Conscription was coming. It was a precarious time. The master of Quebec had to move cautiously. His loyalty to Britain was never questioned. His faith in a United Canada was never doubted. Had Quebec been all for Gouin instead of Gouin all for Quebec, the Premier's way would have been easier. Better let well enough alone; encourage those to enlist who really wanted to go—because Quebec was a free country.
Then there was the Laurier influence. Had the old man gone in with the
Premier to help the Ottawa Government—
Impossible. Neither of them was asked before Coalition came on the heels of conscription. And when conscription came, the minority of Nationalists opposed to the war became the majority of Quebeckers who preferred not to comply with the law. From disregarding the law to rebellion, to Nationalism was not far. Gouin had the balance to hold.
The Cardinal's attitude on conscription made Gouin's position still
more difficult. His letter to the press bluntly put the Roman Catholic
Church above temporal law. One heard of no rebuke from the Premier of
Quebec to the Cardinal. A Cardinal may be above politics.
Sir Lomer was playing the game of safety, when from his own temperament and position and unbacked by other leaders he could do little more. He stood for the law and did not hinder its operation. But if there was a chief executive in Canada who wished the war were righteously over, it was Sir Lomer Gouin. No Premier had such a predicament; so much at the end to lose; so much at first to have gained—if only he could have foreseen, as nobody did, that conscription was coming and that law would be more awkward than liberty.
The Premier of Quebec had experience in keeping his Government immune from agitators. It was not alone the Nationalists who had made him uneasy. On the other extreme there had been for some time one Godefroi Langlois, former editor of La Patrie, and later founder and editor of Le Pays, whose platform was compulsory State education away from control of the clergy and in defiance of the Archbishops. Gouin did not endorse Langlois. How could he? Le Pays, when it condemned clerical schools, attacked the Administration. Politically Gouin was right in opposing Langlois. Nationally he was playing provincial. Langlois had a mission, in line with a broader, nationalized Canada; the same mission which is now being reflected in the National Council of Education.
So, between the reactionism of Bourassa and the radicalism of Langlois, Gouin was the compromise; and Langlois was conveniently given an official post in Europe.
Gouin has compromised his whole political career. With the leverage of enormous success in elections and administration, he never had the vision to declare himself in favour of a bigger Quebec than could be got by extending its boundaries to Ungava.
He was too old to begin. Quebec to him was a vast prefecture to be administered; not a vision to be realized. Ontario—except politically—was almost as far away as British Columbia. He was seldom in Toronto. Montreal was as a rule the last west for this voyageur. He seldom or never went to the Maritimes. He knew the people down there regarded the bloc Quebec as a denationalizer. He had little or no desire to see the prairies. He wanted Quebec to prosper. He delighted to see pulp mills and cotton factories and power plants and railways and trolleys vibrating along the St. Lawrence. He loved to dream of the great unpeopled hinterland—all Quebec; of the other hinterland—all the rest of Canada; of the transcontinentals converging at Montreal; of the steamship lines terminating there; of a land where there are few empty cradles or idle factories or wasting farms.
All these things Gouin, growing stout and somewhat heavy of face, loved to behold; and out of that grew all the vision he seemed to have. In this enormous prefecture within the Empire he beheld a far more comfortable State than the Nationalist dream of a separative Quebec; glad when he could find time to motor grandly and amiably out among the villages and be greeted as le grand seigneur of politics, even when he lacked the grand manners of the eminent patrician.