by Conrad Black
Canada sent a third division to France in 1915, and in January 1916 announced the imminent departure of a fourth. These were not large numbers by German or French standards, but Canada was not a large or close country, and these were volunteers who had acquired and would retain a reputation as first class soldiers, and in this increasingly desperate struggle every increment of military strength helped.
On February 3, 1916, the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa very inconveniently burned down, killing two visitors (who had dined with Sir Wilfrid and Lady Laurier the night before) and three staff members. The prime minister and most of the ministers and MPs had to flee for their lives. Apparently, the fire was started by a lighted cigar butt igniting waste paper in a basket, which spread to curtains and to the often-varnished panelled walls, which took like tinder. Parliament sat for a time in the Victoria Memorial Museum (now the Canadian Museum of Nature).
Canadian Involvement in the First World War
The greatest naval battle in the history of the world, up to that time, occurred on May 31 and June 1, 1916, at Jutland, off the coasts of Norway and Denmark, when the German High Seas Fleet, seeking to draw out and destroy a large part of the British Home Fleet, and thus to eliminate the British numerical advantage, found itself facing the main units of the British Grand Fleet. The German navy, commanded by Grand Admiral Reinhard Scheer, consisting of sixteen battleships, five battle cruisers, six pre-dreadnoughts, eleven cruisers, and sixty-one torpedo boats, encountered the main battle fleet of the Royal Navy, commanded by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, consisting of twenty-eight battleships, nine battle cruisers, eight armoured cruisers, twenty-six cruisers, and seventy-eight destroyers. The weaknesses of the battle cruiser design where the enemy’s gunfire was accurate, as it was with both navies, was demonstrated with the loss of three of these ships by the British and one by the Germans. (The British battle cruiser commander, Admiral Sir David Beatty, famously said as he watched one of the battle cruisers blow up, “Something is wrong with our bloody ships today.”) The British also lost three armoured cruisers and eight destroyers, and the Germans one pre-dreadnought battleship, four cruisers, and five torpedo boats. The British suffered 113,000 tons sunk, 6,094 men killed, and 851 men wounded or captured, to 62,300 tons sunk for the Germans, 2,551 men killed, and 507 wounded. Germany had apparently won on the day, but they retired and escaped from the British through minefields and their navy did not put to sea again. The British blockade continued. This was the exposé of the strategic idiocy of the German emperor. It was the construction of the German navy that had driven Britain out of isolation and a friendly disposition to Germany and into the arms of the French and Russians. Two indecisive days, a few hours in fact, of exchanging fire with the British navy was the upshot of this vast naval competition and the hair-trigger alliance that led to this terrible hecatomb of a war. Rarely has human folly been so vividly and tragically depicted as in the history of the kaiser’s naval enthusiasm and its consequences.
The controversy over Sir Sam Hughes’s handling of defence contracts, and his erratic nature generally, agitated him to wild outbursts, including an unacceptably impudent letter to Borden, who fired him on November 9, 1916, to the relief of almost every affected party on both sides of the Atlantic and all political parties. Borden, accompanied by one of his Alberta MPs, Richard B. Bennett, set out on a tour to encourage recruiting, starting in Quebec. Calls for conscription, nearly two and a half years into the war, were starting to be heard, and the implications of such a step were bound to be extremely serious. In his memoirs, Borden kindly opines, “The Canadian of French descent is essentially a most desirable and useful citizen. He is devout, industrious, hard-working and frugal,” and so forth. The lack of any great desire to help the metropolitan French was partly ascribed to Borden’s belief that “the Quebec peasant was sometimes told that the sufferings of the French people were just retribution for the unholy spoliation and humiliation of the [Roman Catholic] Church in France.”75 It is a wonder that a government leader who wrote even after the fact of one-third of his countrymen as if they resided on the far side of the moon was so successful labouring under such unselfconscious delusions. Borden was playing with political high explosives.
In November, Woodrow Wilson, on the slogan “He kept us out of war,” was narrowly re-elected president of the United States over the Republican nominee, former New York governor, and Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes. In December 1916, the British cabinet concluded that the direction of the war was inadequately efficient and Asquith was pushed out as leader of the Liberal-Conservative coalition. David Lloyd George took his place with the support of the Conservative and Labour parties, but with most Liberals leaving government with Asquith. A war cabinet was set up composed of Lloyd George, Lord Curzon as leader of the House of Lords, Arthur Henderson as head of the Labour Party, Lord Milner as a troubleshooter, and Bonar Law as chancellor of the exchequer. The Conservative colonial secretary, Walter Long, wrote Borden, assuring him that he should not be disconcerted at his own absence from the war cabinet, as it implied no non-recognition of the vital role of the dominions, and so on. An emergency Imperial War Conference was called by the new prime minister in London for late February 1917.
