June 11

Canada's Dominion-wide election on June 11 was important to more than Canadians. Canada would be the first major belligerent to pass judgement on a victorious war government. The effects of the election might be felt in the British general election of July 5.* Canada would be the first important Allied power to answer: after war, what?

Would there be a swing to the right, as there was in the U.S. after World War I? If so, the Progressive Conservative Party of ex-farmer John Bracken would win. This party stands for untrammeled free enterprise, a minimum of government restriction, all-out participation in the Pacific war.

Would the voters reward with another term the Government that had carried Canada successfully (though not smoothly) through the war? In that case, the Liberal Party of William Lyon Mackenzie King, five-term Prime Minister, would win.

Or would the voters, remembering the depression of the 19303 and well aware of dangerous days ahead, decide to try something new? If so, they would vote for the socialist Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, led by onetime Schoolteacher M. J. Coldwell. The CCF stands for public ownership of big business, natural resources.

Secret Deal. Prime Minister King's chances of reelection, at first dim, were suddenly looking up. There was a reason, involving politically potent Quebec, without whose votes a party can scarcely hope to win.

In Montreal, Paul LaFontaine, a Progressive Conservative organizer, let a plump cat out of the bag. He revealed (and John Bracken later partly confirmed) that his pro-conscriptionist party had made a secret deal with the anti-conscriptionist "independents" to support 30 of their candidates in Quebec. Behind this incongruous arrangement was the obvious hope that after the election the combined strength of the Progressive Conservatives and the "independents" would be great enough to unseat Prime Minister King, permit formation of a Progressive Conservative Government. A historical precedent buttressed this hope: a similar deal had worked in 1911, when Conservatives and Quebec Nationalists, though differing on basic policies, had united to defeat Canada's late, great Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier.

The difference was that in 1911 the arrangement was kept hidden until the election was over. Quebeckers, who still speak bitterly of "the year of the great betrayal," suddenly awoke to find their representatives in Parliament affiliated with the hated Tories. This time it was unlikely that the deal would succeed. The province might not like King, but now he seemed more than likely to get a sizable bloc of its votes.

*Said Britons at the San Francisco conference: a socialist victory in Canada, or even a marked socialist trend, would substantially help Britain's Labor Party in the British general election (see FOREIGN NEWS).

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