It was Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s distinction, as it was Gladstone’s to take this view of Liberalism. It is true that he belonged, as he himself often said, to the school of Gladstone and Bright. But he did not hold that the tenets of that school must necessarily comprehend all truth. He realized that it is the spirit in which political problems are approached that constitutes the great difference between Liberalism and its opposite. Even he approached those problems in a spirit of sympathy with the aim and ideals of the common people. His ears had caught the tramp of the marching feet of the New Democracy, and to his heart the sound brought not fear but lofty hope. Old in years, but young in heart, he had an unquestionable faith in the honesty of this New Democracy and in its ability to solve its own problems in its own way. Not long ago, speaking of the fuller life for the people which might be expected as one of the outcomes of the war, he said that the England of the future would not be so picturesque or so dignified as the old England, but that it would be a far happier England for the masses of the people. It was the welfare of the masses which was ever nearest his own heart. He saw that all over the world the People’s Day was dawning. He saw it and was glad.
That Sir Wilfrid Laurier was a great, and will prove to have been a lasting, dynamic force in Canadian public life seems to us unquestionable. On the many years of material prosperity that Canada enjoyed while his hand guided the helm of State; on his great achievement in the realm alike of legislation and of administration it is beside our present purpose to dwell. These things are a part, an imperishable part, of the history of our country. But he did much, infinitely much, to give Canadians a sense of national unity and a sense of the dignity of nationhood. His efforts were often frustrated by the schemes of smaller men, with their appeals to racial prejudice and religious intolerance. But he himself steadily strove to weld the Canadian people into one harmonius whole. He certainly did not live to see the consummation of his work in this regard. But there will come a day when the people for whom he laboured will surely remember it and not with ingratitude.
Whoever he may be, the successor to Laurier must take no smaller view than this. Appeals to classes, to interests, and to sections—whether to farmers, to labour, to the manufacturers, or what not—are not the appeals that Liberalism makes. For that appeal is to all good citizens. It is to the civic sense of the whole country.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier has not had an approach of an equal during the last generation. It is not easy to exactly define in what his personality consisted. Facial charm was certainly one of his greatest endowments. He had a remarkably fine and open countenance, with a finely chiselled and expressive mouth, and with a classic brow that was one of the gifts of the gods. No one ever forgot Sir Wilfrid who had the privilege of seeing or hearing him once. The late Sir George Ross once referred to him as “a picture gallery all in himself.” His voice was also one of his great endowments, and his gestures of hands and body were in perfect sympathy with the thoughts he had to express. Behind all this was a finely cultured intellect, and behind this again was a burning French-Canadian soul that added warmth to all his words, gave action and gesture and fire, and made him from a purely speaking standpoint one of the greatest and most finished orators of his time. But there was more even than this. No man can hold followers simply by words alone. Sir Wilfrid had a wonderfully sympathetic heart, a keen appreciation of the human qualities in man, and coupled with his own personal magnetism, there was a winsomeness that bound his followers to him as with hoops of steel.
He did not ignore the material side of nation-building. He realized the importance of the country’s natural resources and the necessity for industrial development; but it was of the very nature of the man that he should think most of the happiness of the people. He saw in Canada the opportunity for a wonderful experiment in nation-making. He realized that wealth and prosperity and national glory are not everything. His ideal of a great nation was that of a free, contented, united and intelligent people, living at peace with each other and with the world. He sought to break down the barriers of prejudice and bigotry and ignorance that those of different races and creeds and parties might live together on terms of harmony and good will. His love was for people rather than for material things, and he attracted the love of people in return. No man in Canada ever attracted a more generous or more genuine measure of love. This was shown by the spontaneous display of personal feeling which his death called forth. And he was loved by the people, not for any great thing he had done, but rather because of what he was.
It was Laurier’s desire, too, that Canada should have an opportunity to develop according to the genius of her own people, free from entanglements with old-world feuds and passions. The nations of Europe were the victims of European history and tradition. They lived in an atmosphere of war and strife. So far as it was possible he would have saved Canada from the influence of this old-world spirit. He hesitated about participation in the early days of the South African war. He was thinking of Canada and the Canadian people. When the present war broke out he saw that it was a struggle to the death between civilization and barbarism, and he did not hesitate for a moment as to Canada’s duty. But he was not prepared to go to the length of supporting conscription. To him conscription meant militarism, and he dreaded militarism as he hated it.
The Canadian nation stood grief-stricken around that august bier. The hero of so many a gallant fight had succumbed to Death, the last great enemy of all—and even that enemy came to him like a friend.