eep out of his mind what
might be happening at home in such places as Medicine Hat. The issues
which he discussed were big. He handled them worthily, with a due
admixture of boldness and caution.

It was no time for mere sentiment, but for careful deliberation of
matters that lay beyond Canada, beyond the Empire, in the danger zones
of world politics, more especially of the Orient. The status of Canada
as a nation north of the United States depended in that case vastly
more upon a definition of Japanese and Pacific policy than upon any
heroic allusion to the Great War. No man could have traversed this
precarious business with more insight into the probable effect of what
he had to say upon the Empire, the United States, and his own electoral
prospect in Canada. The day after his announcement of a general
election this year the Premier spoke to an open-air crowd at the
Canadian National Exhibition. He chose the Imperial Conference, and
mainly the Pacific issue, as his theme. In twenty minutes of
unrelieved, almost solemn seriousness, he made that weighty business
interesting to a crowd not too friendly in politics, with scarcely a
gesture, speaking direct to the people instead of using the amplifier
tube, making himself heard and understood with the clarity of studious
conviction and straight mastery of all the links in his logic.

And Meighen knows how to lead. His bewildered smile is a prelude often
to a strong move in action. Older and wiser men learn to love this
lean wildcat who knows the strategic spots in the anatomy of the foe;
who can spit scorn at the Agrarians and venomous contempt at the
Liberals; who dares to glorify a government of authority and of force
as though it were a democracy; who can hold the allegiance of some
Liberals and lose that of few old Tories. He has earned that
allegiance. He carried his load in the war. Long enough he lay up as
the handy instrument of a clumsy Coalition, as before that he had been
dog-whip for the Tories. When Premier Borden wanted a hard job well
done he gave it to Meighen, who seldom wanted to go to Europe when he
could be slaving at home.

Fortunately for Meighen he had been but a year in office when
Opportunity came to him with a large blank scroll upon which he might
write for the consideration of other people his views about, "What I
Think of Canada as a Part of the Empire."

No law examiner at Osgoode ever offered him such a chance to say the
rig