is the fault of the leader of the Oppo­ sition, and on his head the charge will rest so long as time endures that in this, the vastest, the most perilous struggle in which this or any

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other nation ever engaged, there was not such a union o f those who want to win the war as would produce for the sons o f Canada the greatest assistance in their struggle to the death in Flanders. That is a responsibility that I would not want to have becloud my memory after my days on earth are done. It is a responsibility that the leader o f the Opposition lightly and airily assumes.

There was, however, still time for Laurier to make amends, to stamp out the noxious growth o f discord. Would he but make the effort, Canada might yet be spared the domestic calamity he feared so much. Meighen closed his speech, and the debate, with a final earnest appeal. There was a time when the influence o f no man in this country, whether in the province o f Quebec or elsewhere, was as great as that of the right hon. gentleman. I beg o f him this afternoon to go where his influence still is great and speak o f this measure as this measure is. Let him not speak o f it as hon. gentlemen o f his own race have spoken o f it in recent weeks at Sunday meetings in their province, but let him tell the people o f his own province that within the four corners o f this measure there is no word o f unfairness and no element o f injustice to the French Canadian people. Let him say that although he himself has spoken on this measure in this Parliament on three or four dif­ ferent occasions, he had never alleged for an instant that there was a shadow or fragment o f injustice in this Bill against the race which he represents and from which he springs. . . . Let him, their leader, see that they are sanely led, and I feel satisfied that they will be ready to perform their duty. But I repeat once more that o f all the prices we must never pay for harmony in Canada, the price we must most o f all decline, is national dishonour. N o nation can survive a cost like that.35

This speech, entirely unrehearsed and unpremeditated and all the more remarkable for its fluency and order on that account, was an expression o f Meighen’s innermost convictions about the war and the situation it had created in Canada. As always with his presenta­ tions, i f one accepted the basic premises upon which the argument rested one must also accept the conclusions. The basic premise in this case was that the war was being fought, not only for the defence o f Canada, but for her very survival as a free, democratic state. Meighen, in company with countless others, was intensely, passion­ ately convinced o f that. With the greatest o f issues at stake, therefore, Canadians must be prepared to make every necessary sacrifice; the obligations o f duty and honour could admit o f nothing less.

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But to many, in Quebec particularly but in the rest o f the country too, that premise was not acceptable. Many would not believe that Canada could be endangered, secure behind her oceans and with a friendly giant to the south, no matter what befell in Europe; in any case the United States was now in the war on the Allied side and its mighty power would assuredly turn the tide o f battle across the sea. Furthermore, while Meighen ardently desired domestic concord and had sought to reassure the French Canadians about the intent and operation o f conscription, his reply to Laurier was not likely to soothe the ruffled temper o f Quebec. This stinging rebuke to a man thirtyfive years his senior, who more than anyone else personified French Canada, could not help but be resented and after it the appeal to that same man that followed would be the more likely to fall on deaf ears. N or would the inference that those who opposed conscription con­ stituted the “backward” portion o f the population and were somehow lacking in “red-bloodedness” be taken in good part. These strictures were directed against all opponents o f conscription and not particu­ larly against the French Canadians, but the latter were unusually sensitive about such aspersions. Since the passage o f the Bill was assured and the battle lines were fully and irrevocably defined, and since there had already been more than enough o f recrimination, some o f these remarks might better have been left unsaid. Yet, on the other hand, could Laurier be left unanswered ? Could the Government afford to keep silence in the face o f his charges o f incompetence, coercion and lack o f consultation? Meighen was certain that it could not and so he sprang to the attack with his merci­ less refutation. His words were spoken more in sorrow than in anger: sorrow that Laurier, for whose gifts o f leadership he had immense admiration, had not thus far responded to what Meighen thought were the self-evident requirements o f the time; sorrow that Laurier by his repeated predictions o f disunity had helped to bring about that dreaded condition; sorrow, finally, that Sir Wilfrid feared to pit him self against the malignant propaganda o f the Nationalists. Meighen, in fact, had more confidence in Laurier’s remaining power and influence in Quebec than Laurier had himself. He believed that in a trial o f strength between the Liberal chieftain and the Nation­ alist agitators Laurier would carry the day. Such a test o f strength did not take place and, whether for that reason or not, Nationalism in Quebec was temporarily triumphant.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

