o saw-mills.

EZEKIEL AT A LEDGER

RT. HON. SIR GEORGE FOSTER

Sir George Foster is a genius. The world forgives much to geniuses,
because it lives by them. Canada has tolerated a great deal in Foster
for the very good reason that no man except Laurier has for so long a
period without interruption seemed so picturesquely necessary to our
public affairs.

In his own temperamental way Sir George somewhat compensates Canada for
never having produced a Milton or a Bach. One of his best speeches
might be made into blank verse or set to a fugue. He illuminates life.
Decade by decade he comes prancing down the vistas of our politics with
a vitality that is perfectly amazing. And when some obituarist writes
his epitaph, "Foster Mortuus Est," he promptly rubs it out and writes,
"Resurgam!"

The first allusion I ever heard made to Sir George Foster was in 1889,
on a Sunday School excursion when a Grit lawyer superintendent spoke
with admiring deprecation of the then famous divorce case; adding, as
might be expected of a righteous Grit, that it was a pity so eminent an
advocate of prohibition should have so compromised, perhaps ruined, his
political career.

Well, the compromise has lasted a long time and the ruin seems to be
long overdue. Public sentiment over both temperance and divorce has
somewhat shifted. In 1889, when virtue shuddered over marrying
divorced women, drunkards were being made by hundreds in any town under
the very nose of the church. In 1921 when Parliament moves to
popularize divorce, public sentiment not only abolishes the bar, but
votes bone dry on the eve of an artificial millennium.

A man who for some years has wanted the Ministry of Trade made the
remark in a magazine article that if he had Sir George Foster in his
employ as a salesman he would have him discharged for incompetence.
That man forgets that a genius is not born to sell goods. There were
times in the war when less genius and more business in Trade and
Commerce would have been better for Canada. Foster was almost seventy
when the war began; a pretty old man to act as the chief business
manager for a nation at war. His department was the economic backbone
of the Administration. The nearer Canada got to total conscription of
resources, the more Foster's work should have towered into the blue.
Trade and troops were the life of the nation. Hughes, White, Borden,
Rowell, Meighen, were all shoved into greater eminence by