Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics

by John Wesley Dafoe

Notwithstanding the severity of their defeat—they were in a minority of 45 in the House—the Liberals in opposition showed a good fighting front, and ere long hope revived. The Borden government found itself in difficulties from the moment of taking office—largely by reason of the tactics by which Laurier's supremacy in Quebec had been undermined. The Nationalist chiefs declined an invitation to enter the government, but they controlled the Quebec appointments to the cabinet, and thus assumed a quasi-responsibility for the new government's policy. The result was disastrous to them; for the Borden government, subject to the influences that had enabled it to sweep Ontario, could not concern itself with the preservation of Bourassa's fortunes. The extension of the Manitoba boundaries was a blow to the Nationalists; they failed in their efforts to preserve the educational rights of the minority in the added territory. Laurier had evaded this issue; Borden could not evade it, and by its settlement Bourassa was damaged. Still more disastrous to the Nationalist cause was the naval policy which Mr. Borden submitted to Parliament in the session of 1912-1913. There was in its presentation an ingenious attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable which deceived nobody. The contribution of the three largest dreadnoughts that could be built was to satisfy the Conservatives; the Nationalists were expected to be placated by the assurance that this contribution was merely to meet an emergency, leaving over for later consideration the question of a permanent naval policy. But all the circumstances attending the setting out of the policy—the report of the admiralty, the letters of Mr. Churchill, the speeches by which it was supported with their insistence upon the need for common naval and foreign policies—made it only too clear that it marked the abandonment of the Canadian naval policy which had been entered upon only four years before with the consent of all parties and the acceptance in principle of the Round Table view of the Imperial problem. Laurier challenged the proposition whole-heartedly. Here was familiar fighting ground. From the moment they joined battle with the government the Liberals found their strength growing. They were indubitably on firm ground. They were helped mightily by Mr. Churchill's attempted intervention in which he belittled Canadian capacity in a manner worthy of Downing street in its palmiest days. Mr. Churchill had the bright idea of coming to Canada to take a hand personally in the controversy. A Canadian-born member of the British House of Commons sounded out various Canadians as to the nature of the reception Mr. Churchill would receive. Mr. Churchill did not come—fortunately for the government. The Liberals fought the proposition so furiously in the Commons that the government had to introduce closure to secure its passage through the commons, whereupon the Liberal majority in the Senate threw it out. The Liberal policy was to challenge the government to submit the issue to the people in a general election. That within eighteen months from the date of their disastrous defeat the Liberals should invite a second trial of strength spoke of rapidly reviving confidence. The government ignored the challenge, for very good reasons. In the sequel Laurier, as with all his policies having to deal with Imperial questions, was amply justified. The policy of Dominion navies was never again seriously questioned in Canada; when admiralty officials, true to form, challenged it in 1918 it was Sir Robert Borden who defended it, to some purpose.

These developments were fatal to Quebec Nationalism as a distinct political force under the direction of Mr. Bourassa. The ideas that inspired it did not lapse. Nor did Mr. Bourassa, as apostle of these ideas, lose his personal eminence. But the electors in sympathy with these ideals began to develop views of their own as to the political action required by the times. Their alliance with the Conservatives had brought them no satisfaction. They had ejected the most eminent living French-Canadian from the premiership to the very evident injury of Quebec's influence in Confederation—that about represented the sum of their achievements. The thought that they had been on the wrong track began to grow in their minds. The conditions making for the creation of the Quebec bloc were developing. The disposition was to get together under a common leadership. It was still a question as to whether, in the long run, that leader should be Laurier or Bourassa; but all the conditions favored Laurier. For one thing, he could command a large body of support outside of his own province which it was quite beyond the power of Bourassa to duplicate. The swing to Laurier was so marked that by 1914 the confident prediction was made by good political judges that if there were an election Laurier would carry 60 out of the 65 seats in Quebec. Such a vote meant victory. Sir Wilfrid was slow in coming to believe that an early reversal of the decision of 1911 was possible; but finally found himself infected with the hopefulness of his following. Hard times became a powerful ally of the Liberals and the government suffered from the first shock of the impending railway collapse. The course of the party lay clear before it; it was to see that the conditions in Quebec remained favorable and to await, with patience, the coming of an election which would reopen the doors to office. But not too much patience, for the years were slipping past. Laurier was in his 73rd year.

