It
seems a pity that a constituency so shrewdly obtained could not have
been steadfastly held.

As an orator Mr. Rowell is remarkable in spite of two defects; no
classical or humanities education except what he diligently dug out of
books, and a very thin voice. Few public speakers of our time use such
admirable diction, and it is a rare one who can make so lean a voice
thrill so completely with passion in the presentation of powerfully
synthetic ideas. This is a great gift; but like personal beauty it has
its fatal fascination. Mr. Rowell has not ceased to suffer from a sort
of bondage to his oratory as he has from the tyranny of his conscience.
In conversation he seldom just talks. He seems to deliver dicta. He
rarely glows with the fire of the moment; he seems to be preparing for
the grand occasion. The stage must be set. When did he ever make a
poor speech that he had time to prepare? Or a good one impromptu? One
cannot soon forget his remarkable speech in the Toronto Arena at the
citizens' reception to Premier Borden in 1915. Here this lifelong
Liberal made what up to that moment was the greatest speech of his
career; and he was speaking as a British citizen, not as a Canadian
Liberal.

With equal power, to a small group, but with even more passion as a
broad-minded Canadian, he spoke to the Bonne Entente in Toronto in 1917
on a subject which may have had something to do with his future as a
Dominion instead of a Provincial statesman. In this connection I quote
from a report of that meeting made by the writer:

"He took his preconsidered skeleton of argument with all its careful
alignment of crescendos and climaxes and clothed it with the passion of
a rousing, emotionalizing speech. The points somewhat roughly made by
other men he remade by a new grouping of the ideas. With eminent
juridical clarity he worked himself up the ropes of oratory, and when
he got to the tiptop of the trapeze he flung out his big compliment to
the French-Canadians now at the front. Of course he said other things.
He made fine use of the historic as he always manages to do. But when
he got away from that into the great little story of Courcellette and
the gallant 22nd with its sole surviving eighty men and two officers
besides the C.O. "fighting the Germans like devils," he had voltage
enough for an audience of ten thousand."

It is doubtful if Canada ever had a public speaker who with so little
personal makeup for