He did not, but went on:
"I know what I should say to a labour elector under such circumstances. I should say to him: 'You had better not touch the farmer candidate with a ten-foot pole because—the farmer wants dear food and you want cheap food; he wants long hours and you want short hours; he wants imported manufactures and you want employment in your home town; he wants free trade and you depend upon a measure of protection.'"
Nobody has ever more pithily stated the case. There is no basic mutuality between the farm and the labour union. The farmer is as much a capitalist as he is a labourer.
I asked the Liberal statesman bluntly:
"Don't you think that in order to avoid political devastation by splitting the vote into three opposition groups each fighting the other, it is the immediate business of the two historic parties to unite against all parties of experiment, especially against the emancipating fanner?"
He gave this evasive but shrewd reply:
"I am a lifelong Liberal. I have been in the habit of reading newspapers on both sides of politics. I am now driven to take the Conservative organ for my daily political food."
I commend that answer to Hon. Mackenzie King. If the Liberal leader is now as anxious to serve the nation of his birth as he was when he twice refused large salaries and comparative ease for the sake of continuing to do Canada's work, would it be high treason either to himself or to his party to call a Liberal convention out of which he would father a resolution of federation of historic parties based upon such a compromise as Macdonald created in the federation of provinces?
The answer is obvious: "Fantastic! Absurd! Impossible!"
Mackenzie King will put up a smoke screen to hide the defection of the West from historic Liberalism. He will insist that the Liberals want only a reasonable tariff for revenue while the Government want protection—when Heaven knows each of them wants substantially the same thing in opposition to the farmer who wants everything. He will point with confident pride to the solid Liberal bloc Quebec, when he knows Quebec is dominated by Lapointe who can demand from him just what he wants as the price of Quebec's solidarity; and he knows equally well that Quebec is as much opposed to continentalism as the Liberal-Conservative Government can ever be. The man who wears the mantle of Laurier without his Orphean magic cannot lead Quebec.