THE PARTIES AND THE WAR

Such were the political conditions: a government in a position of growing doubtfulness and a combative and confident opposition—when Canada found herself plunged over night into the Great War. Under the high emotion of this venture into the unknown politics vanished for a brief moment from the land. If that moment could have been seized for a sacred union of hearts dedicated to the great task of carrying on the war how different would the whole future of Canada have been! In the fires of war our sectional and racial intractibilities might have been fused into an enduring alliance. But Canadian statesmanship was not equal to the opportunity. For this Sir Wilfrid has no accountability. There is no question of the correctness and generosity of his attitude as revealed in the war session of August, 1914. From a speech in the next session it might be inferred that he would have gone farther than he did if overtures had been made to him.

In Canada, as elsewhere, the war spelt opportunity for more than the patriot and the hero. The schemer, resolute to make the war serve his ends, appeared everywhere. From the morrow of those first days of high exaltation the two currents ran side by side in Canada: the clear tide of valor and self-sacrifice, the muddy stream of cowardice and self-seeking. There was an influential element in the dominant party which was determined to exploit the war to the limit for political and personal interests. The war meant patronage; it must be placed where it would do the most party good. It meant an opportunity for artificial and perfectly safe distinction; this must be employed for increasing the political availability of friends. Political colonels began to adorn the landscape. It meant a corking good issue upon which an election could be won; why not take advantage of it? While the government officially was leading a united people into action, these scheming political profiteers were perfecting their plans for appealing to the people on the ground that the government—a party government which had not invited any measure of close co-operation from the opposition—must have a mandate to carry on the war. There is a quite authentic story of a leading Canadian being cheered up on a train journey by assurances from a travelling companion, a friend holding high office, that events were shaping for certain victory; until he learned that the enemy about to be defeated was the "damn Grits." The battle of Ypres in April, 1915, saved Canada from an ignoble general election on the meanest of issues. Though some of the conspirators still pressed for an election, it soon became apparent that the proposal was abhorrent to public opinion. Canadians could not bring themselves to the point of fighting one another while their sons and brothers were dying side by side in the mud of Flanders.

The danger of a profound division of the Canadian people in war-time passed; but irretrievable damage had been done to the cause of national unity. In considering subsequent events these unhappy developments of the first year of the war cannot be overlooked. Party feeling among the Liberals had been held in leash with difficulty; now it was running free again. The attitude of the party towards the government was in effect: "You have tried to play politics with the war; very well, you will find that this is a game that two can play at." The strategy looking to a future trial of strength was skilfully planned. There was no challenge to the government plans. It was given full liberty of action upon the understanding that it would accept full responsibility and be prepared to render an account in due time to parliament and people. The tactics were those of paying out the rope as the government called for it. The attitude of the Liberal leaders towards the war was unexceptionable. Sir Wilfrid's recruiting speeches—and he made many of them—were admirable; and he did not hesitate to point the way of duty to the young men of his own province. Upon things done or not done the attitude of the parliamentary Liberals was increasingly critical; and the government, it must be said, with its scandals over supplies, its favoritism in recruiting, its beloved Ross rifle, gave plenty of opportunity to opposition critics. With every month that passed the political advantage that had come to the government, because it was charged with the task of making war, waned.

General elections were due in the autumn of 1916. It became a serious question of Liberal policy to decide between agreeing to an extension of the life of parliament, which the government intended to request, and the forcing of an election. Two lieutenants of Sir Wilfrid toured Western Canada sounding Liberal opinion; their disappointment was obvious when, in a conference with a group of Liberals in Winnipeg, they found opinion solidly adverse to an election. Their reasons for an election were plainly stated—in brief they were that on the details of its war management the government could be, and, in their judgement, should be, beaten. But Sir Wilfrid, with his hand on the country's pulse, could not be stampeded. He saw, more clearly than his lieutenants, the danger to the party of refusing an extension at that time. A twelve months was added to the life of parliament with a reservation in the minds of the Liberals that the first extension would be the last. This meant an election in 1917.

