seats in Quebec.

When, therefore, the new Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, faced the
issue, he endeavored to frame a policy which would suit both wings
of his following. In 1912 he proposed as an emergency measure to
appropriate a sum sufficient to build three dreadnoughts for the British
navy, subject to recall if at any time the Canadian people decided
to use them as the nucleus of a Canadian fleet. At the same time he
undertook to submit to the electorate his permanent naval policy, as
soon as it was determined. What that permanent policy would be he was
unwilling to say, but the Prime Minister made clear his own leanings
by insisting that it would take half a century to form a Canadian navy,
which at best would be a poor and weak substitute for the organization
the Empire already possessed. The contribution to the British navy
satisfied the ultra-imperialists, while the promise of a referendum and
the call for money alone, and not men, appealed to the Nationalist wing.
Under the impetuous control of its new head, Winston Churchill, the
British Admiralty showed that it had repented its brief conversion
to the Dominion navy policy, by preparing an elaborate memorandum to
support Borden's proposals, and also by formulating plans for imperial
flying squadrons to be supplied by the Dominions, which made clear
its wish to continue the centralizing policy permanently. The Liberal
Opposition vigorously denounced the whole dreadnought programme,
advocating instead two Canadian fleet units somewhat larger than at
first contemplated. Their obstruction was overcome in the Commons by the
introduction of the closure, but the Liberal majority in the Senate, on
the motion of Sir George Ross, a former Premier of Ontario, threw
out the bill by insisting that it should not be passed before being
"submitted to the judgment of the country." This challenge the
Government did not accept. Until the outbreak of the war no further
steps were taken either to arrange for contribution or to establish a
Canadian navy, though the naval college at Halifax was continued, and
the training cruisers were maintained in a half-hearted way.

In the Imperial Conference of 1911, one more attempt was made to set
up a central governing authority in London. Sir Joseph Ward, of New
Zealand, acting as the mouthpiece of the imperial federationists, urged
the establishment, first of an Imperial Council of State and later of
an Imperial Parliament. His propos