d unbacked by other leaders he could do little more. He
stood for the law and did not hinder its operation. But if there was a
chief executive in Canada who wished the war were righteously over, it
was Sir Lomer Gouin. No Premier had such a predicament; so much at the
end to lose; so much at first to have gained--if only he could have
foreseen, as nobody did, that conscription was coming and that law
would be more awkward than liberty.

The Premier of Quebec had experience in keeping his Government immune
from agitators. It was not alone the Nationalists who had made him
uneasy. On the other extreme there had been for some time one Godefroi
Langlois, former editor of _La Patrie_, and later founder and editor of
_Le Pays_, whose platform was compulsory State education away from
control of the clergy and in defiance of the Archbishops. Gouin did
not endorse Langlois. How could he? _Le Pays_, when it condemned
clerical schools, attacked the Administration. Politically Gouin was
right in opposing Langlois. Nationally he was playing provincial.
Langlois had a mission, in line with a broader, nationalized Canada;
the same mission which is now being reflected in the National Council
of Education.

So, between the reactionism of Bourassa and the radicalism of Langlois,
Gouin was the compromise; and Langlois was conveniently given an
official post in Europe.

Gouin has compromised his whole political career. With the leverage of
enormous success in elections and administration, he never had the
vision to declare himself in favour of a bigger Quebec than could be
got by extending its boundaries to Ungava.

He was too old to begin. Quebec to him was a vast prefecture to be
administered; not a vision to be realized. Ontario--except
politically--was almost as far away as British Columbia. He was seldom
in Toronto. Montreal was as a rule the last west for this voyageur.
He seldom or never went to the Maritimes. He knew the people down
there regarded the _bloc_ Quebec as a denationalizer. He had little or
no desire to see the prairies. He wanted Quebec to prosper. He
delighted to see pulp mills and cotton factories and power plants and
railways and trolleys vibrating along the St. Lawrence. He loved to
dream of the great unpeopled hinterland--all Quebec; of the other
hinterland--all the rest of Canada; of the transcontinentals converging
at Montreal; of the steamship lines terminating there; of a land where
th