Prime Minister Mackenzie King addressed an unsettled gathering of his caucus on this date in 1942. King’s MPs and Senators needed soothing as debates over conscription on the Hill and in the country were leading to fears that Canadian and Liberal party unity might be fractured. Earlier the King government had called a national plebiscite asking Canadians to release the government from a previous pledge not to impose conscription. This campaign was raging from coast-to-coast when King to his caucus on march 25, 1942.
“I pointed out that if the greater part of the country were to go for conscription, and other parts against, I might have to consider whether it was not my duty to leave the administration over a policy of this kind,” he wrote in his diary recounting the day’s events. “There was strong protest against this but I said one could not say how strong the tide would rise, with possible happenings in other parts of the world, or toward our own coasts, which would alarm the people generally.”
The PM then concluded by recounting for his caucus details of his private meeting with former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, another man of principle in King’s telling, not long before the American’s death two-decades before.
“I made an event stronger appeal, in closing the caucus, saying I recalled a visit… I had with President Wilson,” King wrote. “He was sitting in a chair, partially paralyzed, and he told us that he hoped he still might get some more scalps. He looked very vigorous and seemed so like an eagle in comparison with the then President (Warren) Harding. I pointed out (to caucus) that, despite his will, he could do nothing and eventually passed off the stage. He said that his paralysis had been brought on because he tried to hold a position, feeling the greater part of the nation was against him; that had he taken Taft and Hughes with him to complete the League of Nations, he might have brought the whole of the nations into the League (of Nations) there might have been no war. Thus, the condition of one man holding to an untenable position had defeated the purpose of his own life and the greatest opportunity of service that his nation had.”
King concluded, saying he did not want it said of him that he was like Wilson in holding to a principle, but going down to defeat instead of reaching for a better conclusion.
“I said I was not all together in a position of a man who was paralyzed, but certainly was in the position of a man with his hands tied at his side, if I was to fight against conscription, and to show there was no necessity for it,” King wrote. “My words were useless so long as it could be said that my attitude was being taken because of the pledge I had given and not because of the merits of the case. I said I wanted freedom to discuss conscription on its merits in Parliament.”
The caucus rallied to King’s side and the unity of his party and the country was again maintained as the Second World War continued.
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.