Not that Laurier ever proposed this choice to his visitors. He had a theory--which not even he with all his lucidity could make intelligible--that a man could support both him and conscription at the same time. There is an attempt at defining this policy in a curious letter to Wm. Martin, then premier of Saskatchewan, which is quoted by Skelton. Sir Wilfrid in these conversations--as in his letters of that period, many of which appear in Skelton's Life--never failed to stress conditions in Quebec as compelling the course which he followed; the alternative was to throw Quebec to the extremists, with a resulting division that might be fatal. There was, too, the mournful and repeated assertion--which abounds also in his letters--that these developments showed that it was a mistake for a member of the minority to be the leader of the party. At the close of the session, when it became increasingly evident that a party split was impending, there were reports that Laurier proposed to make way for a successor upon some basis which might make an accommodation between the two wings of the party possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal M.P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in Professor Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no significance and it came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and necessity retained the leadership. Sir Wilfrid misjudged, all through the piece, the temper and purpose of the Liberals who dissented from his policy. For his own courses and actions there was a political reason; he looked for the political reasons behind the actions of those in disagreement with him. He found what he looked for, not in the actual facts of the situation but in his imagination. He saw conversion to the Round Table view of the Imperial problem and the acceptance of dictation from London--a very wild shot this! He saw political ambition. He saw unworthy desires to forward personal and business ends. But he did not see what was plain to view--that the whole movement was derived from an intense conviction on the part of growing numbers of Liberals that united national action was necessary if Canada was to make the maximum contribution to the war. There was very little feeling against Sir Wilfrid--rather a sympathetic understanding of the position in which he found himself; but they were wholly out of agreement with his view that Canada was in the war on a limited liability basis. In the very height of the controversy Sir Wilfrid could not be got to go beyond saying that Canada should make enquiries as to how many men she could afford to spare from her industries and these she should send if they could be induced voluntarily to enlist. This was wholly unsatisfactory to those who held that Canada was a principal in the war, and must shrink from no sacrifices to make victory possible. Still less satisfactory was the professed attitude of the Liberal candidates in Quebec; with few