nfessed that he liked everybody
in the House of Commons, even "Bob" Rogers and Dr. Pugsley, it was time
for the interviewer to go, before so charmed a Utopia should vanish
like a film on a screen, and to conclude that the Finance Minister of
Canada was no novice in a certain species of diplomacy.

Time made some heavy changes in him. A press gallery observer, asked
by a certain Canadian periodical to name a possible successor to Sir
Robert Borden four years before the Premier's resignation, picked Sir
Thomas whom he said he had watched turn grey and careworn in office,
sedulous at his desk, always busy, never at ease. Yet in 1912 he could
lecture hon. gentlemen opposite seasoned in political intrigues as
though he, himself, had discovered some new coefficient in politics.

Sir Thomas White has always been a political emergency, a sort of
administrative occasion. For real politics he was never meant. For
government by business he had great aptitude. To him government is big
business, and the human side of democracy a sealed book. He has an
almost exquisite sense of prerogative. His equilibrium is adjusted to
the niceties of a seismographic instrument. Yet he has never held
himself aloof, and is not commonly proud.

There is an idle story that near the end of his term in office he went
to a bank teller's wicket--being in urgent temporary need of a little
common money--and presented a cheque. On being courteously reminded by
the teller that he had not brought the customary identification, he
blandly announced, "I am the Finance Minister of Canada." The manner
in which the Minister spoke is said to have left no doubt in the
teller's mind that he was indeed the very man whose photograph had
appeared in the newspapers.

There is also a little story that during one of the Victory Loan
conferences in Ottawa, one of his older associates in newspaper work
politely called him Sir Thomas, and that the Minister replied, "Oh,
forget it! Call me Tom."

The first may be fiction. The second is a fact. But the number of men
who without invitation would call him Tom, is not very extensive.

From his youth up Tom White had a powerful capacity for ordered work.
There was "a time to work and a time to play, a time to laugh and a
time to weep." Nor did he acquire this from Sir Joseph Flavelle, with
whom he was so long and intimately associated. He had it from the
cradle, which he must have left at the appointed time with