ch, so far as we could see him before
the war, was Sir Robert Borden.

Platitudes lay in wait for the Premier to utter them. Only by an
effort of will could he lift them to a plane of high interest. He
could sketch great issues with the solemn hand of a great preacher
pronouncing a benediction; but he never could utter an aside, or crack
a joke, or tell a story, or forget that once upon a time Fate had
picked him to be a leader and so help him he would go through the
motions of shepherding while the other men were the real collie dogs of
the flock. If only Borden could have broken some bucking broncho, or
worn some new kind of bouquet, or invented some imitation of a brazen
serpent to hold up, the people and the party might have got hold of him
and followed him.

Such was Premier Borden before the war, and so he remained, but under a
magnifying glass, afterwards. The war was a godsend to the Government.
It drove out alleged dissension in the Cabinet and gave the party which
had met defeat in the Naval Aid Bill a chance to perpetrate something
which no Parliament would dare try to defeat. Sometimes I almost think
Borden was for short periods in the war a truly great man--in the eyes
of the angels. He had known the war was coming; he had said so. There
was a secret plan of action on file in the Archives months before it
came. Not his to exult in I-told-you-sos to the leader opposite who
had mitigated the menace. He rose to his programme of duty. He did
not even wait till Britain declared war, but cabled assurances of aid
on August 2nd, 1914. Special Parliament was assembled. The hour had
struck. A Halifax writer present at the Khaki Parliament says:

"Sir Wilfrid easily bore off the honours in oratory. It was a great
occasion and he rose to it. . . . Sir Robert is no orator, but he
spoke in straight man-fashion of the great crisis. The climax of his
speech was a solemn warning of the dark days to come 'when our
endurance will be tried.'"

Had the Premier issued a referendum in that first month of Canada's
going to war he would have wept at the amazing number of Noes from the
Province in which Laurier was born, and the provinces in the Far West
which he had created; in the one, obvious indifference whatever the
cause; in the other enmity from the Nationals whom Laurier had imported
to make Liberal voters. Even in the rural areas, traditionally the
stronghold of Liberalism, indifferentism was the rule;