W A R T IM E P O L IT IC S : STR A TE G Y FOR A TE ST OF STR E N G TH Senate the Military Service Act was passed by a substantial majority early in August. As in the Commons, some Frenchspeaking Conservatives and some English-speaking Liberals de­ fected from their respective parties when the vote was taken. N ow that the Bill had gone completely through the legislative mill and had been signed by the Governor-General, the way was open to bring con­ scription into effect. But despite the prevailing sense o f urgency, the Government’s anxiety to find more troops, and the fact that losses overseas were currently exceeding enlistments by two to one, the first conscripts were not called up until October the thirteenth. There were two reasons for the delay. The machinery o f selective service had to be set up and a great array o f officials appointed to operate it. More important, there was a reluctance to take action before a coalition had been organized, for it was felt that a reconstructed union govern­ ment would be in a stronger position to enforce and administer con­ scription than one which bore the standard o f a single party. The achievement o f coalition, too, took time and infinite patience. The negotiations for it dragged on and on while the country waited, specu­ lating about the outcome and still seething with emotion. There was another reason why coalition seemed imperative to Borden: there would have to be an election. True enough, in the speech from the throne there had been mention o f extending the life o f Parliament for still another year but Borden had little hope that the Liberals would agree to this. He had made up his mind, supported by Meighen and Doherty but opposed by a majority o f his colleagues,1 that he would not press for the extension unless it received almost unanimous support in the House. This had been his position a year earlier and he still adhered to it. On July the seven­ teenth he moved the required resolution and, as he expected, Laurier did not endorse it. N or did any other member o f the Opposition save Michael Clark, not even the conscriptionists who were known

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to favour coalition. Instead, George P. Graham, who had voted for conscription but whose position was somewhat equivocal, offered a dilatory amendment which was defeated by a mere seventeen votes. Borden’s resolution was carried by a majority o f only twenty. Evidently, then, Laurier wanted a fight; perhaps he thought he would win it. Indeed, almost all Liberals, conscriptionists and anticonscriptionists, coalitionists and anti-coalitionists alike, had appar­ ently forgotten their earlier antipathy to wartime elections. They now seemed to believe that the present Parliament had outlived its usefulness and its mandate and that an election would clear the air, since it would enable a new Parliament to speak and act with an authority the existing one did not possess. So let it be; the people would be consulted in a constitutional way. A referendum on con­ scription alone had been refused but the voters would now have an opportunity to pronounce judgment, not only on that policy but on the entire record o f the Government and the various proposals o f the Opposition. As it turned out, the election might well have been a conscription referendum since the Government’s manpower policies proved to be the overriding, indeed almost the only, issue in the cam­ paign. The decision to hold an election was taken in July, but an immedi­ ate dissolution o f Parliament was out o f the question. There was still a large part o f the Government’s legislative programme for the session to be put through, in particular an important Bill relating to the Canadian Northern Railway. N ot only that, an election could not be called until the ground had been carefully and completely prepared. There was much apprehension in the Conservative ranks in view o f the widespread unpopularity o f conscription, in Quebec especially, but also among many people in other provinces. Quebec was entirely lost to the Conservatives; that was all too clear. In the rest o f the country, if three-cornered fights between Conservatives, conscriptionist Liberals and Laurier Liberals were the rule, the con­ scription vote might split in such a way as to give Laurier enough seats to form a government. The Conservatives were sincerely and profoundly convinced that that would be a disaster for Canada which could not be contemplated and which had to be avoided at all costs. It would mean, in effect, a victory for Quebec Nationalism, and the virtual withdrawal o f Canada from the war, the desertion o f her soldiers overseas, the abject surrender o f her honour, and the utter loss o f her pride. This was, o f course, not the first time that a govern-

