SITTING ON THE FENCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 December 1938, Page 11

SITTING ON THE FENCE

CANADA’S WATCHFUL WAITING MR MACKENZIE KING’S ROLE. POLICY OF EXTREME CAUTION. (By Lloyd Roberts, in the "Christian Science Monitor.") The fence-sitter's role is not a romantic one. Nations as well as individuals who remain calm and detached when great issues are at stake and the whole world is seething about them are not exactly popular. Explanations in self-defence sound futile, even in their own ears, and they begin to wonder how much longer they can hold out against controversial waves that are pounding them from either side. Then is the testing time of principles and policies formulated in tranquillity. Canada has just been subjected to such a test and came through unscathed —at least in its Government’s eyes. Mackenzie King, supported by a large majority of his followers, had often declared in Parliament that Great Britain at war would not mean necessarily Canada at war, that Parliament would be called and even a plebiscite taken before Canada could be committed to armed conflict. The pressure upon Mr King during’the days preceding the Munich four-power conference was terrific. Australia, New Zealand, the princes of India had promised unquestioning support whatever happened; the Canadian Legion had offered tc raise an army of 250.000 men; manynewspapers and leading officials throughout the Dominion were denouncing the Government’s “pusillanimity." But Mr King waited and, with his proverbial good fortune, won out. Now, when Parliament again assembles. he can look his followers, and particularly his French-Canadian followers, in the face and fear no embarrassing questions. Just how much of Mr King's cautious aloofness from British “entanglement” is due to Quebec Province and how much to his own private convictions there is no way of knowing. He is certainly not a pacifist at heart or he would not be so proud of his rebel grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie. And yet throughout his twenty years’ leadership of the Liberal Party his foreign policy has been one of everincreasing freedom from British control and influence in domestic affairs until now there is little to show in the form of legal relationship but the possession of a common King and his representative at Ottawa. Of course the “protective" relationship, as symbolised by the Royal Navy, is still accepted as a matter of course —and without cost. Canada has no “standing army,” only a “permanent and non-permanent active militia,” a naval service and an air force, totalling a few thousand men, and its armaments, strictly of a defensive nature, would scarcely deter a < potential invader. This condition is due partly to Canada’s geographical position and partly to Quebec’s suspicion of anything suggesting possible involvements in “foreign” quarrels.

Before the Federal Government can ask Parliament for increased, expenditures for the department of national defence (as it. did last year) it must make sure of having the support of the sixty or more French members. This is enough to account for Canada’s silence, in contrast with the bold declarations of the other Dominions, in times of world crisis. It does not necessarily reflect the majority view toward /Empire sentiment and Empire responsibility. Indeed “British loyalty” protests vehemently against carrying this laissezfaire policy into international affairs, although again and again the King Government seems to have been vindicated by subsequent events. One recalls Mr King’s negative attitude toward the application of sanctions against Italy and toward collective action in the event of war with that country, declaring in effect,“Canada prefers to wait and see.” Waiting seems to have been carried to the extreme limit in the case of the Czechoslovakian crisis.

Consistently, Mr King carries this waiting into home affairs. He is waiting now for Premier Mitchell Hepburn of Ontario to arrive at a more reasonable frame of mind toward the St. Lawrence Deep Wtfterway project which President Roosevelt and Premjer King are so anxious to launch. Time and tact may accomplish far more than political pressure in clearing the way, the latter thinks. He is also waiting for Premier Maurice Duplessis of Quebec to voluntarily rescind the unpopular and illegal “padlock law,” aimed against the spread of Communism in that province but directly opposed to the democratic principles of free speech and free assembly. Eoth time and justice are on his side.

Even in the case of the new trade agreement with the United States it has been largely a matter of waitingwaiting for the negotiators of the United Kingdom-United States trade treaty to decide what further concession the United States would grant Canada in return for the right to share its favours in the British market. When defeated in the 1930 general elections Mi- King remarked he was content to wait and see what Mr Bennett could do with the business recession, foreseeing his own return to power in 1935 with a greatly enhanced majority. So far Mr King has lost nothing by this policy of waiting.