CANADA: Canada First

With 137 seats out of a possible 245 and a clear majority over all political parties, the Conservative party ousted Canadian Liberals from their nine-year roost fortnight ago. Last week stern-jowled Richard Bedford Bennett, Prime Minister-elect, was cock of the Canadian walk. Editors in Britain and the U. S. sat back to analyze the results.

Obvious was the deduction that Canada is wholeheartedly in favor of Bachelor Bennett’s program of “Canada First” and high protective tariffs. A further fact which most U. S. editors privately admitted, few printed, is that the average Canadian today is frankly anti-U. S. The Hawley-Smoot tariff, which Canadians interpreted as directly aimed against their chief exports, crystallized feelings. Both parties promised retaliatory measures. The Conservatives’ measures were more severe. They got the votes.

The Ottawa Journal summed up Canada’s case against Prime Minister King in one sentence: “He had no policy to cure unemployment and he has not given Canada prosperity.” Nationalist Canadians privately added a third accusation: Mackenzie King was pro-U. S. They felt that he was afraid to come out strongly against the Hawley-Smoot tariff. They said that he was too amenable to U. S. interests in the projected St. Lawrence waterways treaty. They knew that he had passed the U. S.-inspired law, objectionable to Canadians, forbidding the export of liquor to the U. S.

Empire Free Trade. One Briton who rejoiced secretly at the Canadian victory of Conservative Bennett was Conservative Stanley Baldwin. He has been fighting tooth & nail to keep control of his party from the British “Press Lords” Baron Beaverbrook and Viscount Rothermere with their pet policy of Empire free trade (TIME, Dec. 2 et seq). Stanley Baldwin, personally a free trader, was grudgingly forced to accept Empire free trade when popular opinion seemed to demand it. Australia’s mountainous tariff and absolute embargoes, conservative Canada’s high tariff policy, gave Stanley Baldwin one more chance to declare his independence of the Press Lords.

Quebec. Observers found the greatest proof of the strength of Conservative Bennett in the “Miracle of Quebec.” Since the War, the French-speaking province of Quebec has been Canada’s “Solid South,” steadily returning all but a handful of its 65 seats in the Liberal column. Reason for Quebec’s Liberalism is Wartime conscription. French Canadians have little desire to die for the dear old Empire, have never forgiven the Conservative party for drafting them into the trenches. Through Montreal’s La Presse ran scare headlines last fortnight—MENACE DE CONSCRIPTION, LA CRISE FORMIDABLE … EN EGYPT—As a last minute appeal to Liberal prejudices, Quebec gave 25 of her 65 seats to Conservative Bennett.