"Union Nazi-onale?"

To the sleepy village of Ste. Claire (pop. 150) in rugged, sparsely settled Dorchester County went Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis, a pink-cheeked opportunist who was once Premier of Quebec and would like to be again. He was there to address a typical pre-campaign meeting in Quebec, where all important political meetings are held on Sunday. Townspeople, farmers in from the country, all of them fresh from morning Mass, thronged to hear Maurice Duplessis make his bid.

His bid was simple and ugly: he sought to whip up anti-Semitism in strongly Catholic Quebec. To his Ste. Claire hearers, many of whom seldom if ever see a Jew, Duplessis hinted a horrendous plot by the International Zionist Brotherhood to establish 100,000 Jewish refugees from Central Europe on Quebec's rolling fields. Opposition Leader Duplessis dragged in Premier Adelard Godbout's ruling Liberal Party, said that the Zionists had decided "to aid financially all Liberal candidates who would agree openly or secretly to support the plan in the House of Commons."

Zionists, Liberals, a spokesman for the Ottawa Government found various ways to call Duplessis a liar. But his plot still had vote-getting possibilities: 1) it appealed to anti-Semitic prejudice already fostered by Fascist elements in Quebec; 2) it revived an old French-Canadian suspicion that open-door immigration is English Canada's device to offset the expanding French-Canadian population of the province; 3) it implied a threat of new competition in predominantly agricultural Quebec.

In Quebec's last election, the Liberal had a phrase for Duplessis' Union Nationale and his particular blend of corporatism, nationalism and sheer political expediency. They called it "Union Nazionale."

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