THE NATIONALISTS AND ONTARIO

Mr. Bourassa was acutely conscious of the development of opinion in Quebec favorable to the Liberals, and he sought to retain his hold upon his following by the tactics which in the first place had given him his following—by going to extremes and outbidding Laurier. The chief article in the Nationalist creed was that Canada was everywhere a bilingual country, French being on an equality with English in all the provinces. This contention rested upon a conglomeration of arguments, assertions, assumptions, inferences, and it was backed by thinly disguised threats of political action. The opposing contention that bilingualism had a legal basis only in Quebec and in the Dominion parliament with its services and courts was interpreted as an insult. Mr. Lavergne, the chief lieutenant of Mr. Bourassa, was wont to wax furiously indignant over the suggestion, as he put it, that he must "stay on the reservation" if he was to enjoy the privileges that he held to be equally his in whatever part of Canada he might find himself.

Events in Ontario put the test of reality to the Nationalist theories. A feud broke out between the English-speaking and the French-speaking Catholics over the language used for instruction in separate schools where both languages were represented; and resulting investigation revealed a state of affairs suggesting something very like a conspiracy to minimize or even abolish the use of English in all school areas where the French were in control. Resulting regulations and legislation intended to put a stop to these conditions gave French a definitely subordinate status. This fired the heather, and later somewhat similar action by Manitoba added fuel to the flames. The Nationalist agitation was resumed with increased vehemence in Quebec; and the Ontario minority were encouraged to defy the regulations by assurances that means would be found to bring Ontario to time. In addition to legal action (which brought in the end a finding by the Privy Council completely destroying the Nationalist claim that bilingualism was implied in the scheme of Confederation) various ingenious attempts were made to apply pressure to Ontario. The most daring, and in results the most disastrous, was the threat that if Ontario did not remove the "grievances of the minority" the people of Quebec would go on strike against further participation in the war. That dangerous doctrine operating upon a popular mind impregnated with suspicion of the motives and intentions behind Canada's war activities, produced the situation which made inevitable the developments of 1917. The movement against Ontario was Nationalist in its spirit, its inspiration and its direction. Side by side with it went a Nationalist agitation of ever-increasing boldness against the war. Ammunition for this campaign was readily found in the imputations, innuendoes, charges, mendacities of the Labor and pacifist extremists of Great Britain and France; they lost none of their malignancy in the retelling. Bourassa included Laurier in the scope of his denunciations. Laurier's loyal support of the war and his candid admonitions to the young men of his own race made him the target for Bourassa's shafts. Something more than a difference of view was reflected in Bourassa's harangues; there was in them a distillation of venom, indicating deep personal feeling. "Laurier," he once declared in a public meeting, "is the most nefarious man in the whole of Canada." Bourassa hated Laurier. Laurier had too magnanimous a mind to cherish hate; but he feared Bourassa with a fear which in the end became an obsession. He feared him because, if he only retained his position in Quebec, Liberal victory in the coming Dominion elections would not be possible. Laurier feared him still more because if Bourassa increased his hold upon the people, which was the obvious purpose of the raging, tearing Nationalist propaganda, he would be displaced from his proud position as the first and greatest of French-Canadians. Far more than a temporary term of power was at stake. It was a struggle for a niche in the temple of fame. It was a battle not only for the affection of the living generation, but for place in the historic memories of the race. Laurier, putting aside the weight of 75 years and donning his armor for his last fight, had two definite purposes: to win back, if he could, the prime ministership of Canada; but in any event to establish his position forever as the unquestioned, unchallenged leader of his own people. In this campaign—which covered the two years from the moment he consented to one year's extension of the life of parliament until election day in 1917—he had repeatedly to make a choice between his two purposes; and he invariably preferred the second. In the sequel he missed the premiership; but he very definitely accomplished his second desire. He died the unquestioned leader, the idol of his people; and it may well be that as the centuries pass he will become the legendary embodiment of the race—like King Arthur of the English awaiting in the Isle of Avalon the summons of posterity. As for Bourassa, he may live in Canadian history as Douglas lives in the history of the United States—by reason of his relations with the man he fought.