It was Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s distinction, as it was Gladstone’s to take this view of Liberalism. It is true that he belonged, as he himself often said, to the school of Gladstone and Bright. But he did not hold that the tenets of that school must necessarily comprehend all truth. He realized that it is the spirit in which political problems are approached that constitutes the great difference between Liberalism and its opposite. Even he approached those problems in a spirit of sympathy with the aim and ideals of the common people. His ears had caught the tramp of the marching feet of the New Democracy, and to his heart the sound brought not fear but lofty hope. Old in years, but young in heart, he had an unquestionable faith in the honesty of this New Democracy and in its ability to solve its own problems in its own way. Not long ago, speaking of the fuller life for the people which might be expected as one of the outcomes of the war, he said that the England of the future would not be so picturesque or so dignified as the old England, but that it would be a far happier England for the masses of the people. It was the welfare of the masses which was ever nearest his own heart. He saw that all over the world the People’s Day was dawning. He saw it and was glad. That Sir Wilfrid Laurier was a great, and will prove to have been a lasting, dynamic force in Canadian public life seems to us unquestionable. On the many years of material prosperity that Canada enjoyed while his hand guided the helm of State; on his great achievement in the realm alike of legislation and of administration it is beside our present purpose to dwell. These things are a part, an imperishable part, of the history of our country. But he did much, infinitely much, to give Canadians a sense of national unity and a sense of the dignity of nationhood. His efforts were often frustrated by the schemes of smaller men, with their appeals to racial prejudice and religious intolerance. But he himself steadily strove to weld the Canadian people into one harmonius whole. He certainly did not live to see the consummation of his work in this regard. But there will come a day when the people for whom he laboured will surely remember it and not with ingratitude. Whoever he may be, the successor to Laurier must take no smaller view than this. Appeals to classes, to interests, and to sections—whether to farmers, to labour, to the manufacturers, or what not—are not the appeals that Liberalism makes. For that appeal is to all good citizens. It is to the civic sense of the whole country. * * * * *