e 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