"And a British subject I will die. In his day—well said."
"You will not say that in 1922?"
"Probably not. Subjects do not vote in true democracies. Events change men——"
"And parties. Even Premiers?"
He turns his spindling anatomy about in the chair, suddenly rises and darts to a bookshelf, seizes a book and flicks over the pages.
"After all," with a yawn, "we have now and then to go back to Laurier, the biggest if not the greatest autonomist of all Premiers—though Sir Robert Borden years ago spoke at Peterborough quite as broadly, if less eloquently. Here it is—spoken during the war by Laurier. 'We are a free people, absolutely free. The charter under which we live has put it into our power to say whether we should take part in such a war or not. It is for the Canadian people, the Canadian Parliament and the Canadian Government alone to decide. This freedom is at once the glory and the honour of Britain which granted it and of Canada which used it to assist Britain. Freedom is the keynote of all British institutions?'"
The clock ticks louder. It is time to go.
"Tell me, Mr. Meighen, is it not after all the mandate of Canada's part in the war that stands behind the attitude you are bound to take at this Conference?"
"You mean that if Canada had not gone to war magnificently as she did, the war—might have been lost?"
"Essentially that. Hence the new nationhood of Canada born of the war. You, or any other leader, even as Tory or as clear Grit, would not foist upon this free nation any issue which does not do justice to the sense of nationhood begotten by the war. Would you?"