Make Up Your Mind

Everywhere cautious "Wee Willie" King looked, there was trouble. Having held a plebiscite which split Canada's English-and French-speaking peoples, Canada's Prime Minister found he had split his Cabinet almost as dangerously.

The plebiscite was on the question: Should the Government be released from its pledge not to conscript manpower for service overseas? The Canadian electorate voted Yes by a more than 2-to-1 vote--and the Cabinet thereupon split over whether to enforce conscription immediately. For the second consecutive weekend Mr. King sought refuge in his summer house in the gentle Gatineau hills. Past master of delay and compromise, he emerged this week with a characteristic proposal.

Without noticeable enthusiasm, Mackenzie King informed a nervous House of Commons of a new Order Paper. It contained the only answer he could find at present to a racial and religious problem which Canadians of good will had always hoped that time--not civil strife--would solve. The answer: an amendment to the National Resources Mobilization Act which struck out Section 3 and thus empowered the Government to send Canadian conscripts anywhere in the world.

The debate on the amendment would not break into a roar until its second reading, later this week. At that time, the Prime Minister was expected to attempt another appeasement of French-speaking Quebec Province by indicating that conscription would not be invoked until absolutely necessary. If he didn't, this week's resignation of Transport Minister Pierre Cardin was a forerunner of a bolt from the Liberal Party of virtually every French Canadian in the Cabinet and in Parliament.

Conscription Now. Both Defense Minister James Layton Ralston and Navy Minister Angus MacDonald had declared publicly that they needed no conscripts to augment the flow of volunteers. But they and others led the Cabinet faction demanding immediate conscription, as a token to the eight English-speaking provinces that the Government accepted the popular mandate for conscription.

Conscription Never. Quebec had been the only province that voted No, by an almost solid block of votes from its French-Canadian majority. The French Canadians had thus turned the rest of Canada against them. Loud-mouthed Maurice Duplessis, onetime Fascist follower, now opposition leader of the Quebec Legislature, tried to capitalize on the anti-conscription sentiment by storming: "That promise of the Government is not one that can be annulled by a majority."

But if it were not annulled, Mackenzie King would face what the Ottawa Journal described as "eruptions in this country" everywhere but in Quebec. If it were annulled, Quebec might erupt. Wee Willie King had to make up his mind.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.