A similar adaptation to useful uses applied to the several cars that are used by Cabinet ministers. About the propriety of the Prime Minister traveling in an exclusive car there are surely no two opinions. Some departmental chiefs, too, are in the working class when they are on journeying duty bound. There can be too much of a good thing, of course, and, at times, judging by sundry signs and wonders that have come forth, this possibility has been discerned by the Cabinet as a whole, against the aspirations of a colleague whose ideas of official frugality and personal convenience were not endorsed. Sir Sam Hughes was an old friend of Sir William Mackenzie, dating back to the time when he defeated Mr. Mackenzie for the Conservative nomination for Victoria county, in 1891. When he became Minister of Militia in 1911, and began an extraordinary career of activity and independence, he felt he needed a car in which the work of the department could be done by a chief who intended to be as nearly ubiquitous as was possible to a Cabinet Minister tied to Parliament for several months in each year. Colonel Hughes asked me to get him a private car, that was to be serviceable rather than ornamental. I bought a Pullman--they were then being taken off the road rather freely by the Pullman Company on account of the steel car coming into favour--had it fitted up, and turned over at a cost of about seven thousand dollars. The bill was promptly paid, and the Roleen, named after the minister’s daughter, was very freely used. When the war came the Roleen had little rest. Valcartier Camp was on our line out of Quebec, so that I was a good deal concerned with the early movement of troops, and knew how incessantly on the job Sam Hughes was. Most Friday nights he left Ottawa for Valcartier, and returned Monday mornings. He regarded himself, as everybody knows, as the real lynch pin of Canada’s share in the war. At all costs he would have things done; and often enough they were done at a first cost of traditional Cabinet responsibility. He honoured this as much in the breach as in the observance; and was consequently not exactly beloved of all his colleagues. His creation of honorary colonels was an exercise that gave him immense pleasure. He could not understand why some of the recipients of his favor were not as delighted to receive as he was to bestow. One, who returned to him the imposing commission signed by the Governor-General--which, by the way contained a mistake in spelling, such as probably appears on many of these treasured parchments--was surprised, after Sir Sam’s death, to receive it from the Militia Department.