On February 1, Wilhelm II made the most catastrophic strategic error of anyone in the world between the invasion of Russia in 1812 and the Japanese attack on the United States in 1941 when he announced unrestricted submarine warfare. German submarines would attack and sink neutral shipping on the high seas. In practice, this meant the merchant flag vessels of the United States and was tantamount to a declaration of war on that country. At last, the finely calibrated balance of the Triple Entente and the Central Powers was about to be disrupted in the Western Allies’ favour by the suicidal misjudgment of the German emperor. His blunder is even more noteworthy because it preceded by only six weeks the collapse of the czarist government and the end of the three hundred years of the Romanov dynasty. A moderate and reforming provisional government headed by Alexander Kerensky was set up in Russia, with the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in sinister opposition, and the country continued unsteadily in the war, but its continued participation was doubtful. There was initial rejoicing in the West that the often heavy-handed autocracy of the czars had been replaced by a democratic system, but the intolerable strain and bloodshed of the terrible world conflict was clearly winding up to a climax. If Germany had not provoked the United States it could certainly have got a favourable peace. Even without having to combat the Russians, who could not and did not continue in the war much longer, Germany might not have been able to win decisively in the West. The French, British, and Germans were all exhausted, though France had borne the greatest burden of all, both as a percentage of casualties among its population and in the extent of its territory that had been pulverized by the violence of war.
By late February 1917, Lloyd George had wrought a revolution in Empire relations. Britain was primus inter pares at the meetings, but the dominions were of equal stature, as Laurier had proposed in 1897, and India was represented by the Maharajah of Bikaner. Borden was very impressed with Lloyd George and even more by the South African representative, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, who fifteen years before had been on the other side and led the Boer militia. Borden’s friend Billy Hughes, of Australia, was present, and Borden, with Smuts, Hughes, and the New Zealand and Newfoundland premiers, and the Indian representative and the secretary of state for India, Austen Chamberlain, son of the late Imperial firebrand, agreed a resolution, which Lloyd George and his government approved, confirming the autonomous status of the dominions.* On Borden’s motion and Smuts’s second, their rather prolix resolution was unanimously adopted at the first meeting of the Imperial War Cabinet, on March 2.
The deterioration in German-American relations proceeded apace while Lloyd George was holding his meetings, and the imminence of American entry into the war greatly cheered the group. To add to the Germans’ misjudgments, the for
eign minister, Alfred Zimmerman, had sent a telegram to the German minister in Mexico suggesting that he propose to the Mexican government that if Germany and the United States went to war against each other, Germany would assist Mexico in regaining the territory lost to the Americans in the Mexican-American War. Wilson had intervened ineffectually in Mexico after faction heads in the Mexican Civil War, especially Pancho Villa, had raided across the border into New Mexico. The British intercepted Zimmerman’s message and happily gave it to the United States, and Wilson made it public.† President Wilson delivered his war message on April 2 at the Capitol, and it remains one of the great state papers of U.S. history. He galvanized the nation and electrified the whole world by his vision, eloquence, and erudition: “The world must be made safe for democracy … the right is more precious than peace.… To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.” Life and meaning and purpose were imparted, at this very late date, to the unspeakable carnage in which tens of thousands died every few days, on all sides, for years, to move an army commander’s headquarters a few thousand metres closer to the opposing army’s capital.
In other respects, 1917 would be a difficult year for the Allies, even compared to those that had preceded it. The Germans sank 881,000 tons of Allied shipping in March. The French offensive in Champagne in April, the British and Canadian offensive in Flanders from June to November, and the Russian offensive of July had all failed, and the Austro-Hungarians, reinforced by the Germans, almost knocked the Italians out of the war at Caporetto, north of Venice, in the late autumn, where the Italians lost 650,000 men in two weeks. The British and French had to send reinforcements to the Italians, cutting short the Passchendaele campaign, which between August and November occupied about fifty divisions on each side and claimed at least 250,000 casualties on each side, including nearly 17,000 Canadians. The Canadians, in another much admired battlefield performance, ultimately captured the western part of the town of Passchendaele itself. But by late 1917, American soldiers, raw but healthy and high-spirited, were arriving in France at the rate of 200,000 a month. Germany would have to defeat the French in their anticipated offensive of the spring of 1918 or they would be overwhelmed by the end of the year. Wilson raised the U.S. Army from 200,000 to over four million men in eighteen months, and built the navy up to over 500,000 men.
From April 9 to 12, 1917, all four Canadian divisions, with the British on their left and the French on their right, attacked the main German position overlooking the Douai plain, next to Vimy Ridge. General Sir Julian Byng knew how to prepare for the offensive; a large model of Vimy Ridge had been built and the Canadian soldiers made familiar with its topography. Captured German artillery was used to train Canadians how to operate captured German field pieces, as it would be impossible to drag up Canadian artillery. A chemistry professor from McGill University, Colonel Andrew McNaughton, developed a system of counter-fire based on location of German guns from their flash and sound. The Canadian divisions moved in unison right behind a sweep of artillery fire that had continued for several days and cleared the ridge after four days of intensive combat. It was a great Canadian victory that brought warm congratulations from senior officials of all the Western Allies. At this point, Canada had graduated to a new level of successful nationhood scarcely recognizable from the condescensions of James G. Blaine twenty-six years before, or even the threat of force on the Alaska boundary fourteen years before. Canada was deputy leader of the Empire, Great Britain’s premier ally and respected associate in the Great War of the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. There could be no further question of the legitimacy or permanence of the country opposite the great world; its struggles now would be within itself. The Imperial War Cabinet and Imperial Conference wound up on May 2, and when Borden returned to Canada on May 14, he wrote in his diary, on seeing again the vast St. Lawrence, “Northern lights … were most beautiful. The majestic river seemed to typify my country’s future, strong, deep, wide, and mighty.”76 Perhaps, but not at once or without further incident.
