d noble a tribute to the inner vitality of the
British League of Nations. And not even Mr. Rowell could have surpassed
it for breadth of view on that subject, Clark looked at the Empire from
within outwards. He saw in it the expression of a great race of people
working the leaven upon other races; a mighty confederacy of free nations.

Red Michael has been a great informing Liberal, and a big illuminating
Canadian. Whether grandly right or magnificently wrong, he is never
uninteresting; a man who could come off a stack of wheat, wash himself up
bare-armed, and in Sunday clothes but seldom well-dressed and never
groomed, step on to a platform over in the schoolhouse or the town hall
and make a great speech to men who believe in the simplicity of a big
mind that thinks hard on the welfare of the majority. John Bright would
have loved such a man. Even John Macdonald might have loved him. And
the one regret among those who value the power of a big free nature in a
nation is, that owing to some fatalistic streak in his genius, Michael
Clark has not risen to the inspiring height from which the country might
get the best that he has to give. Never cured of his insurgency in
Parliament, he has become an uncompromising conformist to one big and
bigoted idea that universal Free-Trade is the need of the world, and
especially of Canada. He persists in the delusion that what has been
good for Britain must be good for Canada; not only is Canada at war when
Britain fights, but when Britain has no tariff Canada must have free
trade.

All which is freely forgiven this stalwart on account of his challenge to
the group who took his Free Trade luggage and attempted to label it
National Progressive. The Free Trader who could watch that caravan of
adventurers going down the trail and stoutly tell them all to keep on
going to the devil, deserves well of his country. Michael Clark's
advocacy of Progressivism might have got him the promise of a Cabinet
position. His rejection of it is the proof that the free-man who
believes in great parties can never be bound by a class-conscious group.
"Better a dinner of herbs . . . ." Michael Clark, whether M.P. or not,
is free to consider himself if need be a party of one man--without a
platform, but not devoid of a cause.

Whatever Michael Clark knows about the benefits of Free Trade and its
effect upon the exchanges, he knows peculiarly well the danger of
unrestricted reciprocity in sentime