of succeeding. There are
probably a number of reasons why Mr. Calder did not take the Provincial
Premiership. Dig them out of Calder if you may. He has never
explained. He leaves it to his commentators.

We are privileged therefore to conjecture that:

Mr. Calder was pretty well sick of Saskatchewan politics and was
looking hard in almost any direction for a good way out;

Mr. Calder could see far enough into the near future of prairie
politics to know that Liberalism was becoming a label for something
else; and he was not disposed to come out as an Agrarian Liberal;

Mr. Calder wanted a chance to begin politics all over again, because
with all his practical success he felt that he had travelled some wrong
trails.

Possibly all of these had something to do with the case. At the
Winnipeg Liberal Convention in 1917 he was a coalition-conscription
Liberal. He worked against the Liberal machine that captured the
Convention by a fluke for Laurier. Before that he was known to believe
in Union Government. It was only common sense to make him one of the
Prairie triumvirate--Calder, Sifton, Crerar, who carried the West into
the Union. Cloudy as his career has been, for no reason that anyone
specially cared to name, he might in Ottawa be a big force for the
Government. He was a behind-the-scenes actor. He knew something about
the art of winning elections and converting immigrants into voters. He
was practical. He would be needed in Ottawa--more than he could see
any use for his talent in Saskatchewan with its farmer-dominated
Cabinets.

Alberta has gone Agrarian. All Saskatchewan needs is a change of
label. Some psychological morning Premier Martin will get up and rub
out "Liberal" after his name, buy a big farm and set up as a National
Progressive. Provincial Legislatures are things to be captured. The
old parties shrewdly used them in the Ottawa game. The new ones are
just as apt. Too long these Western elective bodies have been on the
switch. It is time to shunt them, once more, on to the main line that
leads to Ottawa--with a different company label on the cars.

By no exercise of the imagination can one behold Jim Calder becoming a
Grain-Grower Progressive. The thing is anomalous.

On the other side of the Sphinx he is credited by those also who know
him well in Regina with going to Ottawa purely as a patriotic duty. He
wanted some work to do for the whole country bigger than any he had
done