animously adopted
a resolution in favor of establishing a Canadian naval service to
cooperate in close relation with the British navy. During the summer a
special conference was held in London attended by ministers from all the
Dominions. At this conference the Admiralty abandoned its old position;
and it was agreed that Australia and Canada should establish local
forces, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, with auxiliary ships and
naval bases.

When the Canadian Parliament met in 1910, Sir Wilfrid Laurier submitted
a Naval Service Bill, providing for the establishment of local fleets,
of which the smaller vessels were to be built in Canada. The ships were
to be under the control of the Dominion Government, which might, in case
of emergency, place them at the disposal of the British Admiralty. The
bill was passed in March. In the autumn two cruisers, the Rainbow and
the Niobe, were bought from Britain to serve as training ships. In the
following spring a naval college was opened at Halifax, and tenders
were called for the construction, in Canada, of five cruisers and six
destroyers. In June, 1911, at the regular Imperial Conference of
that year, an agreement was reached regarding the boundaries of
the Australian and Canadian stations and uniformity of training and
discipline.

Then came the reciprocity fight and the defeat of the Government. No
tenders had been finally accepted, and the new Administration of Premier
Borden was free to frame its own policy.

The naval issue had now become a party question. The policy of
a Dominion navy, a policy which was the logical extension of the
principles of colonial nationalism and imperial cooperation which
had guided imperial development for many years, was attacked by
ultra-imperialists in the English-speaking provinces as strategically
unsound and as leading inevitably to separation from the Empire. It was
also attacked by the Nationalists of Quebec, the ultra-colonialists or
provincialists, as they might more truly be termed, under the vigorous
leadership of Henri Bourassa, as yet another concession to imperialism
and to militarism. In November, 1910, by alarming the habitant by
pictures of his sons being dragged away by naval press gangs, the
Nationalists succeeded in defeating the Liberal candidate in a
by-election in Drummond-Arthabaska, at one time Laurier's own
constituency. In the general election which followed in 1911, the same
issue cost the Liberals a score of