The Masques of Ottawa | Page 6

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 call for Canada. Foster, Borden, Rowell--since Laurier and Macdonald--had all taken a hand in this. But there was some new way to state the case that would--or might--seem as large and strong for Canada at the Imperial Conference as the voice of either Borden or Rowell had been at the Peace Conference or the Geneva Assembly.
The Premier could picture Sir Robert scanning his manifesto to the British press; Sir George, his old mentor of speechmaking in the House, comparing it to what he