h time for him to be absent where he felt much more at home, in
Europe. As President of the Council he had great ability.

This one year of Ministry before the end of the war gave Mr. Rowell an
opportunity to survey forces of whose operation he had no knowledge
while he remained a mere Liberal. He became officially familiar to
London and as the constant companion of the Premier came very near to
the elbows of the great, when he did not suffer by comparison.

But it was the Peace Conference that gave him his real work. During
the war any nation got the prestige that it could win, either by its
own efforts or in league with others. All nations on each side were
more or less animated by the one great purpose. Suddenly the golden
grip of union was off. The second war began around the Peace table.
In this new and more precarious conflict of pour-parlers and old secret
diplomacies under the dangerous flare of the self-determination torch,
national selfishness rushed to the front of the stage. Every pocket of
people in Europe hemmed between a river, a mountain and a dialect
claimed the rights of a nation, when more than half of them should have
been conveniently merged into workable groups having some form of
government with which nations of experience could deal.

In this clamour of the _voces populi_ the voice of Canada was not to be
disregarded. We had reason that it should be heard. We were in sudden
danger of being overshadowed at the Conference by the vast figure of
the other half of North America. Mr. Rowell has never been an
anti-Yankee. He has too much fine sense ever to pull feathers out of
the eagle in retaliation for twisting the lion's tail. He knows as
well as any man the strategic and moral necessity of Canada being the
real House of Interpreter to the two leading Anglo-nations. He knew it
at the Conference. But he knew also that in proportion to service and
sacrifice in the war, Canada in the Council of Peace had a right to be
heard and considered as the voice of a nation occupying the northern
half of North America.

There was great sense in the estimate of a leading London correspondent
that among the four most impressive and masterful personalities at the
Geneva Assembly of the League, Rowell the Canadian was at least the
fourth. This was not merely a personal or natural compliment. It was
the sincere recognition of a fact.

Mr. Rowell had the gift and the energy of will to translate the