Tariffs are not properly sentiment. They are business."

"But Joe Chamberlain sentimentalized the tariff. He was even willing
to have free trade in the Empire to get an Imperial zollverein against
the rest of the world."

"Why mention Chamberlain? Are you--twitting me?"

"Because he afterwards wanted an Imperial Cabinet. And if I'm not
mistaken you began to learn parliamentary speeches from one George
Eulas Foster only a few years after he stumped England for the
Chamberlain idea."

Meighen smiles; that wan but wholesome illumination of a
thought-harassed face.

"Hasn't the old flag been some sort of issue in every Federal election
since Confederation?" he is asked.

"Of course. No Federal election can be held in this nation, except by
virtue of the B.N.A. Act, and every election carries with it an
inferential challenge to amend the Act. Macdonald settled that--by a
grand compromise with Quebec."

"But--as a Canadian first."

"Granted. But he also said in 1891--mm--now what did he say?"

"A British subject I was born----"

"And a British subject I will die. In his day--well said."

"You will not say that in 1922?"

"Probably not. Subjects do not vote in true democracies. Events
change men----"

"And parties. Even Premiers?"

He turns his spindling anatomy about in the chair, suddenly rises and
darts to a bookshelf, seizes a book and flicks over the pages.

"After all," with a yawn, "we have now and then to go back to Laurier,
the biggest if not the greatest autonomist of all Premiers--though Sir
Robert Borden years ago spoke at Peterborough quite as broadly, if less
eloquently. Here it is--spoken during the war by Laurier. 'We are a
free people, absolutely free. The charter under which we live has put
it into our power to say whether we should take part in such a war or
not. It is for the Canadian people, the Canadian Parliament and the
Canadian Government alone to decide. This freedom is at once the glory
and the honour of Britain which granted it and of Canada which used it
to assist Britain. Freedom is the keynote of all British
institutions?'"

The clock ticks louder. It is time to go.

"Tell me, Mr. Meighen, is it not after all the mandate of Canada's part
in the war that stands behind the attitude you are bound to take at
this Conference?"

"You mean that if Canada had not gone to war magnificently as she did,
the war--might have been lost?"

"Essentially that. Hence th