en years
Sir Herbert has been too much absorbed in Ottawa and the League of
Nations to care much about the city where he spent so much of his earlier
zeal for reclamation. The member for St. Antoine has a larger orbit--to
negotiate which he has resigned his seat in the House.

One is tempted to consider whether there are not enough secretarial minds
in Europe from which to take a man as Financial Secretary for the League
of Nations, and let Sir Herbert come back to Canada to finish his work.
He has had world experiences enough to come back and be of some real use
to the country. He is not yet sixty. He has ahead of him twenty years
in which he could do a great deal more for the Empire about which he is
so earnest by working in Canada than by occupying a conspicuous post
somewhere in Europe. It is not the fashion for ex-Canadians who have had
political or other experiences abroad to come back here for anything but
speeches and banquets. Sir Herbert may be permitted to change the
fashion. With his versatility in French, his knowledge of Europe, his
acquaintance with large public questions of finance and his general
_savoir faire_, he seems to be just the kind of man who could head a
movement to nationalize Montreal.

But of course he never will do it.

THE SHADOW AND THE MAN

HON. SIR SAM HUGHES, K.C.B.

The career of the late Sam Hughes is a tragic reminder that no man in
public life can afford to regard himself as bigger than his suitable
job. When a nation has to retire a genius for the sake of enthroning
what remains of common democracy the nation's loss is nobody's gain.
In the jungle book of our aristocracy Sam Hughes should have been Lord
Valcartier. Not that a democratic country cares at all to be given any
more lords, even if Parliament had not asked the King to abolish the
custom. But while peerages and baronetcies were being handed about for
honour, Hughes was the kind of man that should have got his--except
that he made it impossible.

However, it is more interesting to record the shortcomings of Hughes
than to report the success of mediocrities. Canada had in Hughes a
name with which for a year or so to poster almost any part of the
Empire, especially England. We are in danger of forgetting at this
distance--five years now since he resigned office--just what were the
conditions that made him such a tremendous figure.

Sam Hughes, M.P., born in County Durham, Orangeman from the town of