Helping Hand

When Canada's official guests, the Winston Churchills, detrained at Quebec, Prime Minister and Official Host William Lyon Mackenzie King greeted them. Next day, just before the Anglo-Canadian conference, Winston Churchill good-naturedly fussed over posing for cameramen. On his right hand he put smiling Mackenzie King. Around that centerpiece he clustered the Canadian Cabinet War Committee. He said: "They want me to shake hands with a Minister," then reached out to grasp the hand of Air Minister C. G. Power.

After a three-hour parley in historic Chateau Frontenac, Prime Ministers Churchill and King drove to the moated, ivy-draped Citadel for lunch. Later they called socially on leaders of the Quebec provincial government. Astute Winston Churchill did not neglect to speak French in the company of French Canadians. Then he parted briefly from his host for sight-seeing at Niagara, where he shopped for scenic postcards and remarked: "I've never seen the water look so green."-

Opposing Hands. The pleasantries and poses, as well as the main Allied business at Quebec, could do much for Canada's morale"and for the prestige of Mackenzie King and his Liberal Party. Mauled in the recent Ontario provincial elections (TIME, Aug. 16), the Liberals last week lost four Dominion parliamentary by-elections. The Prime Minister still holds a safe legislative majority, but that majority may now be out of tune with the country. Two population groups show growing restiveness.

> Labor, especially in Ontario's armament centers, where government wage ceilings are under attack.

> French Canadians, still isolationist although many of their sons are serving overseas. A Gallup Poll last week asked: "Should men conscripted for military service be sent overseas [as volunteers are] or kept in Canada as at present?" British Canadians replied: 56% for sending all draftees; 15% for sending some; 21% against sending any; 8% undecided. French Canadians replied: 15% for sending all; 15% for sending some; 66% against sending any; 4% undecided.

From the Quebec Conferences, many observers believed Canada would emerge with a greater war role. To direct that role effectively, the Liberal Government needed more solid popular support. Perhaps Winston Churchill's figurative pat on Mackenzie King's back would help.

* Asked by a reporter whether he had ever seen the Falls before, Churchill replied: "I was here for the first time in 1900." The reporter asked if the Falls had changed much. Said Churchill: "The main principles remain."

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