Terrible Infants

"I am a reformer, but I am not a Mackenzie King Liberal. I will tell the whole world that, and I hope he hears me."

With this fare-thee-well three years ago, the sleek, sharp-tongued, C. I. O.-hating bad boy of Canadian politics, Ontario's Premier Mitchell Frederick Hepburn, broke with his Party chief, Canada's Prime Minister. Ever since then the two men have avoided and talked about each other like a couple of feuding Corsicans. Last week Mitchell Hepburn took a potshot at William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Into Ontario's Legislature Premier Hepburn introduced a resolution condemning the Ottawa Government's alleged inefficiency in prosecuting the war. Specifically, Premier Hepburn attacked Prime Minister King for allowing the sale of 1,000,000 bushels of Canadian wheat to Russia, "a potential enemy"; drilling Air Force recruits without sufficient clothing in zero weather; causing great increases in tuberculosis by under-equipping soldiers.

The Hepburn-King split is generally thought to be due to Mitch Hepburn's ambitions and personal jealousy. Ontario's Premier is a kind of Huey Long, and there is not room for both a King and a Kingfish in Canadian politics. As he submitted the condemnatory resolution last week, Mitch Hepburn said: "I stand firm on the statement that he [King] has not done his duty by his country and he never will. I am going to take my political future in my hands. If we are not reflecting the overwhelming sentiment of the people of Ontario, then I will resign."

A vote was moved. The Chamber's division bell rang. A few straddling Liberals left the room rather than commit themselves. The Provincial Legislature then condemned the National Government --aye, 44 (including the entire Conservative Opposition); nay, 10.

Another Terrible Infant of the Dominions also acted up. South Africa's former Prime Minister and present Opposition Leader General J. B. M. Hertzog, who plugs for independence from Britain and who is an even bitterer rival of Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts than Mitchell Hepburn is of Mackenzie King, introduced a motion before the Legislature in Cape Town: "Resolved, That this House is of the opinion that the time has come for the state of war against Germany to be ended and for peace to be restored." Voting on the resolution was postponed until this week, but it was considered doomed to certain defeat.

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