The Masques of Ottawa | Page 8

at the root of the welfare of the civilized world. In
every nation of this League, no matter by what party label the Unionist
cause is identified in the baggage room, it is a matter of vital
importance to the solidarity of the League that such party should
remain or go into power. So--I hope to get from the Conference such a
reasonable endorsation of Canada's stand on the main issues that our
party here----"
He pauses and gazes fixedly at a large map of Western Canada. The
visitor imagines that he is looking at Portage, his home town.
"Er--you were saying, Mr. Meighen?"
"Medicine Hat," he answered vacantly. "Somehow, you know--I wish
Kipling had never made that remark about Medicine Hat,--'all hell for a
basement.'"
"You don't worry about the Hat just because there's going to be a
bye-election while you're away?"
"No,--for I know pretty well that I won't hold that seat. What worries
me is the fool use that some people will make of a freak election as a
forerunner of doom. However, as I was saying about the Conference--I
hope to get such a reasonable endorsation of Canada's stand on the
main issues that our party here can work to victory advantage in the
next election. I may as well be honest. Arthur Meighen, Premier, has
not yet been elected. But he intends to be, because he ought to be,
because the party he leads can do this country more good for the next
few years than anything else in sight; because the party which carried
the war and the re-establishment has been given a new lease of life, at
least some vision, and a vast deal of experience which Canada is going
to need from now on more than she can ever need the wholesale patent
nostrums of millennial doctors who think the plough-handles are a sign
manual of a new efficiency in government. We all know what is
happening to Russia. I'll be perfectly frank, and say that I fear this
young nation may be induced to scrap experience for
experiment--which above all times would at present be the inauguration
of an economic system for which the nation is not prepared, for which

it has not been educated, and because of which it cannot afford to take
for its education the bitter experience which too often succeeds
glittering experiment. What the world needs to-day is economic justice,
not economic revolution. No nation in the world has a better chance
than Canada for sound economic justice to all that makes her the
world's young leading democracy. But economics isn't everything.
Good-night."

THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN PREMIER
RT. HON. SIR ROBERT BORDEN
Here is a modest, honourable man who saw his duty to the nation and
the emergency never more clearly than he knew his own defects.
Canada never before had a mediocrity of such eminence; a man who
without a spark of genius devoted a high talent to a nation's work so
well that he just about wins a niche in our Valhalla--if we have one. It
was the war that almost finished Borden; and it was the war that made
him.
Canada has been governed by strategy, imagination, and common sense.
We have had Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden. The first finished his
work, the second wanted to, and the third had finished his work two
years before he resigned office.
Sir Robert Borden was the only man in the world Premier both when
the war began and when it ended. Of all Premiers of Canada he was the
least like a Canadian, and he achieved European fame with less title to
personal greatness than either Laurier or Macdonald. For the crowd
there never was an inspired moment in Sir Robert's life, nor ever one
when he did not try to do his whole duty. He never interested the
people and did not always hold the profound allegiance of his party.
Yet there never was a public man in Canada to whom the average
politician would as soon take off his hat in absolute respect for his
moral purpose, integrity, fair-mindedness and sense of honour. There
was enough morality wasted in the equipment of R. L. Borden to have

supplied the lack of it in some of his heterogeneous followers. But it
was morality that he could not transmit except by silent influence.
Other celebrated Premiers had governed by the personal method. The
moral law was written all over Borden. He was a walking decalogue.
He worked for the good of the country without detriment to the
Conservative party. But there never was any Borden Mount of
Transfiguration. He never could lead except when he was considered
by the Majority to be right. In the war he took refuge in the nation, and
its patriotism. But for