lity when he refused the Premiership.
After declining the Premiership he was not likely to need a portfolio.

Public life is considerably like war. Every time you move there must
be a motive.

A former political crony of Sir Thomas said to the writer that the
excess profits tax imposed by the Minister was one of the cleverest
political manoeuvres ever perpetrated in Ottawa, because it drove
manufacturers and merchants to advertise in the newspapers in order to
reduce their profits, thus paying part of the excess to the newspapers
rather than to the Government; which was supposed to have made the
Government popular with newspapers on both sides of the political
fence. This is a genially cynical way of saying that every publisher
has his price, and that the Finance Minister had made some startling
progress in his mentality since the day when he was charmed with
everybody in Parliament. But it is a Machiavellian touch quite
uncharacteristic of a man whose friends had designated him for the
Premiership.

The friends of Sir Thomas may have had good reason for considering him
as the next Premier. On the evidence of the mere handling of executive
big business demanding cool judgment, practical vision and powerful
action he was the equal of any other candidate for the office. His
defects were less obvious, but perhaps more vital in the case. Sir
Thomas was not designed to lead, which in these days means to be
constantly recreating a party, not to operate a well-built governmental
machine. In his nine years of public life he did a big national work
and justly earned all the real distinction he ever got. He did so much
in a big, unusual way for the nation that his passing out becomes
another example of how easy it is to cripple administration by
sacrificing public service brains to private business.

CALLED TO THE POLITICAL PULPIT

HON. NEWTON WESLEY ROWELL

N. W. Rowell has the bearing of a man who long ago felt that he was
called to do something for a cause or a country and has never got over
it. Meanwhile he has done much for both a cause and a country, and
seems to have quit before the country had begun to enjoy more than the
least agreeable elements in his character. To have suffered the
insistent righteousness of Mr. Rowell so long, and at the close of the
first period of his life when he seemed to be getting his own measure
as a public man on a big stage, to see him withdraw like a chambered
nautilu