For months negotiations continued within Parliament and without. The Military Service Act was passed in August, 1917, with the support of the majority of the English-speaking members of the Opposition. Then the Government, which had already secured the passage of an Act providing for taking the votes of the soldiers overseas, forced through under closure a measure depriving of the franchise all aliens of enemy birth or speech who had been admitted to citizenship since 1902, and giving a vote to every adult woman relative of a soldier on active service. Victory for the Government now appeared certain. Leading English-peaking Liberals, particularly from the West, convinced that conscription was necessary to keep Canada's forces up to the need, or that the War Times Election Act made opposition hopeless, decided to accept Sir Robert Borden's offer of seats in a coalition Cabinet. In the election of December, 1917, in which passion and prejudice were stirred as never before in the history of Canada, the Unionist forces won by a sweeping majority. Ontario and the West were almost solidly behind the Government in the number of members elected, Quebec as solidly against it, and the Maritime Provinces nearly evenly divided. The soldiers' vote, contrary to Australian experience, was overwhelmingly for conscription. The Laurier Liberals polled more civilian votes in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia, and in the Dominion as a whole, than the united Liberal party had received in the Reciprocity election of 1911. The increase in the Unionist popular vote was still greater, however, and gave the Government fifty-eight per cent of the popular vote and sixty-five per cent of the seats in the House. Confidence in the administrative capacity of the new Government, the belief that it would be more vigorous in carrying on the war, the desire to make Quebec do its share, the influence of the leaders of the Western Liberals and of the Grain Growers' Associations, wholesale promises of exemption to farmers, and the working of the new franchise law all had their part in the result. Eight months after the Military Service Act was passed, it had added only twenty thousand men to the nearly five hundred thousand volunteers; but steps were then taken to cancel exemptions and to simplify the machinery of administration. Some eighty thousand men were raised under conscription, but the war, so far as Canada was concerned, was fought and won by volunteers.