BTS AND HESITATIONS

Laurier's accession to leadership caused doubt and heart-burnings
among the leaders of Ontario Liberalism. Still under the influence
of the Geo. Brown tradition of suspicion of Quebec they felt uneasy
at the transfer of the sceptre to Laurier, French by inheritance,
Catholic in religion, with a political experience derived from
dealing with the feelings, ambitions and prejudices of a province
which was to them an unknown world. Part of the doubt arose from
misconception of the qualities of Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn
party fighter, with an experience going back to pre-confederation
days, said to the writer: "Laurier will never make a leader; he has
not enough of the devil in him." This meant, in the brisk terminology
of to-day, that he could not deliver the rough stuff. This doubter
and his fellows had yet to learn that the flashing rapier in the
hands of the swordsman makes a completer and far less messy job than
the bludgeon; and that there is in politics room for the delicate
art of jiu-jitsu. Further, the Ontario mind was under the sway of
that singular misconception, so common to Britishers, that a
Frenchman by temperament is gay, romantic, inconsequent, with few
reserves of will and perseverance. Whereas the good French mind is
about the coolest, clearest, least emotional instrument of the kind
that there is. The courtesy, grace, charm, literary and artistic
ability that go with it are merely accessories; they are the
feathers on the arrow that help it in its flight from the twanging
bow-cord to the bull's-eye. Laurier's mind was typically French with
something also Italianate about it, an inheritance perhaps from the
long-dead Savoyard ancestor who brought the name to this continent.
Later when Laurier had proved his quality and held firmly in his
hands the reins of power, the fatuous Ontario Liberal explained him
as that phenomenon, a man of pure French ancestry who was
spiritually an Englishman--this conclusion being drawn from the fact
that upon occasion the names of Charles James Fox and Gladstone came
trippingly from his tongue. The new relationship between the
Liberals and Laurier was entered upon with obvious hesitation on the
part of many of the former and by apparent diffidence by the latter.
It may be that the conditional acceptance and the proffered
resignation at call were tactical movements really intended by
Laurier to buttress his position as leader, as most assuredly