re and the League of Nations,
went about alone, unobtrusive, drab-coloured, almost insignificant. He
spoke to nobody and few men as much as noticed him. He nodded gravely
now and again, but never smiled. Both hands in his trouser pockets, he
seemed to be gazing at some vagabond blind spot in the room. He almost
seemed to be whistling to himself like a lad in a forest. Presently he
wandered out.

By no exercise of imagination could one conceive such a man as a
Canadian political leader. If there is anything in an aura he has it
not. A halo would have suited him better.

Three elements conspire to make Rowell:

Conscience; oratory; opportunity.

Most men have trouble enough with any two of the three. Mr. Rowell
continues to hold our respect in spite of the whole trinity. Too much
conscience always on duty at a peak load is no way to attract a vast
variety of people who relish a degree of sinfulness now and again. We
do not repudiate the value of conscience in public affairs. The public
man without it provides almost the only sane argument for the
preservation of the gallows. But when one man carries so much of it, a
number of others may be excused for carrying less. This is an age of
specialties.

It is required of a truly efficient conscience, however, that it be
instant in season and out of season, and that it do not wait upon
opportunity. When the Ross Government was so old in sin that even the
new _Globe_ editor accused the ship of having barnacles, we fail to
remember that Mr. Rowell lifted his voice against it. He was a
candidate for the Commons five years before James Whitney began his
regime of government by indignation; at a time when if Ontario went on
a political spree Ottawa got a headache. Big-party government was
pretty strong in those days to keep a man like Rowell from talking out
in meeting. The value of a conscience to a community, whatever it may
be to an individual or a party, is in giving it a chance to speak out
when something is wrong with your own group, not when it is politically
convenient to take off the muffler. Mr. Rowell's method of opening
Durham as a safe seat for himself by making a Senator of the
Conservative member for Durham, was one way of reforming the Civil
Service, which was one of his Government hobbies. But in practical
politics it is sometimes necessary to do evil that good may come. Mr.
Rowell needed a safe seat--in order to do his work for the country.