Public life is considerably like war. Every time you move there must be a motive.
A former political crony of Sir Thomas said to the writer that the excess profits tax imposed by the Minister was one of the cleverest political manoeuvres ever perpetrated in Ottawa, because it drove manufacturers and merchants to advertise in the newspapers in order to reduce their profits, thus paying part of the excess to the newspapers rather than to the Government; which was supposed to have made the Government popular with newspapers on both sides of the political fence. This is a genially cynical way of saying that every publisher has his price, and that the Finance Minister had made some startling progress in his mentality since the day when he was charmed with everybody in Parliament. But it is a Machiavellian touch quite uncharacteristic of a man whose friends had designated him for the Premiership.
The friends of Sir Thomas may have had good reason for considering him as the next Premier. On the evidence of the mere handling of executive big business demanding cool judgment, practical vision and powerful action he was the equal of any other candidate for the office. His defects were less obvious, but perhaps more vital in the case. Sir Thomas was not designed to lead, which in these days means to be constantly recreating a party, not to operate a well-built governmental machine. In his nine years of public life he did a big national work and justly earned all the real distinction he ever got. He did so much in a big, unusual way for the nation that his passing out becomes another example of how easy it is to cripple administration by sacrificing public service brains to private business.
CALLED TO THE POLITICAL PULPIT
HON. NEWTON WESLEY ROWELL
N. W. Rowell has the bearing of a man who long ago felt that he was called to do something for a cause or a country and has never got over it. Meanwhile he has done much for both a cause and a country, and seems to have quit before the country had begun to enjoy more than the least agreeable elements in his character. To have suffered the insistent righteousness of Mr. Rowell so long, and at the close of the first period of his life when he seemed to be getting his own measure as a public man on a big stage, to see him withdraw like a chambered nautilus into his shell, not only from the Cabinet but from his seat in Durham, is a little hard on public patience. But of course the chambered nautilus may emerge again.
Years ago Mr. Rowell had moral energy enough to reconstruct a large part of the world in Liberalism and in the Methodist Church. Today he finds evangelic Liberalism rampant out on the skyline under such men as Crerar and Drury, and the church discussing social reformation in phraseology associated with dynamic ideas to which he never could be assimilated.
Mr. Rowell's career reminds us that there are four brands of Liberals in Canada: Evolutionary; Manchester School; Laurierite; Agrarian. Tories never evolve. There are only good Tories and bad ones.
He belongs to the first group, and there is nothing in his temperament to make him anything else. Free Trade never did convince him; he broke away from the enchanting tyranny of Laurier; and, though born on a farm, he never could revert to the plough-handles for a vision of the world.
Judging from some fairly recent preachments by able reverends such as Wm. Woodsworth and Salem Bland, there may be as many brands of Methodism. If so we unhesitatingly place Mr. Rowell in the evolutionary group. Therefore by personal development he is next thing to a Conservative; and the latest phase of his career proves that in working it out he has practised the fine old platitude of Polonius to Laertes: