The Masques of Ottawa | Page 6

It takes a Lincoln or a Roosevelt to be in high office and say
things that palpitate in the heart of a crowd. Wilson did; but he was
dangerous. You judge a man in high office by words and deeds.
Lincoln was great in both. Lloyd George is great in either, but not

always in both at once. Macdonald could thrill a crowd with a homely
epigram and turn his hand to a vastly national piece of work. We have
yet to be sure that Meighen can be as big in action as he has sometimes
been in speech.
Unless one is too easily mistaken, the Imperial Conference imparted a
steady sense of responsibility to Arthur Meighen that he rather lacked
when he took office. He found himself in a very uncomfortable
spotlight. He had not been used to measuring his words to suit such
momentous occasions; nor accustomed to realizing how small the
greatest men and the most impressive human arrangements are when
you get to the centre and no longer have the perspective. He
represented the oldest self-governing Dominion. A word misplaced
might make a vast difference. He realized the significance of the
event--especially before an election. He was never able to keep out of
his mind what might be happening at home in such places as Medicine
Hat. The issues which he discussed were big. He handled them
worthily, with a due admixture of boldness and caution.
It was no time for mere sentiment, but for careful deliberation of
matters that lay beyond Canada, beyond the Empire, in the danger
zones of world politics, more especially of the Orient. The status of
Canada as a nation north of the United States depended in that case
vastly more upon a definition of Japanese and Pacific policy than upon
any heroic allusion to the Great War. No man could have traversed this
precarious business with more insight into the probable effect of what
he had to say upon the Empire, the United States, and his own electoral
prospect in Canada. The day after his announcement of a general
election this year the Premier spoke to an open-air crowd at the
Canadian National Exhibition. He chose the Imperial Conference, and
mainly the Pacific issue, as his theme. In twenty minutes of unrelieved,
almost solemn seriousness, he made that weighty business interesting
to a crowd not too friendly in politics, with scarcely a gesture, speaking
direct to the people instead of using the amplifier tube, making himself
heard and understood with the clarity of studious conviction and
straight mastery of all the links in his logic.

And Meighen knows how to lead. His bewildered smile is a prelude
often to a strong move in action. Older and wiser men learn to love this
lean wildcat who knows the strategic spots in the anatomy of the foe;
who can spit scorn at the Agrarians and venomous contempt at the
Liberals; who dares to glorify a government of authority and of force as
though it were a democracy; who can hold the allegiance of some
Liberals and lose that of few old Tories. He has earned that allegiance.
He carried his load in the war. Long enough he lay up as the handy
instrument of a clumsy Coalition, as before that he had been dog-whip
for the Tories. When Premier Borden wanted a hard job well done he
gave it to Meighen, who seldom wanted to go to Europe when he could
be slaving at home.
Fortunately for Meighen he had been but a year in office when
Opportunity came to him with a large blank scroll upon which he might
write for the consideration of other people his views about, "What I
Think of Canada as a Part of the Empire."
No law examiner at Osgoode ever offered him such a chance to say the
right thing wrongly or the wrong thing first. It was a fascinating topic.
Other Premiers had done such things off-hand, almost impromptu as it
seemed, and inspired by merely patriotic sentiment. This was a notice
that the Premier of Canada could speak his mind in advance, or if he so
preferred, wait till the Conference of Premiers opened and spring a
surprise. Meighen lost no time in deciding to prepare for the N.L.C.
party a brief on Imperial relations. Here was a thing out of which he
could make capital--for Canada and the party and the coming elections.
And if ever Meighen had delved for material he did it now. He was
going to the Imperial Conference of Premiers with a mandate--to help
define Canada's position in the great Commonwealth about which Mr.
Lionel Curtis had written two large books and the Round Table had
published forty-four numbers since 1910; when nobody had as yet
issued the one clear