It was Laurier’s desire, too, that Canada should have an opportunity to develop according to the genius of her own people, free from entanglements with old-world feuds and passions. The nations of Europe were the victims of European history and tradition. They lived in an atmosphere of war and strife. So far as it was possible he would have saved Canada from the influence of this old-world spirit. He hesitated about participation in the early days of the South African war. He was thinking of Canada and the Canadian people. When the present war broke out he saw that it was a struggle to the death between civilization and barbarism, and he did not hesitate for a moment as to Canada’s duty. But he was not prepared to go to the length of supporting conscription. To him conscription meant militarism, and he dreaded militarism as he hated it. * * * * * The Canadian nation stood grief-stricken around that august bier. The hero of so many a gallant fight had succumbed to Death, the last great enemy of all—and even that enemy came to him like a friend. “When a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Along the paths of men.” So it will be with Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Intrinsically and essentially he was a great man—great in natural gifts, great in vision, great in heart, great in soul, and “as the greatest only are, in his simplicity sublime.” Great men, it has been well said, are like great mountains. One cannot fully judge of their real grandeur at close range. So it may well be that we shall have to interpose some distance of time between Sir Wilfrid Laurier and ourselves before we can gauge, with anything approximating to adequacy, how much a bigger man he was than any of his contemporaries. To the end he was “the greatest fighter of them all.” Forty odd years of strenuous public life brought no slackening in the vigour of mind or energy, nor any discouragement as to the ultimate triumph of the principle for which he always stood. There is an elixir of perpetual youth in a good cause and in a good fight.