“Messieurs, will you permit me in conclusion to take a liberty with your customs and while raising my glass to the chief of state in this country of my ancestors—to that sagacious man that France has selected for President—may I join another thought, not for you but for myself, and to couple with that toast, that of my own sovereign, the King of England, who is also, like myself, a friend of France.”
That was not all that attached Sir Wilfrid to the history of the entente cordiale. On his return to London once more in 1907, one evening at a function in his honour at the Queen’s Hall, where he sat in the Royal box, a messenger came to request him not to leave, as the custom is, immediately after “God Save the King.”
Acquiescing he was surprised to hear the orchestra after the National Hymn, play the stirring strains of the “Marseillaise.” It was the official recognition of what he had done for the entente cordiale.
In the work of reconciliation of race and country he had but one motive and that was the exaltation of Canada and the development of our national and Canadian spirit and the subversion of all petty and sectional antagonisms. He was the true imperialist, who saw this Empire as a voluntary confederation of free nations. Anything different and more centralized he regarded as a menace to this country and to the Empire as a free system. He left every man to his opinion.
In 1907, when the Imperial Conference of Premiers was meeting in London, (Sir Wilfrid being one of its outstanding personalities), Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was hesitating on the very threshold of granting complete self-government to the Boers. The Unionist party, particularly its high Tory wing, led by Lord Milner, and fortified by powerful influences, was fighting hard against such a measure. It was an open secret that members of “C.-B.’s” own Cabinet were not overly enthusiastic about the proposal. Lord Roseberry, although practically in retirement, was believed to be opposed, and had a powerful following among what was known as the Liberal Imperialists. Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and Mr. Haldane, sometime followers of Roseberry, although in Campbell-Bannerman’s Cabinet, were regarded as luke-warm and for a time it seemed as though Sir Henry himself might waver.
In the course of his participation in the Imperial Conference, Campbell-Bannerman was brought much into contact with Sir Wilfrid, and, being impressed with his wonderful comprehension and appreciation of the British Constitution, saw in him the fulfilment in Canada of what he hoped to do for South Africa, and invited him to a small gathering of Liberals to give his opinion upon the wisdom of self-government for the Boers.
Sir Wilfrid, as those who knew his ardent sympathy with small nationalities everywhere, can well understand, readily accepted the invitation. For nearly an hour he spoke with all his intense eloquence upon what trust and self-government had done to build up an united and prosperous Canada, to win the loyalty and devotion of French-Canadians, and toward the close, in a peroration of moving eloquence, asked why trust in the Boers would not achieve in South Africa what it had achieved in Quebec.
That speech is said to have been the decisive factor in influencing Campbell-Bannerman. Mr. Asquith in the great tribute which he once paid to his departed chief, significantly told how, after a certain event, Sir Henry said that in regard to his South African policy there would be “no surrender”; and there is little doubt as to the event he had in mind. Not long ago, a writer in the “Manchester Guardian,” in paying a tribute to Campbell-Bannerman, referred to the support given him in regard to the Boers by an “overseas statesman,” but apart from such meagre notice, Sir Wilfrid’s noble part in this momentous drama is unknown to the world.
It is also known that in the possession of Sir Wilfrid there were a number of letters and documents dealing with this matter—letters from General Botha, and Campbell-Bannerman, and others—testifying to the great influence he exerted in such a far-reaching stroke of statesmanship.