The Tip-Off

For the first time since the dying days of World War I, Canada's Parliament met in secret session. For six hours and 20 minutes it discussed the biggest problem in Canadian life: Is Canada still tied to Mother Britain's empire strings, or is Canada a grown-up brother of the U.S.? The immediate issue was whether to use Canada's 130,000 volunteer troops, trained and anxious for action, to guard against a German invasion of Britain or a Japanese invasion of North America.

Defense regulations allowed only a printed statement: that the secret session was "devoted to the question of the defense of Canada in its widest qualification." But all Canada knew what "widest qualification" meant. The threat of a German fleet in the Atlantic, the possibility of Japanese invasion of Alaska and British Columbia demanded second thoughts on basic war strategy. The possible shelling of Atlantic coastal towns would be bad enough, but Canadians, remembering Pearl Harbor, thought also of Dutch Harbor. If the Japanese hoped to protect themselves from the wrath to come, they would have to neutralize Alaska, from which the Aleutian Islands stretch west and south toward Russian air bases, a short bomber hop from Tokyo.

In the prairies, the Winnipeg Free Press roared that "brass hats" who considered an Alaska invasion an impossibility "ought to have their heads examined." In Toronto, Alex Walker, president of the Canadian Legion, which has been leading recent demands for all-out aid to Britain, began to speak of "grave, personal danger [which] confronts every man, woman and child in all our provinces bordering on the two oceans."

Wise, as usual, in catching a change in popular thinking was Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. A tip-off on Parliament's secret action was his announcement that Canadian soldiers, even if conscripted only for "home" service, could be used in the U.S. or Alaska--and no funny business about it.

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