Polling the soldier vote: The overseas campaign in the Canadian general election of 1917

65. Toronto G!obe and Mail, November 8, 1971, p. 8. 66. " . . .it has juSt been demonstrated to us by a few misguided persons just how fragile a democratic society can be, if democracy is not prepared to defend itself. .." National television broadcast, October 18, 1970, in Conversations , p. 50; "A democratic society is terrib:y exposed to this kind of intimidation," Speech before the National Conference on the Law, Ottawa, February 1, 1972, in Conversations, p. 70. 67. The best documented case for the more limited 'overreaction ' thesis is Smith's Bleeding Hearts, which appeared within a year of the crisis before all the evidence was in. 68. Technology and Empire (Toronto: Anansi, 1969), p. 38. 69. Conversations, pp. 153-4. 70. Bruce Thordarson, Trudeau and Foreign Policy (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 161. 71. "The Montreal Star of December 24, 1971, reported on a secret cabinet document that 'revealed that an Interdepartmental government committee had considered the possibility of using the War Measures Act ... five months before the October crisis.' " Robert Davis and Mark Zannls, The Genocide Machine in Canada (Montreal: Black Rose Polling the soldier vote: the overseas campaign in the Canadian general election of 1917 DESMOND MORTON Democratic elections can function as a surrogate for civil war only if most participants can treat them essentially as sporting affairs in which all part1c1pants, however dolefully, can live with the outcome. Chronically , this is more difficult for governments than for their opponents. In the Canadian general election of 1917, it seemed almost impossible. For Sir Robert Borden and his colleagues, victory for the anti-conscriptionist Liberals would have meant: "the virtual withdrawal of Canada from the war, the desertion of her soldiers overseas, the abject surrender of her honour, and the utter loss of her pride." 1 The War-time Elections Act and its cousin, the Military Voters' Act were introduced to improve the chances of a Conservative victory in 1917. While even professional Journal of Canadian Studies Books, 1974). Quoted in The Last Post, May 1974, p. 45. (I was unable to obtain a copy of this new book before completing the present manuscript.) 72. Trudeau in a CBC interview, October 13, 1970. Quoted in Smith, Bleeding Hearts, p. 32. 73. Foreign Policy, p. 95. 74. Ibid., p. 96. 75. See Lloyd Axworthy, "The Housing Task Force: A Case Study," in The Structures of Policy-Making in Canada, ed. G. Bruce Doern and Peter Aucoin (Toronto: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 130-54; and Stewart, Shrug, pp. 32-3. 76. Federalism, p. 202. 77. "Surely magic, or at least the willing suspension of disbelief , deserves some credit for his sudden rise to power. How else can one explain that rapture which fell over the Canadian people, including a disproportionate share of the academic community, at the prospect of the new Liberal leader?" Desmond Morton, "Trudeau: Year One," Canadian Forum, XL (December, 1970), p. 29. (It should hardly be necessary to repeat at this point that Trudeau has not held to this mythology consistently. That much at least Is to his credit.) historians may have to pause for an instant to recall which particular villainy is assoC'iated with which particular act, both stand high in the standard indictment of the wartime Borden government. "Jails and penitentiaries are yawning for such miscreants," the Peterborough Review warned the officials who had carried out the Military Voters' Act, "and the blood of martyred heroes - the young men of Canada whom the men in authority wantonly sent to their graves cries out for vengeance. " 2 On the other hand, it is apparent that the accepted version of Canada in the First World War has been as effectively diffracted through Liberal spectacles as the fulfilment of the "National Dream" has been appropriated by their rivals. An interpretation of Canadian history which gives pleasure to so vast a constituency as the Liberal party deserves the status of a national heirloom. The main problem with historical myths is not their validity but their lack of complexity. There was both more and less to the story that the Military Voters' Act had been used to steal an election. The outbreak of war in August, 1914, brought...