The inevitable end in the ordinary course of events would have been the going on of the party until it died of dry rot and decay, as the Liberals had already died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the party and for Laurier's subsequent fame--though it may not have seemed so at the time--emergence of the reciprocity question gave it an opportunity to fall on an issue which seemed to link up the end of the regime with its heroic beginnings and to reinvest the party with some of its lost glamor. LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX THE defeat of the Liberals in September, 1911, raised sharply the question of the party's future and the leadership under which it would face that future. Speaking at St. Jerome toward the close of the campaign Sir Wilfrid had stated positively that if defeated he would retire. This declaration of intention--no doubt at the moment sincerely made--was designed to check the falling away from Laurier's leadership in Quebec, which was becoming more noticeable as election day drew near. But the appeal was ineffective.. The effective opposition to Laurier in Quebec came not from Borden or from Monk, the official leader of the French Conservatives, but from Bourassa. Laurier and his lieutenants fought desperately, but in vain, to break the strengthening hold of the younger man on the sympathies of the French electors. In Quebec the custom of the joint open air political meeting is still popular, and at such a concourse in St. Hyacinthe, an old Liberal stronghold, Sir Wilfrid's colleagues, Lemieux and Beland, met a notable defeat at the hands of Bourassa--an incident which clearly revealed how the winds were blowing. Bourassa, fanatically "nationalist" in his convictions and free from any political necessity to consider the reactions elsewhere of his doctrines, was outbidding Sir Wilfrid in the latter's own field. Laurier received the news of the electoral result in a hall in Quebec East, surrounded by the electors of the constituency which had been faithful to him for 40 years. He accepted the blow with the tranquil fortitude which was his most notable personal characteristic; but the feature in the disaster which must have made the greatest demand upon his stoicism was this indication that his old surbordinate and one time friend was--apparently--about to supplant him in the leadership of his own people. The election figures showed that whereas Laurier had carried 49 seats in Quebec in 1896, 58 in 1900, 54 in 1904 and again in 1908, he had been successful in only 38 constituencies against 27 for the Conservatives and Nationalists combined. Laurier, at the moment of his defeat, was within two months of entering upon his 70th year. He had been 40 years in public life; for 24 years leader of his party; for 15 years prime minister. He had had a long and distinguished career; and he had gone out of office upon an issue which, with confidence, he counted upon time to vindicate. He had