the Dominion
with the mother country" and his "parting of the ways" speech received
sinister interpretations. Speaker Champ Clark's announcement that he
was in favor of the agreement because he hoped "to see the day when the
American flag will float over every square foot of the British North
American possessions" was worth tens of thousands of votes. The
anti-reciprocity press of Canada seized upon these utterances, magnified
them, and sometimes, it was charged, inspired or invented them. Every
American crossroads politician who found a useful peroration in a vision
of the Stars and Stripes floating from Panama to the North Pole was
represented as a statesman of national power voicing a universal
sentiment. The action of the Hearst papers in sending pro-reciprocity
editions into the border cities of Canada made many votes--but not for
reciprocity. The Canadian public proved that it was unable to suffer
fools gladly. It was vain to argue that all men of weight in the United
States had come to understand and to respect Canada's independent
ambitions; that in any event it was not what the United States thought
but what Canada thought that mattered; or that the Canadian farmer who
sold a bushel of good wheat to a United States miller no more sold his
loyalty with it than a Kipling selling a volume of verse or a Canadian
financier selling a block of stock in the same market. The flag was
waved, and the Canadian voter, mindful of former American slights
and backed by newly arrived Englishmen admirably organized by the
anti-reciprocity forces, turned against any "entangling alliance." The
prosperity of the country made it safe to express resentment of the
slights of half a century or fear of this too sudden friendliness.

The result of the elections, which were held on September 21, 1911,
was the crushing defeat of the Liberal party. A Liberal majority of
forty-four in a house of two hundred and twenty-one members was turned
into a Conservative majority of forty-nine. Eight cabinet ministers went
down to defeat. The Government had a slight majority in the Maritime
Provinces and Quebec, and a large majority in the prairie West, but the
overwhelming victory of the Opposition in Ontario, Manitoba, and British
Columbia turned the day.

The appeal to loyalty revealed much that was worthy and much that
was sordid in Canadian life. It was well that a sturdy national
self-reliance should be developed and expressed in the face of Ame