the other British
nations", who it was assumed would do likewise. For years before the
war the _Free Press_ had talked of this evolutionary Empire, deeply
regretting that Mr. Bourassa had coined the word "Nationalist" and made
it obnoxious.

Winnipeg seldom does things one half at a time. In the summer of 1917
J. W. Dafoe was one of the most astounded men in Canada. The other one
was Sir Wilfrid Laurier. That was the year of the famous Liberal
Convention. Had such a Convention happened in Chicago with such a man
as Roosevelt as the centre-piece, its doings would have been cabled the
world over. In its small way the Winnipeg Convention was more
sensational than the Big Strike two years later. Mr. Dafoe was in
Ottawa that summer. He was needed there. The Premier had come back
from England primed with a policy of conscription to be enforced by a
possible Coalition Government, an offer of which was made to the
Opposition leader. Since early in the war the _Free Press_ had argued
for coalition, but opposed conscription until after the United States
entered the struggle because of the inevitable exodus of slackers
across the border.

There was a strong conscriptionist group of Liberals in Ottawa. We
must assume that Mr. Dafoe, though not a member of Parliament, was
strongly behind them; his presence in Ottawa indicates that his
counsels were needed in view of the attitude to be taken by Western
Liberals. It was the conscriptionist group of Liberals in Ottawa that
decided upon the Convention, whether on the advice of Mr. Dafoe is not
generally known. The intention was to create a Western Liberal group
free from Laurier control, prepared to consider coalition--involving
conscription--on its merits. So far, the policy of the Convention was
in line with the previous programme of Mr. Dafoe. But the Liberal
machine in the West--which was not Mr. Dafoe's party at all, because
for some time he had been working on the principle that both the old
parties as such had lost their grip on the West--went out and captured
the delegates. The Convention was suddenly stampeded for Laurier, a
result which Mr. Dafoe never expected but against which he had strongly
urged, the Liberal Unionist leaders. The _Free Press_ thereafter
thundered against the Convention as entirely misrepresenting Western
Liberalism. The subsequent South Winnipeg convention shewed that the
_Free Press_ was right. Almost the entire strength of Western