they show no real sympathy with the rude pioneer life from
which the writer came and to which he owes a debt that he could very well
discharge, if he would write a book about the social and craft life of
the Canadian farm as it was in the Victorian Era. There is more national
vitality in the story of that than there is in the programme of the
National Reconstruction Association. Sir John has a true sympathy with
that life, because he knows it has been at the root of all his own big
Canadianism in all its forms. He is one of the kindliest men alive and
he writes with great discernment and dignity. Let him stop writing
Reconstruction bulletins and do something of more value to the country,
so that the older enthusiasm of men who used to think he was Canada's
greatest editor may not althogether die.

WHATSOEVER THY HAND FINDETH

SIR JOSEPH FLAVELLE, BART.

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." I have
forgotten whether it was Paul or Solomon who said that. But Sir Joseph
Flavelle, Bart., will be sure to remember. From the time he was big
enough to carry in wood for his devout Christian mother near
Peterborough, Ont., he was living out that text.

The Flavelle family afterwards moved to Lindsay, where the future
baronet went into business. Queer little town--to be the home of three
such men as Flavelle, Hughes, and Mackenzie.

A man who has had years of business intimacy with Sir Joseph said to me
once--under suggestion--"Yes, you never miss a word he says to you,
because he puts everything so clearly, and you admire the big things he
does, because he has such a genius for action after he thinks--but
somehow you are so exasperated when you leave him that you feel like
giving him a big swift kick."

Another man who was under him in an organizing position for years
during the war said: "Well, the higher critics can say all they like
against his methods and his personal peculiarities, but I tell you--I
like the old boy."

One of Britain's foremost financial experts in the war said to an
interviewer: "Ah, you know Flavelle? Clev-er man! Clev-er!" That was
nearly twenty years ago.

In 1918 Sir Joseph Flavelle had in his Munitions Office at Ottawa a
staff of 360 accounting clerks working upon thirteen ledgers, each
representing a separate department of the Board, which up till that
time had placed orders in this country for war material aggregating
$1,60,000,000 [Transcriber's note: