OCCASIONAL BIOGRAPHIES : XI. MR. MACKENZIE KING
ANYONE who dined with the Prime Minister of Canada at his residence in Ottawa at any time between :1921 and 1930, and remembered that his full name was William Lyon Mackenzie King, would have made contact at once with the three directive forces of his life. The roomy, delightful but unpretentious house among the trees is Laurier House. It was presented to the Liberal leader who succeeded Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1919 as a gift from his party, and there that leader, sometimes in opposition, sometimes in office, now on the threshold of office again, has lived ever since. The shadow of Laurier, Liberal, federationist, patriot, is per- petually over him. Upstairs in his study hangs the Portrait of his mother by Forster. Mr., Mackenzie Kings devotion to the memory of his Mother, who died in 1917, is profound. His opponents suggest occasionally that he is exploiting sentiment, but the deep sincerity of the senti- Inent is beyond cavil.. The Liberal leader is a bachelor, and since he is over sixty he will probably remain one. The predominant feminine influence in his life has been his mother's. That mother's father was William Lyon Mackenzie, the " rebel " of Upper Canada, who with the other rebel, Papineau, in Lower Canada evoked the despatch of Lord Durham in 1838, the Durham report in 1839 and the union of the two Canadas in 1840. The rebel blood has come down filtered through two genera- tions, but Mr. King is proud to trace his Liberalism to its source in the revolt of the grandfather whose name he bears—as he showed when, as Opposition leader, he took his part in the William Lyon Mackenzie centenary celebrations last year. .
There are varying elements of chance in most men's lives, and more than once an almost chance decision kept 'Mr. Mackenzie King's feet in the path that has led him today to the verge of his third premiership. He took his degree at the University of Toronto, carried on post- graduate study at the University of Chicago, where he lived at Jane Addams' Hull House to study social conditions, just as he lived for a time at the Passmore Edwards (now the Mary Ward) Settlement in London when he came to study conditions in Europe a few Years later. Then, while in Rome, he was offered a lectureship in Political Economy at Harvard. He hesitated. He went and walked on the Pincian Hill and thought it out. Then he took instead ,a post in the new Department of Labour, of which he subsequently became Deputy Minister. It was thus through the civil service that he passed into politics. That was not quite Chance perhaps, but a vital decision which something. like chance determined. Twenty years later Sir Donald Maclean (who told me the story) was leading the attenuated Liberal Party in the House of Commons when the name of a man called Mackenzie King was sent in to him. He proved to be a Canadian politician who Ivanted Sir Donald's advice as to whether he should give up politics and come to practise at the English tar. Maclean persuaded him (for good reasons) to stick to politics, and claimed that as consequence he had been the making, of one Prime Minister at least.. Not quite • .liance, again, but something like it. Mr. Mackenzie King's days in the Departmcnt of Labour are worth remembering, for they are a part of his equip- ment as Prime Minister which tends to be forgotten. He put notable feats to his credit as a conciliator, and his sympathy with the workers (though his handling of some of them during the War brought him under sharp criticism) was always keen. A phrase in one of his Carly reports—" in any civilised community private rights should cease when they become public wrongs "— sets firm limits to the laisser faire element in his Liberalism, and there are passages in the report of a Royal Commission of which he was chairman (in .1907) on telephone-operators' conditions of work which show remarkable understanding of the cumulative effect of continuous petty strains on the nervous system. Since 1919 Mr. Mackenzie King has been Prime Minister for nine years and Opposition leader for seven. His position in his party has never been challenged, and his unprecedented victory this week gives him a position such as no Canadian 'politician has ever held. He has won it by hard work, -ability and very considerable gifts as an orator and greater still as a party strategist. He has an almost sentimental attachment to peace,. but in a crisis.. like the present may be counted on to show that his faith in the League of Nations is much more than sentimental. An optimist by nature, he is a firm believer in the political value of public confidence, but his method is to inspire confidence, not, like Mr. Bennett, to demand it. During the London Economic Conference a story went the rounds that when Mr. Bennett passed through Trafalgar Square on his way to Canada House Nelson's lions stood up and roared. If Mr. Mackenzie King passed that way they would be more likely to purr—if lions do. With all his urbanity, the Liberal leader is a vigorous and assertive debater, and displays a knowledge and skill unusual in a Dominion statesman in playing the game of politics as played at Westminster. His strategy was effectively demon- strated this year when Mr. Bennett, in an eleventh-hour attempt to capture his lost prestige, announced a New Deal programme for Canada. He might successfully have " stolen the Whigs' clothes," but Mr. King imme- diately offered full assistance in putting the new proposals into force without delay, to the unexpected embarrass- ment of his Conservative rival, who never meant the programme to get beyond paper before the election. Mr. Mackenzie King is essentially a low-tariff man—as tariffs go in Canada. The Liberals were ardent believers in reciprocity with the United States in 1911 and their party came to grief on it, for the elements that would have suffered (the farmers, of course, would have gained heavily) through an influx of American manufactures brought about their downfall. Mr. King himself has been under suspicion in some quarters as pro- American, He is in fact no more pro-American than pro-British. He believed in reciprocity with the United States in 1911 and it is in the forefront of his programme still. The primary producers of Canada bulk large with him. He means them to get cheap manufactured goods, preferably British. But he stands not for Mr. Bennett's Ottawa policy of benefiting British goods by raising Canada's tariffs against foreigners still higher, but for lowering tariffs all round and giving British goods the same proportionate advantage. When he was in London last year someone asked him what Canadian manufac- turers would say to his policy. His answer in effect was that there it stood, and they would have to swallow it. The election results indicate that the prospect of the meal has cost them few pangs.
Mr. Mackenzie King's third accession to office will affect not Canada only but the whole Empire. He is a Liberal through and through, and his Liberalism will prove • either infectious or dominating at coming Imperial Conferences. It is a notable and auspicious coincidence that on the day when a British Foreign Secretary and an American Secretary of State were both insisting on the necessity of lowering tariff barriers, the world should have learned that a low-tariff • party in Canada had won a victory unprecedented in the country's history
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