ain. Leading English-peaking
Liberals, particularly from the West, convinced that conscription was
necessary to keep Canada's forces up to the need, or that the War Times
Election Act made opposition hopeless, decided to accept Sir Robert
Borden's offer of seats in a coalition Cabinet.

In the election of December, 1917, in which passion and prejudice were
stirred as never before in the history of Canada, the Unionist forces
won by a sweeping majority. Ontario and the West were almost solidly
behind the Government in the number of members elected, Quebec as
solidly against it, and the Maritime Provinces nearly evenly
divided. The soldiers' vote, contrary to Australian experience, was
overwhelmingly for conscription. The Laurier Liberals polled more
civilian votes in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia, and in
the Dominion as a whole, than the united Liberal party had received in
the Reciprocity election of 1911. The increase in the Unionist popular
vote was still greater, however, and gave the Government fifty-eight
per cent of the popular vote and sixty-five per cent of the seats in the
House. Confidence in the administrative capacity of the new Government,
the belief that it would be more vigorous in carrying on the war, the
desire to make Quebec do its share, the influence of the leaders of
the Western Liberals and of the Grain Growers' Associations, wholesale
promises of exemption to farmers, and the working of the new franchise
law all had their part in the result. Eight months after the Military
Service Act was passed, it had added only twenty thousand men to the
nearly five hundred thousand volunteers; but steps were then taken to
cancel exemptions and to simplify the machinery of administration. Some
eighty thousand men were raised under conscription, but the war, so far
as Canada was concerned, was fought and won by volunteers.

"The self-governing British colonies," wrote Bernhardi before the war,
"have at their disposal a militia, which is sometimes only in process
of formation. They can be completely ignored so far as concerns any
European theater of war." This contemptuous forecast might have been
justified had German expectations of a short war been fulfilled. Though
large and increasing sums had in recent years been spent on the Canadian
militia and on a small permanent force, the work of building up an
army on the scale the war demanded had virtually to be begun from the
foundation. It was pu