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ment or a party had in all sincerity equated its own triumph with the well-being and security o f the state, and believed that the national interest depended on its winning at the polls. There was more than blind partisanship or hypocrisy in that belief; it was a deep convic­ tion, widely and earnestly held, not only by the Conservatives but also by some o f their new allies in the Liberal party. As Borden expressed it in his diary, “ Our first duty is to win, at any cost the coming election in order that we may continue to do our part in winning the war and that Canada be not disgraced.”2 The impetus toward coalition, then, came mainly from the dis­ cordant, violent outcry which greeted conscription in some quarters. The manpower problem, more than anything else, was the polarizing force, disrupting old alignments and allegiances and putting some strange companions in the same boats. But hardly less controversial or less strenuously contested was the Government’s railway policy, which by 1917 had been decided upon and was ready to be imple­ mented in the case o f the Canadian Northern. The policy was public ownership and it was opposed in Parliament with almost as fierce a determination as conscription itself, and by many o f the same people. A reconstructed government, strengthened in both Parliament and the country by a sizeable infusion o f Liberal blood, seemed necessary to Borden partly because such a government could with more authori­ ty and decision carry out this far-reaching and hazardous experiment in railway operation. As we have seen, in trying to persuade Sir John Willison o f the wisdom o f coalition in February, Borden had inti­ mated that it was the railway situation more than the war which made the idea attractive to him. That may well have been the calcu­ lated exaggeration o f the advocate, though in any case when he wrote to Willison conscription had not yet made its explosive entrance on the scene. Nevertheless, Sir Robert and his ministers no doubt truly felt that the problem o f the railways and dieir proposed solution o f it made desirable a reconstructed ministry as broadly based and widely supported as possible. In 1916, it w ill be recalled, the Government had decided to give temporary aid on a small scale to the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific, and to appoint a commission o f inquiry to explore the entire railway problem. The commission was appointed in July 1916 and consisted o f A . H . Smith, Vice-President o f the N ew York Central Railroad, as chairman, Sir George Paish.of England

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and Sir Henry Drayton, chief o f Canada’s Board o f Railway Com­ missioners. Subsequently Paish resigned and was replaced by another English railway authority, W. M. Acworth. W hen the commission o f inquiry was approaching the end o f its labours, Meighen, who had been keeping a close eye on its proceedings, wrote to Borden, then on his way to meetings in London, to let him know how railway matters stood. There would, Meighen explained, be two reports, one by Smith and the other by Drayton and Acworth. The latter was the only one o f the investigators who had consulted him, and he enclosed for Borden’s information a memorandum containing certain o f his own observations.

,

Mr. Ackworth [rzc] came across from England with Lord Shaughnessy and refers frequently to impressions received from him. He also speaks o f “ demonstrations” as to the “bankruptcy” o f the C.N.R., and other “perpetrations” o f that Company, that have been made to him by Mr. [R. B.] Bennett. He admits that in the same sense the G.T.R. is bankrupt but does not seem to have imbibed any antagonism to that road. . . . It was suggested that the general principle o f union o f the various constituent systems might be positively laid down and two or three practicable methods o f effecting such union outlined in gen­ eral terms, leaving the Government to be governed by financial con­ ditions immediately surrounding us and by other practical circum­ stances in determining which was preferable. A m not hopeful that this suggestion will be followed. The wisdom o f recommending a thorough digestion o f the report and avoiding its too early completion and pres­ entation, might now be considered. The impression given by Mr. Ackworth was that o f being an agree­ able well intentioned theorist, and as one not likely until [after] some years o f special study, to have as wide and practical a knowledge of the specific subject in hand as those to whom his advice is to be ten­ dered. He stated that he would likely be reporting in a month’s time.3

The commissioners presented their findings in April. That the Government must do something they were all agreed but when it came to suggesting what it should do they parted company. As Meighen had predicted, there were two reports. The Chairman pro­ posed, in brief, that public ownership be avoided by an ingenious method which he spelled out in some detail. The Grand Trunk Rail­ way should be required to lease and operate the Canadian Northern lines east o f North Bay and Parry Sound in northern Ontario; the

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Canadian Northern should be required to lease and operate the Grand Trunk Pacific lines between Winnipeg and the Pacific terminus at Prince Rupert. The lines between North Bay and Winnipeg, except, o f course, those o f the Canadian Pacific, should be leased to either the Canadian Northern or the Grand Trunk, or, i f they declined to take them, to some other “ qualified” company. In each case the rental was to be the net annual fixed interest charges on the lines taken over. A ll these arrangements were to be effected by a board o f trustees appointed by the Government and were to last for twentyone years, with the Government and the companies having the option o f terminating any o f the leases after ten years “ upon equitable terms.” Drayton and Acworth, on the other hand, while professing their desire to avoid public ownership, presented recommendations which, Mr. Smith thought, would lead to that very evil and which he there­ fore refused to endorse. The Dr ay ton-Acworth report, instead o f merely offering several possible means o f uniting the various rail­ ways, as Meighen had suggested to Acworth it should, laid down one policy, and only one, which was explained at fairly extensive length. The Canadian Northern, Grank Trunk and Grand Trunk Pacific should be acquired from their present owners and, along with the Intercolonial and the National Transcontinental, handed over to a new independent board o f trustees, to be incorporated as the Do­ minion Railway Company. Ownership o f all these lines was to be vested absolutely in that company, and its board, whose members were to be appointed by the Government in the first instance, was to be permanent, self-perpetuating and entirely free from governmental or parliamentary control. The Government, however, would pay the interest on the existing securities o f all the lines making up the system. The publication o f the reports touched off a nation-wide discus­ sion which, though soon drowned out by the uproar over conscription, did not end for many years to come. In the Cabinet there was dis­ agreement concerning the respective merits o f the two plans and Meighen, for one, expressed a preference for Smith’s suggestions over those o f Drayton and Acworth.4 The fact was, however, that both sets o f recommendations had serious flaws. I f Smith’s plan were carried out there would be no assurance that the reconstructed com­ panies, still in private hands, would not have to return to the Govern­ ment again and again for further subventions, even though certain economies might be effected. In that case, the state would remain in

