The P.M. Attacks

POLITICS The P.M. Attacks

Prime Minister Mackenzie King, whipped in recent political skirmishes (TIME, Sept. 30, Oct. 28), had no intention of meekly yielding the battle. Last week, mindful that he is leader of a party as well as a government, he set about to rally his forces.

The scene was the ballroom of the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, the province without whose support no party can expect to win in Canada. The occasion: a dinner honoring External Affairs Minister (and Justice Minister) Louis Stephen St. Laurent, Quebec's top-ranking politician in the Dominion Parliament. While some 800 party big& littlewigs whooped it up from the floor. Prime Minister King, as a gesture to Quebec, spoke ten minutes in French before switching to English. He pleaded with Minister St. Laurent to drop his intentions to retire. (The Minister would probably agree.) Then, after some pats on the back for past Liberal triumphs, the P.M. abruptly sat down.

Surprised newsmen, with advance copies of the speech before them, saw that the real political punch in the speech had been left undelivered. It was explained that the banquet was behind schedule and that it was about time for Minister St. Laurent to go on the air. For the balance of the P.M.'s speech Canadians were forced to turn to their daily newspapers. There they learned that Mackenzie King had whacked Quebec's politicians, notably Premier Maurice Duplessis and his Union Nationale, which has shown little love for the Liberals.

Punch Thrown. Two of the omitted paragraphs:

"The danger to representative government . . . arises from a bewilderment of political parties that have no past, and but little promise of any future. In [Quebec] there have appeared in recent times the Union Nationale, the Bloc Populaire, the CCF, Social Credit, the Union des Electeurs, the Labor-Progressive [Communists] Party, and so-called Independents of every color of the rainbow. . . . The so-called Union Nationale is not national, but narrowly provincial; the Bloc Populaire is certainly not popular; many people do not know what the initials CCF stand for; one day, Social Credit is the same thing as the Union des Electeurs, the next day it is not. . . .

"What we want in Canada are political parties that will serve to unite its provinces as one nation from coast to coast. Such a party we have in the Liberal Party. . . ."

Though the tone of the whole speech was determined, politicos saw more significance in the worried undertone. Plainly the P.M. had been alarmed by the Party's recent setbacks. He was appealing to the plain people for support. And in retaining the reluctant St. Laurent in his Cabinet, the P.M. was keeping close at hand a potential heir apparent from the key province of Quebec.

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