10. Unlimited Emergency, 1917–1918
Borden returned convinced that conscription was necessary and announced this to Parliament. The core of his position was in the excerpt from his statement to the House of Commons: “All citizens are liable to military service for the defence of their country, and I conceive that the battle for Canadian liberty and autonomy is being fought today on the plains of France and Belgium.… If this war should end in defeat, Canada, in all the years to come, would be under the shadow of German military domination.” This, objectively, was not true. There was certainly an argument to be made for conscription, but the very virtue and unique heroism of the dominion efforts in the Great War were that volunteers went overseas for a cause that was one of principle and affiliation and was not based on any threat to their own countries. Whatever happened in Europe, German domination of Canada was not in the offing. In times easily and not so distantly recalled, the domination of Canada by the United States was quite conceivable, but no one was fighting against that in Europe, such threat as there had ever been of that had passed, and no matter how gallant the Canadian forces, and they were very brave and very professional, they could not have stopped a serious American military assault at any time since the end of the American Civil War (and still could not). A large number of Canadians, including the great majority of French Canadians, had never seen Canadian participation in the war as a defence of Canada itself, though certainly of values Canada shared and favoured.
The Military Service Bill, which aimed to raise between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand more members of the armed forces, was introduced on June 11, 1917. Borden pre-emptively denied in the most vehement terms that it was prompted by the British, or that the matter had ever been discussed with the British government. (“No more absolute falsehood was ever uttered by human lips. If there had been any suggestion from them, I … would not have tolerated it.”77) He told Parliament, “It has been said of this Bill that it will induce disunion, discord, and strife and that it will paralyze the national effort.… Why should strife be induced by the application of a principle which was adopted at the very inception of Confederation? … I am not so much concerned for the day when this Bill becomes law, as for the day when these men [overseas] return if it is rejected.” The debate continued from June 18 to July 6. Laurier disputed that the Militia Act authorized conscription for any reason except the defence of Canada itself (which was almost undoubtedly accurate). “Naturally [Laurier] used, with his accustomed adroitness and eloquence, the statements made by me in the earlier parts of the war that the government had no intention of enforcing compulsory military service,” Borden later wrote.78 The second reading of the bill was voted on at 5 a.m. on July 6. Borden gained slightly more English-speaking Liberals than Laurier gained Quebec Conservatives, but the division in the country was stark.
Laurier’s position was that the government could impose conscription but only after a referendum on the issue, or a general election, and that imposing it without either was morally and legally ultra vires to Parliament. Borden had offered, and continued to offer, coalition government with equal numbers of ministers from both parties, apart from the post of prime minister. Laurier declined to join a coalition for the purpose of facilitating conscription, said that this was not what he had subscribed to when he approved extending the life of the existing Parliament, and made it clear he would not extend it again. He also made it clear in private conversations with Borden (and these were eminently courteous throughout, both leaders being gentlemen in all matters) that he expected the Conservatives would win an election on the issue of conscription; they would carry English Canada but lose Quebec and the French district
s in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba, but Laurier would keep Bourassa at bay. Laurier thought conscription a mistake on all counts, but if it was going to come, Borden would have to put it across for his own political account and the party of opposition would at least be an unambiguously federalist party and not Bourassa and his crypto-separatist seducers.
In Borden’s respectful words,
Sir Wilfrid Laurier arose, indomitable as ever, with his back against the wall: “I find myself … estranged from friends who were just as near and dear to me as my own brothers.… Every one of my honourable friends knows that I have not tried to impose my views upon any of my followers.… I have my conscience and they have theirs; but the situation shows that we are face to face with a cleavage which, unless it is checked, may rend and tear Canada down to its root.” He said that he had been invited to join a coalition with no statement that conscription was intended, and accused the government of deceiving the House. “They did not consult me [on conscription] then they were kind enough to ask me to carry on what they had [secretly] devised. As in the play of children, they asked me: ‘Close your eyes and open your mouth and swallow.’ I refused.… I oppose this Bill because … it is an obstacle and a bar to that union of heart and soul without which it is impossible to hope that this Confederation will attain the aims and ends that were had in view when Confederation was effected. All my life I have fought coercion; all my life I have promoted union; and the inspiration that led me to that course shall be my guide at all times, so long as there is a breath left in me.”79
