le down to common
business at home. The trek to England and to Europe became a fad. The
nations went world crazy. Premiers neglected to "saw wood." It was a
matter for gratitude that they did not parade in khaki.

Premier Borden's lingering objection to Coalition here, even after it
was established in London, did him no credit. He was displeased when
the Chairman of the Imperial Munitions Board, back from a business
conference in London, asked if the Premier had any objection to his
stating the case for the need of Coalition at a public dinner. Of
course the Chairman was out of order. But he was talking business, not
politics.

The war was not going well. The British part of it was badly enough
bedevilled by distance and differences of opinion between various
Dominions without the distraction of party politics.

But for the great services of win-the-war Liberals the Military Service
Act might have disrupted the Coalition even when it came. It was an
extreme measure; much more hazardous here than in Britain--except for
Ireland, of which we wanted no imitation in Quebec. There were times
when Sir Robert longed for the wings of a dove. His offer of Coalition
came at a time when he knew Laurier would refuse it. Conscription he
carried out as a necessity. He never wanted it. No Premier of a
free-will nation would. There were bigoted anti-Quebeckers who would
have had compulsion from the first to show the French that Canada was
greater than Quebec. But if Canada had sent conscripts in 1915 what
would have become of the glory of the Canadian army? The argument that
it was the best men who were killed, thereby robbing the nation of its
flower, is thoroughly ignoble. Canada has never regretted that her
best men died first, or that the Premier delayed conscription until it
was inevitable. Canada does regret that the Government did not until
too late, attempt to make any national register of the strength of this
nation as had been done in England before conscription came as the
final result. To have applied conscription before the United States
went to war would have driven thousands of slackers across the border.
Enough went as it was in the fear that conscription was coming.

The bilingual bungle in the Commons was even worse than the bad feeling
over conscription. In this debate the angry French element in the
House were a bad commentary on the still hopeful minority of
broadminded French-Canadians who