Winnipeg seldom does things one half at a time. In the summer of 1917 J. W. Dafoe was one of the most astounded men in Canada. The other one was Sir Wilfrid Laurier. That was the year of the famous Liberal Convention. Had such a Convention happened in Chicago with such a man as Roosevelt as the centre-piece, its doings would have been cabled the world over. In its small way the Winnipeg Convention was more sensational than the Big Strike two years later. Mr. Dafoe was in Ottawa that summer. He was needed there. The Premier had come back from England primed with a policy of conscription to be enforced by a possible Coalition Government, an offer of which was made to the Opposition leader. Since early in the war the Free Press had argued for coalition, but opposed conscription until after the United States entered the struggle because of the inevitable exodus of slackers across the border.
There was a strong conscriptionist group of Liberals in Ottawa. We must assume that Mr. Dafoe, though not a member of Parliament, was strongly behind them; his presence in Ottawa indicates that his counsels were needed in view of the attitude to be taken by Western Liberals. It was the conscriptionist group of Liberals in Ottawa that decided upon the Convention, whether on the advice of Mr. Dafoe is not generally known. The intention was to create a Western Liberal group free from Laurier control, prepared to consider coalition—involving conscription—on its merits. So far, the policy of the Convention was in line with the previous programme of Mr. Dafoe. But the Liberal machine in the West—which was not Mr. Dafoe's party at all, because for some time he had been working on the principle that both the old parties as such had lost their grip on the West—went out and captured the delegates. The Convention was suddenly stampeded for Laurier, a result which Mr. Dafoe never expected but against which he had strongly urged, the Liberal Unionist leaders. The Free Press thereafter thundered against the Convention as entirely misrepresenting Western Liberalism. The subsequent South Winnipeg convention shewed that the Free Press was right. Almost the entire strength of Western Liberalism swung into the Union movement and the Coalition, and the Free Press became a temporary, though independent, supporter of the Union Government for the purpose of winning the war.
Now for the larger front stage view; how does Mr. Dafoe's attitude in the defeat of the Winnipeg Soviet idea of government and his former campaign against Laurier Liberals match with his attitude towards the Farmer Movement as embodied by Mr. Crerar? The leader of the Agrarian movement is a friend of the Free Press for much the same reason that the strike leaders in 1919 were a foe to it. Crerarism in the West looks for the support of that paper in its drive upon Ottawa. From his experience outwardly to the public, and intimately behind the scenes, always concerned with building up a new Liberalism on the wreck of the old, Dafoe endorses Crerar and his movement. When Crerar went into the Government the Free Press favoured his going. Mr. Dafoe clearly states that, "if the Union movement could retain its Liberal elements and produce an economic and taxation policy acceptable to Western opinion, we could continue to support it." In contemplating such a miracle, did he expect that the ultra-Tories would lop away from the Union, making a "rump" party to match the Laurier Liberals, and leaving the Union Government free to make an alliance with the Farmer Group? This we do not profess to know. In a political age like this almost any sort of alliance may be made for the purpose of capturing Parliament. But a permanent alliance between Western Liberalism represented by Mr. Crerar and the Government by Coalition looks now as fantastic as a Coalition between Lloyd George and de Valera. Mr. Dafoe probably knew that the Government and Mr. Crerar would lock horns over the tariff—since any species of protection and free trade never could sleep together. When Mr. Crerar left the Government on the budget issue, the Free Press ceased its active support of the Government and moved its guns to a detached position. When Meighen became Premier and in his programme speech at Stirling outlined his policy, Dafoe definitely declared himself as no longer in support of the Union Government. As he could not support the Laurier Liberal party, which he had formerly opposed, the only thing left was to make an active and open alliance with Mr. Crerar.
Such a mobile course of action is incomprehensible unless we keep in mind the fact that Mr. Dafoe has long found it impossible to support either of the old parties. The Coalition was a new one which he consistently supported on its merits and up to a point. The point was reached. Unionism and Agrarianism were incompatible. Therefore Unionism was a Tory institution; and the only Liberal programme left for the Free Press was to form an alliance with Mr. Crerar and his great group of class-conscious Agrarians.
By this time, if he reads this, Mr. Dafoe will have observed that we are trying to corner him on the question:
If you were opposed to a Labor Soviet which aimed at making a little Moscow of Winnipeg, what are you going to do about a Farmer Soviet that aims to capture Ottawa?
Already he has begun to answer. He uses a label for the party led by
Mr. Crerar and evolved with the aid of Mr. Dafoe:
The National Progressive Party.
A good name, even if not new. What is behind the label? That the party so named has now taken over all the Liberal economic traditions in the West and after the next general election will become the real Liberal Party of Canada. In the opinion of Dafoe, Mackenzie King should keep out of the West in the coming election in order to let Mr. Crerar romp home with three-fourths of the entire representation in Parliament. He alleges that Laurier destroyed the old Western Liberal party in 1917; that King has not revived it—though Mr. Fielding might have done so; that Western Liberals have become Progressive except in the cities, where some have become Unionists. In making this statement he probably reckoned on Michael Clark becoming a Progressive. But Michael Clark has turned out to be one species of even Free Trade Liberal which Crerarism cannot absorb.
Let us concede that here is one of the most absorbing problems in Canada. If Dafoe backs Crerar in the effort to get that preponderant majority away from Meighen and King, then he is afterwards committed to Crerarism. Dafoe cannot afford to take Crerar and abandon the traditions of the Free Press. If he is so keen about real "nationalism" in this country as to regret that Bourassa made the word obnoxious, he has surely decided that the policy of the N.P.P. must be to build up a true national life in Canada. And the man who was Canada's press representative at the Peace Conference, with such exceptional facilities for focussing Canadian national sentiment among other nations, will not dare to countenance in Mr. Crerar and his followers any policy that will open the gates for the United States to walk in and walk over this nation as twenty years ago his Free Press associate, Clifford Sifton, opened the doors to let Europe inundate us with a polyglot, un-national flood.