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the position o f having to subsidize the companies and what was wanted was deliverance from the voracious appetites o f the railroads. In addition, the hugely unprofitable National Transcontinental, run­ ning in splendid isolation through the wilds o f northern Quebec and Ontario, would be left in the hands o f the Government and there would be no prospect o f uniting it with an integrated system and thus balancing its inevitable losses against possible profits from more fav­ ourably situated routes. Again, suppose neither die Grand Trunk nor the Canadian Northern was w illing to lease the lines between North Bay and Winnipeg and some other “ qualified” company had to be asked to do so. W hat better qualified company was there than the Canadian Pacific Railway, which, i f it took those lines over, would completely dominate the transportation bridge between eastern and western Canada ? A railway monopoly in that vital area could hardly be accepted. Finally, the cancellation option proposed by Smith might, if exercised, put the whole intolerable mess back on the Government’s doorstep in a decade’s time. A more permanent solution was essen­ tial. W hat then o f the Drayton-Acworth plan ? That solution had the merit o f permanency, at any rate, and avoided some o f the other pitfalls in Smith’s plan. But there was one grave defect in the reasoning behind it: could any government be expected to acquire a set o f rail­ ways— at considerable expense, i f the principle o f compensating the stock- and bond-holders were admitted— agree to pay the fixed charges on the vast securities outstanding, and then hand the lines to a board o f directors over which neither it nor Parliament would have any control whatever ? This, as Smith recognized, was out o f the question. Certainly political interference, with all the attendant importunities o f patronage-seekers and the pressures o f partisan politics, was unde­ sirable in the management o f railways, but it was unthinkable to accept public financial responsibility on a large scale and over a long term without insisting on ultimate public control. That would neces­ sarily mean public ownership. It was some weeks after the commissioners had reported before the Government’s railway policy was firmly decided upon. There had been hints and portents earlier that public ownership would be adopted, not willingly and certainly not by philosophical conviction, but out o f hard, inescapable necessity. When the policy was an­ nounced it proved to be a modified form o f the Drayton-Acworth proposals. A ll the great privately owned systems except the Canadian

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Pacific would be nationalized and would be managed by a board o f directors appointed by the Government and responsible to it and Parliament but free to direct the affairs o f the consolidated system without interference from politicians. This decision was not arrived at without difficulty or without efforts being made, notably by the officials o f the Canadian Pacific Railway, to secure the acceptance o f some other approach to the problem. Borden arrived back in Ottawa from England in May and the very day after his arrival Lord Shaughnessy hurried to the capital to have lunch with him. Shaughnessy explained that he feared the effect on the Canadian Pacific Railway o f the competition o f a publicly owned road with the resources o f the state behind it and political consider­ ations inevitably affecting its management. He therefore suggested that the Canadian Pacific Railway should take over the Canadian Northern and the Government take over the Grand Trunk Pacific.5 Whatever else this extraordinary proposition indicated, it proved beyond doubt that Shaughnessy knew a good bargain when he saw one. For many reasons, however, most o f them probably as obvious to Shaughnessy as they were to the ministers, this arrangement was entirely unacceptable to the Government. His Lordship then returned to an idea he had presented to Borden more than a year earlier: i f nationalization there must be, let all the railways in Canada be taken over by the state. This seemed to be a startling proposal coming from the president o f the Canadian Pacific Railway Company but when Shaughnessy explained it in full at Borden’s invitation in the sum­ mer o f 1917, it did not seem so surprising after all. Late in June Sir Robert wrote that it would be necessary to take action o f some kind with reference to railways during the coming week and asked Shaughnessy to let him have his views.6 A few weeks later Shaugh­ nessy was again in Ottawa and the two men discussed the situation. Borden told him a Bill to nationalize the Canadian Northern would shortly be introduced in Parliament and “he raised no serious objec­ tion. Proposed to him that all r[ailwa]ys in Canada shall be man­ aged by one Board or executive. He said it w[oul]d be a great saving and promised to prepare and submit a plan.”7 The Shaughnessy plan was cleverly contrived to reconcile the principle o f public ownership o f all railways with the principle o f private operation, to gain tire economic advantages o f railway unifi­ cation and at the same time to safeguard the interests o f private capital. A ll lines should be nationalized, and all should be brought together

