“He (Churchill) sensed a good deal of feeling (in Canada) that I ought to support conscription or form of national government to let two or three Conservatives have a look in,” King wrote in his diary. “That he would never press on me in any way. That I knew better about my own country than anyone else, but that he had been told by several already that I would be the strongest Prime Minister of Canada had, if I could meet my opponents to that extent.”

King quickly replied to the British PM’s suggestions.

“I reminded him that Meighen had made a political issue of the question of conscription and had made it more difficult on that account to take in anyone (into cabinet) from the Opposition,” he wrote in his diary. “Also, that I had offered them the chance last year, and that there were two other parties to consider. I doubted they would come in. Also, there was no real cabinet material on the other side.”

And with that, the conversation was closed!

Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.