Complacency Popular

At the opening of Canada's Parliament last week, the Tories took a searching look at the government's program for 1951, noted the absence of concrete plans for expanding the nation's armed forces, and straightaway opened fire.

Said Tory Leader George Drew: "There is no sense of that urgency which is in keeping with the nature of the emergency . . . This is a war which has already cost the United States more than 55,000 casualties." Said Tory George Hees, a World War II army officer: "The target in the United States for the end of June this year is to have 3,500,000 men under arms. Our ceiling is 69,000. Therefore, their target is 50 times that of Canada, instead of eleven times, as it should be in proportion to population."

But the Tories themselves did not meet the issue headon. They avoided any call for conscription, the only real way to boost the Canadian forces much higher than 69,000. Though Canada is the only major power of the North Atlantic alliance without a draft law, the Tories recognized that there is little active sentiment for conscription (chief support has come from the Canadian Legion and some newspapers). They also made their timid obeisance to the traditional isolationism of French Catholic Quebec, which bitterly opposes the draft even when the enemy in sight is the enemy of its faith.

Unimpressed by the Tories, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent suavely made his case for a painless policy. He argued that conscription now might drain men off from what he said is Canada's primary defense mission--production of arms and munitions for herself and her allies. Europe, he said, can provide soldiers more efficiently than Canada, but nobody could surpass Canadian industrial efficiency.

St. Laurent was probably keyed to the Canadian mood. A Gallup poll reported last week that 45% of all Canadians had never heard of the cold war.

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