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under the existing management o f the Canadian Pacific Railway, which must be absolutely independent and self-perpetuating. The shareholders o f the constituent companies should be guaranteed the payment in perpetuity o f a fixed annual dividend by the Government, which must also make up any deficits and pay the fixed interest charges on all present indebtedness. Borden, who admired successful business men and was inclined to be heavily influenced by their views, was perhaps ready to give this scheme serious consideration. Most of his colleagues, however, were quick to point out that whatever its economic benefits might be it was impossible politically because it would, in effect, mean handing over an absolute railway monopoly to the Canadian Pacific, which would then enjoy most o f the advan­ tages o f ownership and incur few o f the risks.8 A railway monopoly, especially under Canadian Pacific auspices, was anathema in the West particularly, and in the summer o f 1917 the Government was most anxious to strengthen itself in that section o f the country. For years afterwards Borden clung to his dream o f complete unification o f the railway system with all the economies and other advantages he thought it would bring, but no plan was ever worked out that was satisfactory to all concerned. W hat the Canadian Pacific wanted and what the Government was prepared to do, both in 1917 and later, were poles apart and the traditional close association between that company and the Conservative party came to an end with this issue. The company wanted everything or nothing nationalized ; it feared a halfway policy that would force it to compete with a publicly owned rival. W hen the cool reception given Shaughnessy’s submission by the Government made it plain that the Canadian Pacific would have to do just that, the company turned on the party that in earlier days had created it and nourished it through thick and thin, and lent its support to a resistance movement intended to compel the Government to change its plans. The movement failed, but as long as it continued, as it did for years, Meighen was its bête noire and more than anyone else its victim. These future events, however, were not at once anticipated when Sir Thomas W hite on August the seventh introduced the Bill nation­ alizing the Canadian Northern Railway. Two-fifths, or forty million dollars’ worth, o f its capital stock had been held in trust for the Crown since 1914. The Government now decided to acquire the balance o f the common shares. That decision was reached in the early part o f July and when Sir William Mackenzie learned from the Prime

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Minister that the decision was irrevocable and that his incredible adventure in empire-building was at an end, he broke down and wept, “ with audible sobs that were most distressing.”0 It was bitter medicine for Mackenzie, but he could at any rate hope to salvage something from the wreckage o f his Olympian dreams, for the Bill presented by W hite provided, not only for acquisition by the Crown o f the remaining six hundred thousand shares, but also for the payment o f compensation after the value o f the stock had been determined by a three-man tribunal. Whatever compensation was awarded by the tribunal Mackenzie and Mann would not be able to keep as their own, that was certain, but they would at least be able, by courtesy o f the taxpayers o f Canada, to pay ofi some o f the more pressing o f their gigantic debts. Sir William Mackenzie’s tears might have been even more copious had the Government exercised its legal power to foreclose its mortgage on his property without admitting the principle o f compensation. The debate on this Bill was hardly less protracted and highly charged with emotion than the one on conscription, just ended. In fact, it might have continued indefinitely had not the Government twice imposed closure. From the Liberal benches came repeated warnings about the iniquities o f socialism, coupled with grim pro­ phecies o f impending financial doom. But the Opposition’s greatest indignation was directed against the policy o f compensating the hold­ ers o f the stock. Those shares, they insisted, could not be considered to have any value whatever. That the Canadian Northern as a prop­ erty, with all its physical assets, was immensely valuable they did not deny; everyone knew it was, not least the directors o f the Canadian Pacific Railway, as Shaughnessy’s offer to take it over testified. The stock, though, was another matter. The Liberals were convinced that it was sodden with water, that it represented no investment by those who held it except that o f time, energy and ingenuity, and that in any case the indebtedness o f its proprietors to the public treasuries o f Canada was so great that the stock must be considered utterly worth­ less. This, indeed, had been the verdict o f Drayton and Acworth. W hy, then was the Government bent on having an arbitration and paying compensation? The Opposition had its answer, which it strove to impress upon the public and to depict as highly discreditable to the Government. That answer, in a word, was that the Government was acting to reward its friends and serve its masters. The friends and masters in

