Jean Baptiste Says No

Quebec Province slapped the face of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King last week and the other eight provinces appeared ready to boot him in the rear. He had called for a national plebiscite on conscription --not because it was necessary, but to ease himself out of a political promise to French Canadians that he would never send their sons overseas. What he had achieved was to split the two great racial elements in Canada, to have the French Canadians vote to hold him to his promise, and to create for himself a dangerous political crisis. It was a kind of poetic justice for a safe-playing politician who had outsmarted himself. "Willie" King went to wrestle with himself alone in the study of his weekend summer home in the Gatineau hills.

One Against Eight. To Jean Baptiste, the typical habitant, conditioned by 300 years close to church and soil, the very hint of the word conscription was enough to make him vote No. Louis Hemon's novel of the lovely Maria Chapdelaine mirrored his basic philosophy: "In this land of Quebec nothing has changed. . . . One duty have we clearly understood: that we should hold fast --should endure." To "hold fast" means, in part, to remain powerfully isolated within Canada.

Two Quebec members of the Government--Air Minister Charles Gavan Power and Justice Minister Louis St. Laurent--stoutly supported the Government's plea for a Yes vote. Quebec's Editor Jean Charles Harvey wrote that a No vote meant "to kneel before the forces of aggression, which advance whip in hand." But in the land where nothing has changed, electoral districts repudiated these appeals with ratios as high as 50-to-1. Quebec voted 952,318 against conscription, 373,599 for.

By delay, by compromise, by cautious moves backward & forward, canny Mackenzie King has got his way on many issues. On the question of conscription he had vacillated too long. Once he had been something of an isolationist, and he had won Quebecois support by promising that conscription would never again be enforced.

Eight Against One. To the rest of Canada, from the wood, wind and water of Nova Scotia west through industrial Ontario, the great wheat belt and on to the tall forests of British Columbia, the word conscription was a symbol of all-out effort. Although Canada has as many volunteers for overseas service as it can handle, conscription meant that the burden of sacrifice was to be fairly distributed.

From his people at large, Mackenzie King's plebiscite got a democratically determined mandate, understood, if not legally worded, to change Section 3 of the National Resources Mobilization Act to allow conscription for overseas service, even if it were not to be enforced immediately. Opposing the Quebec No vote, the other eight provinces voted "Yes" 2,267,927, "No" 547,921.

So serious was the problem before Mackenzie King that on Monday of this week he did not face the House of Commons. Unless he resigned or pulled out a master compromise formula, Ottawa expected that at least 40 French-Canadian Liberal M.P.s would walk out on him.

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