Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics

by John Wesley Dafoe

THE BILINGUAL EPISODE

The Canadian house of commons was the vantage point from which Sir Wilfrid carried on the operations by which he unhorsed Bourassa. Here we find the explanation of much that appears inexplicable in the political events of 1916 and 1917. Laurier was out to demonstrate that he was the true champion of Quebec's views and interests, because he could rally to her cause the support of a great national party. Hence the remarkable projection of the bilingual issue into the proceeding of parliament in May, 1916. The question as an Ontario one could only be dealt with by the Ontario authorities once it was admitted—Sir Wilfrid being in agreement—that disallowance was not possible. Yet Sir Wilfrid brought the issue into the Dominion parliament. If he had done this merely for the purpose of making his own attitude of sympathy with his compatriots in Ontario clear, the course would have been of doubtful political wisdom, in view of his responsibilities to the party he led. But he insisted upon a formal resolution being submitted. Professor Skelton, in the passages dealing with this episode, shows him whipping up a reluctant party and compelling it, by every influence he could command, to follow him. The writer, arriving in Ottawa when this situation was developing, was informed by a leading Liberal member of parliament that the "old man" had thought out a wonderful stroke of tactics by which he was going to strengthen himself in Quebec and at the same time do no harm in Ontario—a feat beside which squaring the circle would be child's play. Very brief enquiry revealed the situation. Sir Wilfrid was determined to have a resolution and a vote. The western Liberals were in revolt; the Ontario Liberals were reluctant but were prepared to be coerced; most of the maritime province Liberals were obedient, but there was a minority strongly opposed. Theoretically the formula that there was to be no coercion, each member voting as his conscience directed, was honored; but Sir Wilfrid had found it necessary to indicate that if in the outcome it should be found that any considerable number of his supporters were not in agreement with him, he would be obliged to interpret this as indicating that the party no longer had confidence in him. Professor Skelton supplies the evidence that Sir Wilfrid pressed the threat to resign almost to the breaking point. He actually wrote out something which was supposed to be a resignation before the Ontario Liberals capitulated. The western Liberals were of sterner stuff; they stood to their guns. No resignation followed. "The defection of the western Liberals," says Professor Skelton, "forced from Sir Wilfrid a rare outbreak of anger." The use of the word "defection" is enlightening, as showing Professor Skelton's attitude towards the Liberals who in those trying times adhered to their convictions against the party whip. He is a thorough-going partisan, which, in an official biographer, is perhaps the right thing.

The writer's activities in encouraging opposition to these party tactics led to a long interview with Sir Wilfrid, in which there was considerable frank language used on both sides. Sir Wilfrid gave every indication that he was profoundly moved by what he called "the plight of the French-Canadians of Ontario." They were, he said, politically powerless and leaderless; the provincial Liberal leaders, who should have been their champions, had abandoned them; the obligation rested upon him to come to their rescue. The suggestion that, while he might be within his rights in thus expressing his individual views, he should not seek to make it a party matter in view of the strong differences of opinion within the party, was rather impatiently brushed aside. Still less respect was shown the observation that it was not desirable that the Liberal party should identify itself with a resolution the carrying of which meant a general election in the height of the war upon a race and religious issue. Sir Wilfrid, in the course of the conversation, touched quite frankly upon the necessities of the Quebec political situation. He advanced the argument, which was put forward so persistently a year later, that it must be made possible for him to keep control of Quebec province, since the only alternative was the triumph of Bourassa extremism, which might involve the whole Dominion in conflict and ruin.

The episode passed apparently without disruptive results; but surface indications were misleading. In reality a heavy blow had been struck at the unity of the Liberal party; there began to be questionings in unexpected quarters of the Laurier leadership. What had happened was only too clear, to those who looked at the situation steadily. Party policy had been shaped with a single eye to Quebec necessities; and party feeling, party discipline, the personal authority of Laurier has been drawn on heavily to secure acceptance of this policy by Liberals who did not favor it. But there is in politics, as in economics, a law of diminishing returns. A year later the same tactics applied to a situation of greater gravity ended in disaster. The split which came in 1917 followed pretty exactly the split that would have come in 1916 over bilingualism, had the Liberal members not been constrained by their devotion to party regularity to vote against their convictions.

