“By gar, dat Prince of Wale must have a good pull wit’ Laurier!”
His visit to the Queen’s Jubilee in 1897, was greeted with a reception that was almost regal. He was made a member of the Privy Council, appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, and received in audiences by the Queen. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge conferred honorary degrees upon him, and the Cobden Club admitted him to honorary membership, and awarded him its gold medal, in recognition of his exceptional and distinguished services to the cause of international and free exchange. The new departure in Imperial policy, the Preferential Tariff, which Sir Wilfrid was able to arrange during this visit, caused the London Times to say: “Laurier’s name must live in the annals of the British Empire.”
A few years later, 1902, he again visited Great Britain to be present at the ceremonies in connection with the crowning of His late Majesty King Edward VII., the Sovereign of the British Empire and British Dominions beyond the Seas. Again in 1907, Sir Wilfrid attended with a number of Ministers upon the invitation of the Imperial Government, a Conference of all the Premiers in His Majesty’s possessions. In 1911 he attended the ceremonies in connection with the crowning of King George V. Upon this, as upon other occasions, he was admirably received by the press and people wherever he went throughout Great Britain. In 1904, the London Daily News of September 14th., of that year, remarked that “Sir Wilfrid Laurier is easily the first statesman of Greater Britain.”
The following are some of the Press comments on Sir Wilfrid during the Imperial Conference of 1907:—The Daily News of London in a review of “The Race Question in Canada,” declared “Sir Wilfrid Laurier has won his title to be considered as a true statesman because, although always a faithful Catholic, he has declined to be dominated by the forces of Ultramontanism. The hope of the fusion of the races, Sir Wilfrid Laurier once declared, into a single one is Utopian. It is an impossibility. The distinctions of nature will exist always. But he went on to say, if we remember rightly, that the two races would none the less form a great nation under the British Flag, and it is, of course, the supreme achievement of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s political career that he has devoted himself to the attainment of this ideal.”
The Western Daily Press of Bristol, England, stated:—“Sir Wilfrid Laurier is in himself an excellent illustration of the success of the British plan of making various great parts of the Empire responsible for the control of their own affairs. There was a time when the race problem in Canada was one affording cause for gravest anxiety; that belongs to the past; and the world is familiar with the fact that Sir Wilfrid, the first French-Canadian who has been Premier of the Dominion, is a man probably without a rival in the confidence felt in him in this country.”
The London Times of April 15th., 1907, editorially stated:—Sir Wilfrid Laurier, whom we welcome as probably the best known of all Canadian statesmen, comes of French-Canadian stock, but he has shown by his career that this is no disqualification for doing valued service to the Empire.
The Tribune of London, referring to Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s stirring speech at the Guildhall in 1907, characterized the Canadian Premier’s deliverance on that occasion as:—A speech that will certainly find a place in future histories of the British Empire.
The Daily News of London stated:—The destinies of Canada were not settled by the war which made England instead of France supreme in North America. There came the second crisis, and if that second crisis had not been faced with the courage, genius, and imagination of Liberalism, there would have been no men of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s race and blood at yesterday’s lunch, and the Colony which is proud to count in its ancestry the heroism of a Montcalm as well as the heroism of a Wolfe would have sent no representative to the capital. For the distinction of the British Empire consists not in the conquests of its arms, but in the reconciliation of its statesmanship, in the generous wisdom which has shown that the British flag can shelter and respect the traditions, the sympathies, and the consciences of races that are not British by blood or history. This is what was in Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s mind when he pointed with pride to the great British act of the present government. (The Great British Act was the Constitution granted to South Africa, or the Transvaal.)
A few days after the coronation of their Majesties King George V. and Queen Mary, a thanksgiving service was held in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The high place which Sir Wilfrid Laurier occupies in the esteem of the British people of all classes is indicated by the manner in which he was greeted on his way to the cathedral and received there. The cable message reproduced below from the Montreal Star (Conservative), of June 29th., 1911, gives a brief summary of this grand cordiality:—