annex to
Goldwin Smith in 1891 had an experience that would fit any man to become
a protection-tariff Chairman of Reconstruction, and to remember the
sirens that tempted Ulysses.

Nobody could have predicted in those days that the great editor of the
_Globe_ would live to become first an Independent, next a Tory, and at
the last a Liberal-Unionist. And perhaps none of these transformations
would have been necessary if Sir George Ross had not tried the trick of
"32 years in the saddle" from the days of Mowat; to do which and to
remain politically virtuous was an impossible feat, even though the
Premier of Ontario was a director of the _Globe_. Ross remained
director, and also Premier. But it seems that Mr. Willison saw in such a
dual role a greater inconsistency than even he deemed to be worthy of so
brilliant a man. As he could not remove the director, he took what
seemed to be a providential opportunity to remove the Premier.

The reconstructed _Toronto News_ was the opportunity. The elimination of
Ross was the first result. The removal of Laurier was the necessary
sequel. The first was a pleasure. The second must have been a pang.
Because of the first, in place of Sir George Ross, Willison had as
frequent visitor to his sanctum James Pliny Whitney, the new Premier of
Ontario, "honest enough to be bold and bold enough to be honest." From
that to Toryism was merely opening a door. It took the new Tory editor
eight years to remove his old idol Laurier, the result of which was a
sort of intense and bigoted animosity to the Province of Quebec which Sir
John is now learning to overcome. When the Tory _News_ became a
Northcliffe Imperialist organ it was inevitable that Sir John should
convert his common hostility to the western Laurier-Liberals into a
polite suspicion of the Radicals who were becoming Agrarians.

When finally, weary of mere politics in which he was our greatest
journalistic expert by instinct and experience Sir John left the _News_,
he was free to engage in work of a more practical character than writing,
and to become Chairman of the Government's most important branch of
active agenda outside of professional politics.

In all these Protean changes of makeup, if not of character, Sir John
Willison has never abandoned two early habits; lawn bowling and reading
the _Globe_. He is an expert in both. Bowling vexes him least, because
its rules never change. The _Globe_ gives him pangs because ala