Stevens' Can-Can

For a year all Canada has waited for the Hon. Henry Herbert Stevens, pinko-minded Conservative, to set up his own party. Mr. Stevens broke spectacularly with his old friend Premier Richard Bedford Bennett over "The Pamphlet," a Stevens expose of too ruggedly individualistic Canadian business practices (TIME, Nov. 5). Next he meekly accepted Bennett's reproofs, meekly resigned as Bennett's Minister of Trade & Commerce. Last week with elections scarcely two months off, Henry Herbert Stevens at last announced that he was prepared to challenge Canada's two old guard parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, with a new one. Name: Reconstruction Party. Motto: "CANADA CAN and Canada will provide a decent standard of living for every person willing to work."

The Stevens platform designed to implement this "cancan" motto and get the votes of everybody except Canadian businessmen was a masterpiece of New Deal paternalism. To workers it promised wage-&-hour laws; to farmers. Govern-ment markets for farm products; to the unemployed, a huge public works program. Finally Mr. Stevens promised not only to pay for all this but to pay off Canada's entire national debt in 25 years by Govern-ment exploitation of gold mines and other natural resources.

Last week the future of Stevens and his Reconstruction Party was anybody's guess. Stevens' career was against him. He was born in Britain; he did not go to War; he has heretofore run with the capitalists. Sang one of his admirers last week: "Canada has found an Abraham Lincoln. . ."

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