he grip of
the Agrarians. Liberalism by constituencies was swept out as clean as a
barn floor at fanning-mill time. And Michael Clark sat down to think it
over. He had half expected that tornado. But he refused to like it.
The farmers had stolen his own programme of free trade and by means of it
had stampeded his Province for the sake of using it as a spring-broad to
make the grand jump into the Federal arena. The apostle of free trade,
himself as good a farmer as any of them, was now regarded as a chip on
the Agrarian stream at high tide.

Wherefore Michael Clark, after certain "conversations" with Mr. Crerar,
wrote the letter which, if Mackenzie King is as wise as he is hopeful,
will be used to flood the country. Hoardings and electric signs in the
interests of true-Liberalism should blazon abroad such sentences as these:

"The House of Lords, the Family Compact, the Manufacturers' Association
and the junkers and militarists of Germany are each and all examples of
group government."

"Class consciousness is none the less class selfishness, and therefore
doomed to die, because it suddenly appears in Farmer and Labour parties."

"The apostles of progress must unite upon common principles, sincerely
held to resist reaction, which is ever present like a dead weight to drag
down the aspirations of the race for freedom, justice and democracy."

"These were the things for which sixty thousand Canadians died in the
recent war. . . . I have been fighting 'class' for forty years. It
would be quite impossible for me to turn my back on my past and the right
in this election."

Our political history contains no declaration of independence more
significant, manly and sensational. Repudiation of the Free Trade,
group-governed, National Progressives by Michael Clark, the farmer and
the apostle of Canadian Free Trade, is the first truly emancipating note
that has been struck in all this pre-election barrage of group against
group. Michael Clark may be no bigger as a Canadian for such a stand,
but he is true to his own form as one of the rarest and manliest Radicals
that Canada ever had. And his declaration should be of immense value to
the Government, which confesses that its real fear is, not of Liberals,
but of Agrarians.

The headmaster of the Manchester School in Canada has had a multitude of
pupils; none more brilliant than Mr. Crerar, who seems to have made Free
Trade a species of bondage. In no other land cou