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this case were the same— the Toronto financial group which con­ trolled the Canadian Northern, the Canadian Bank o f Commerce and the National Trust Company. It was alleged that they dominated the administration, working through one o f dieir number, Sir Thomas W hite, formerly Vice-President o f the National Trust and now stra­ tegically placed as Minister o f Finance. These people, Rodolphe Lemieux charged in a violent diatribe, not only controlled the Govern­ ment but had corrupted the country and chloroformed the press. Nonsense, said Meighen, replying. “ Did you, Mr. Chairman, ever see so fine a spectacle o f the form, trappings and the suits o f oratory without the substance at all ? The hon. gentleman has at last reached that pitiable state o f mental hopelessness where he is in the condition ascribed by Macaulay to Southey o f being able to believe without reason and to hate without provocation.”10 But was there not reason and provocation? The Opposition thought there was plenty o f both. W ho were the men behind the railway, the bank and the trust company? Several o f them like W hite himself— and this no doubt helps to explain the bitterness o f the Opposition— were former Liberals who had signed a manifesto against reciprocity in 1911. Therefore, staunch Liberals regarded them as a nest o f traitors whom they had never forgiven and never really would. Here were the real villains o f the Canadian Northern story, the renegades o f 1911, now about to milk the public coffers o f millions o f dollars to pay for stock not worth the paper in its certificates. To pay whom? Themselves, o f course. H ad not Sir Clifford Sifton— not a signer o f the manifesto but best-known of the reciprocity traitors— a large personal interest in the Canadian Northern? No, answered W hite, producing a list o f the stockhold­ ers, he owned not a single share. W hat then o f those other turn­ coats, Sir Edmund Walker, Z. A . Lash, E. R. Wood, W. K . George? Their names were all on the manifesto; they had managed to have one o f their friends made Finance Minister in 1911 and now here they were, demanding their pound o f flesh. As Charles Murphy, perhaps Laurier’s most devoted and unwavering follower, was at pains to point out, they composed an oligarchy tightly knit by an intricate web o f interlocking directorships representing an imposing agglomeration o f power. Consider the case o f Mr. Lash, for example: Director o f the Canadian Northern, Vice-President o f the Canadian Bank o f Commerce, Vice-President o f the National Trust Company. E. R. Wood, too, was on the boards o f directors o f all three concerns.

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And o f course W. K . George was a director o f the railway, and Sir Edmund Walker President o f the bank. N or should it be forgotten, Murphy went on, that Sir Joseph Flavelle, who moved in the high places o f wartime Ottawa officialdom as well as o f finance, was President o f the National Trust and a director o f the Bank o f Com­ merce. Add to all this the fact that White, formerly an associate o f these men, was sponsor o f the Bill, and it seemed self-evident to Murphy and those around him that a very sinister conspiracy was afoot. It fell mainly to W hite to defend the Government against these insinuations o f favouritism and dishonesty, but Meighen, who since his researches in 1914 knew more about Canadian Northern matters than any other minister, was also in the thick o f the fray, especially during the Committee stage when a heavy barrage o f questions, allegations and abuse was flung across the floor. It was not difficult for the two men to explode Murphy’s charge that the measure was intended to protect the stock-owning traitors o f Toronto. True, Lash, Wood and George were listed as stockholders but the shares were in their names only in order to qualify them as directors; they had no personal financial interest in the railroad. Furthermore, W hite pointed out, to accuse the Government o f subservience to the eighteen erstwhile Liberals o f Toronto was absurd; most o f those gentlemen had no connection whatever with the Canadian Northern, the Bank o f Commerce or the National Trust Company. In fact, among the present directors o f that bank were eighteen Liberals in good standing with their party and only nine Conservatives. "What had happened in 1911 had not the remotest connection with what the Government now proposed to do. A ll this was true. It was not a matter o f recompensing political £ friends and benefactors who had had the misfortune to invest in Canadian Northern common stock. O f the one million shares o f that stock forty per cent had been held in trust for His Majesty since 1914; it was now the possession o f the state. Fifty-one per cent was i owned by Mackenzie, Mann & Co. Ltd. Only nine per cent belonged to others and the largest single individual holding was only one hundred shares. But there was another salient fact which the probing o f the Opposition at length brought out. A ll die stock belonging to Mackenzie, Mann & Co. Ltd., along with other assets, was pledged to the Canadian Bank o f Commerce against cash advances made to the railway to enable it to keep going. If the stock were simply con-