The Yeas Have It

The hour was 10:30 p.m. The date was July 7. "Call in the Members," intoned Speaker James W. Glen. Division bells clanged through the marble-floored corridors of Canada's House of Parliament. Each M.P., conscious of an historic occasion concluding one of the bitterest debates in Canadian history, rose to record himself yea or nay. The Government was sustained, 158-to-54.

Prime Minister Mackenzie King, shrewd, cautious and fearful of the threat of civil war between English-and French-speaking Canadians over the issue of conscription for service overseas, had shoved through another compromise.

In an hourlong, 37-page speech the Prime Minister put on record the Government's demand for the power to enforce overseas conscription--and the Government's pledge not to enforce it unless necessary. The Conservative Opposition, which wants immediate conscription, snorted that the "Government has now looped the loop three times." but sided with Mackenzie King's Liberals. Forty-five Quebec Liberals bolted their Party, voted against the measure. They picked up two Quebec independents, one rebellious Ontario Liberal and six members of the schoolmarmishly socialistic Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.

The bill now gets a cursory third reading, has to be passed by Canada's aged Senators, will then become the law of the land-leaving still unsettled English-speaking Canada's desire that Dominion manpower be immediately available for worldwide service. In 126 conscription speeches in Parliament since June 10, not one M.P. mentioned that 500 Quebec municipalities were reported to have signed a pledge never to accept overseas conscription under any circumstances. Not one quoted the anonymously written paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm which was making the rounds of Canada:

Mackenzie King is my shepherd

I am in want

He maketh me abide by his fallacies

He leadeth me into troubled waters

He polluteth my soul

He leadeth the country into destruction

For his Party's sake.

Yea, though I walk in the valley of oppression

I anticipate no recovery

For he is with me.

His diplomacy and policies they frighten me

He prepareth a reduction in production

In the presence of mine enemies

He anointeth my salary with taxes

My expenses runneth over

Surely a willynilly complex shall follow me

All the days of my life

And I shall live in the shadow of Quebec forever.

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