For these conditions there were reasons in our history. Our parties once expressed deep divergencies of view upon issues of vital import; and each had experienced an individual leadership that had called forth and had stereotyped feelings of unbounded personal devotion. The chiefships of Laurier and Macdonald overlapped by only four years, but they were of the same political generation and they adhered to the same tradition. The resemblances in their careers, often commented upon, arose from a common attitude towards the business of political management. They conceived their parties as states within the state. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they conceived them as co-ordinate with the state. Of these principalities they were the chieftains, chosen in the first place by election--as kings often were in the old times; but thereafter holding their positions by virtue of personal right and having the power in the last analysis by their own acts to determine party policy and to enforce discipline. Their personalities made these assumptions of power appear not only inevitable, but proper. Personal charm, human qualities of sympathy and understanding; an inflexible will which, except in crises, worked by indirection; the prestige of office and the glamor of victory; and the accretions of power which came from the passage of time--half their followers towards the end of their careers could not remember when other suns shone in the firmament; all these influences helped to transform party feeling into that blind worship which drew from Viscount Bryce his mordant comment. This venerable but archaic political system did not survive the war. Beside the loyalties inspired by the war tribal devotion to a party chief seemed a trivial concern. Canadians, who gave first place to the need of getting on with the war, viewed with consternation the readiness of elements in both parties to put their political interests above the safety and honor of the commonwealth. The movement for national political unity was born of their concern and indignation. This development was almost as displeasing to the Conservative partisans as to the Liberal "legitimists," who upheld the right, under all circumstances, of Laurier to regain the premiership; and it was their inveterate and unthinking opposition that had much to do with the ultimate disruption of the union. They did not realize, until they got into the elections of 1921, that their party had disintegrated under the stresses of war.