n enthusiasm to take
hold of something, and afterwards to make it go. "Whatsoever thy hand
findeth."

Flavelle's hand found many things. Among them was the _Toronto News_,
his one recorded failure. This also was an impulse; precisely the same
as had led him years before to subscribe $5,000 to a fund for the
better education of the Tory party. The _News_ cost him one hundred
times as much, for much the same reason on a larger scale; and he lost
it. But he has never regretted the loss, because he gained the
experience. The _News_ did a valuable work. But its rather Utopian
resurrection had a sad sequel in Toryism such as Flavelle never could
have endorsed, and its ultimate extinction seemed to prove that
newspapers cannot be operated by ideals.

Again, reconstructing enthusiasm followed him to Ottawa. He went there
at the instigation of the Imperial Government. Whether he himself made
the original suggestion of the need, I do not know. But he obeyed the
need when he saw it. Impulse drove him to meet it in the greatest work
of public organization ever done in so short a time in this country,
except the sending of the First Contingent.

Flavelle had never liked Ottawa. Ordinarily he had a sort of contempt
for its waste of time and its dissipation of morality. It is not
conceivable that he would have taken Munitions under any Canadian
department. Nor was it necessary. Canada was to produce munitions for
much more than the Canadian Army.

The work was vast and varied; the man at the head of it capable,
exacting and impartial. His sole aim was to produce and to export
munitions at a price high enough to attract industry and low enough to
prevent profiteering. For three years he was the superman of Canada's
industrial fabric. The C.M.A. and the Department of Trade became mere
annexes to munitions, at a time when Davies' bacon clamoured for
ship-room needed by Flavelle munitions.

Official Ottawa had never known a man like this. He was not popular.
The Government had no control of him. Ottawa had never cared for
super-men. Flavelle was there without politics. He had a department
greater than any in the Administration. He was never responsible to
Parliament. Ministers to him were not necessary. He had no favours to
ask of members. He never even looked in at the Commons which he would
like to have reformed. People sometimes ask why such a man does not go
into Parliament. Impossible. He regards go