THE MOVEMENT FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

The movement for national government long antedated the emergence of the issue of conscription; it was, in its origin, Liberal. Its most persistent advocates in the later months of 1916 and the opening months of 1917 were Liberal newspapers, among them the Manitoba Free Press; and there was an answer from the public which showed that the appeal for a union of all Canadians who were concerned with "getting on with the war" made a deep appeal to popular feeling. The most determined resistance came from the Conservatives. The ministerial press could see nothing in it but a Grit scheme to break up the Borden government, which they lauded as being in itself a "national government" of incomparable merit. But that movement was equally disconcerting to the Liberal strategists since it threatened to interfere with their plans for a battle, to end, as they confidently believed, in a Liberal victory. In January, 1917, Sir Wilfrid could see nothing in the movement but an attempt to prevent a French-Canadian from succeeding to the premiership, and wrote in those terms to N. W. Rowell.

An offer by Sir Robert Borden to Sir Wilfrid Laurier to join him in a national government would have been unwelcome at any time excepting perhaps in the first months in the war; but in the form in which it finally came, in May, 1918, it was trebly unacceptable. Sir Wilfrid was asked to help in the formation of a national government to put into effect a policy of conscription, already determined upon. Although history will no doubt confirm the bona fides of Sir Robert's offer, it cannot but be lenient to Sir Wilfrid's interpretation of it as a political stroke intended to disrupt the Liberal party and rob him of the premiership. From his viewpoint it must have had exactly that appearance. Laurier's position in Quebec had been undermined in the years preceding the war by the Nationalist charge that his naval and military policies implied unlimited participation, by means of conscription, in future Imperial wars. He had always denied this; and when Canada entered the great war he, to keep his record clear, was careful to declare over and over again that Canadian participation by the people collectively, and by the individual, was and would remain voluntary. As the strain of the war increased the feeling in Quebec in its favor, never very strong, grew less. There began to be echoes of Bourassa's open anti-war crusade in the Liberal party and press. Sir Wilfrid, watching with alert patience the development of Quebec opinion, began cautiously to replace his earlier whole-hearted recognition of the supreme need of defeating Germany at all costs by a cooler survey of the situation in which considerations of prudent national self-interest were deftly suggested. The "We-have-done-enough" view was beginning to prevail; and Laurier, intent upon the complete capture of Quebec at the impending elections, while he did not subscribe to it, found it discreet to hint that it might be desirable to begin to think about the wisdom of not too greatly depleting our reserves of national labor. To Laurier, thus engaged in formulating a cautious war policy against the day of voting, came the invitation from Borden to join him in a movement to keep the armies of Canada in the field up to strength by the enforcement of conscription. Every aspect of the proposition was objectionable to Laurier. It meant handing back to Bourassa the legions he had won from him, and with them many of his own followers. No one was justified in believing that Laurier with all his prestige and power could commend conscription to more than a minority of his compatriots. Sir Robert Borden's proposal meant the foregoing of the anticipated party victory at the polls, the renouncement of the premiership, and the loss, certainly for the immediate future and probably for all time, of the affection and regard of his own people as a body. The proposition doubtless looked to him weird and impossible, and not a little impudent. The argument that the proposed government could better serve the general interests of the public, or even the cause of the war, than a purely Liberal government, of which he would be the head, probably struck him as presumptuous. Three days before Sir Robert Borden made his announcement of an intention to introduce conscription, Sir Wilfrid, anticipating the announcement, wrote to Sir Allan Aylesworth his unalterable opposition to the policy. This being the case, there never was a chance that Laurier would entertain Borden's offer to join him in a national government.

THE LIBERAL DISRUPTION

Sir Wilfrid, rejecting Borden's offer, adhered to his plan of an election on party lines; but he knew that conditions had been powerfully affected by these developments. His position in Quebec was now secure and unchallenged—even Bourassa, recognizing the logic of the situation, commended Laurier's leadership to his followers. If he could hold his following in the English provinces substantially intact the result was beyond question. He set himself resolutely to the task. Thereafter the situation developed with all the inevitableness of a Greek tragedy to the final catastrophe. Sir Wilfrid surveyed the field with the wisdom and experience of the veteran commander, and from the disposition of his forces and the lay of the land he foresaw victory. But he overlooked the imponderables. Forces were abroad which he did not understand and which, when he met them, he could not control. He counted upon the strength of party feeling, upon his extraordinary position of moral authority in the party, upon his personal hold upon thousands of influential Liberals in every section of Canada, upon the lure of a victory which seemed inevitable, upon the widespread and justified resentment among the Liberals against the government for things done and undone to keep the party intact through the ardors of an election. One thing he would not do; he would not deviate by an inch from the course he had marked out. Repeated and unavailing efforts were made to find some formula by which a disruption of the party might be avoided. One such proposition was that the life of the parliament should be extended. This would enable the government, with its majority and the support it would get from conscriptionist Liberals, to carry out its programme accepting full responsibility therefor. Sir Wilfrid rejected this; an election there must be. This was probably the only expedient which held any prospects of avoiding party disruption; but after its rejection Liberals in disagreement with Laurier still sought for an accommodation. There was a continuous conference going on for weeks in which all manner of suggestions were made. They all broke down before Laurier's courteous but unyielding firmness. There was the suggestion that the Liberals should accept the second reading of the Military Service Act and then on the third reading demand a referendum; rejected on the ground that this would imply a conditional acceptance of the principle of compulsion. There was the proposal that Laurier should engage, if returned to power, to resort to conscription if voluntary recruiting did not reach a stipulated level—not acceptable. Scores of men had the experience of the writer; going into Laurier's room on the third floor of the improvised parliamentary offices in the National History Museum, spending an hour or so in fruitless discussion and coming out with the feeling that there was no choice between unquestioning acceptance of Laurier's policy or breaking away from allegiance to him. Not that Laurier ever proposed this choice to his visitors. He had a theory—which not even he with all his lucidity could make intelligible—that a man could support both him and conscription at the same time. There is an attempt at defining this policy in a curious letter to Wm. Martin, then premier of Saskatchewan, which is quoted by Skelton. Sir Wilfrid in these conversations—as in his letters of that period, many of which appear in Skelton's Life—never failed to stress conditions in Quebec as compelling the course which he followed; the alternative was to throw Quebec to the extremists, with a resulting division that might be fatal. There was, too, the mournful and repeated assertion—which abounds also in his letters—that these developments showed that it was a mistake for a member of the minority to be the leader of the party. At the close of the session, when it became increasingly evident that a party split was impending, there were reports that Laurier proposed to make way for a successor upon some basis which might make an accommodation between the two wings of the party possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal M.P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in Professor Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no significance and it came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and necessity retained the leadership.

Sir Wilfrid misjudged, all through the piece, the temper and purpose of the Liberals who dissented from his policy. For his own courses and actions there was a political reason; he looked for the political reasons behind the actions of those in disagreement with him. He found what he looked for, not in the actual facts of the situation but in his imagination. He saw conversion to the Round Table view of the Imperial problem and the acceptance of dictation from London—a very wild shot this! He saw political ambition. He saw unworthy desires to forward personal and business ends. But he did not see what was plain to view—that the whole movement was derived from an intense conviction on the part of growing numbers of Liberals that united national action was necessary if Canada was to make the maximum contribution to the war. There was very little feeling against Sir Wilfrid—rather a sympathetic understanding of the position in which he found himself; but they were wholly out of agreement with his view that Canada was in the war on a limited liability basis. In the very height of the controversy Sir Wilfrid could not be got to go beyond saying that Canada should make enquiries as to how many men she could afford to spare from her industries and these she should send if they could be induced voluntarily to enlist. This was wholly unsatisfactory to those who held that Canada was a principal in the war, and must shrink from no sacrifices to make victory possible. Still less satisfactory was the professed attitude of the Liberal candidates in Quebec; with few exceptions they embraced the anti-war Nationalist programme. It became only too evident that a Liberal victory would mean a government dependent upon and controlled by a Quebec bloc pretty thoroughly committed to the view that Canada had "done enough." For those committed to the prosecution of the war to the limit, conscription became a test and a symbol; and ultimately the pressure forced reluctant politicians to come together in the Union government. There followed the general election and the Unionist sweep. Laurier returned to parliament with a following of eighty-two in a house of 235. Of these 62 came from Quebec; and nine from the Maritime provinces. From the whole vast expanse from the Ottawa river to the Pacific Ocean ten lone Liberals were elected; of these only two represented the west, that part of Canada where Liberal ideas grow most naturally and freely. The policy of shaping national programmes to meet sectional predilections, relying upon party discipline and the cultivation of personal loyalties to serve as substitutes elsewhere had run its full course—and this was the harvest!