Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 11–15. Gary EvansЧитать онлайн книгу.
wet, they hated politicians. King’s speech rambled on. “Speak up, speak up,” some men called. Others continued booing while still others clapped approvingly. Tory tactics, King thought of the booers and ignored them.
What did they want to hear from a politician, any politician? King sensed that they were tired of waiting around Britain. They’d rather be fighting on the Continent. Inspired, the prime minister shouted into the microphone “I gather from the applause that many of you are impatient and would rather be engaged in more active operations than you are today.”
The men cheered.
The press, however, made a front-page story of the “booing incident.”
Three days after this incident, when Lieutenant-General A.G.L. McNaughton, commander of the Canadian Corps, asked him without warning to address the troops, King was in agony. He sensed what felt like a dart pierce through his bowels, and he felt quite sick and faint.
What could he tell these fine, vigorous, homesick young men? “Offering their lives,” he would tell his diary, “is infinitely greater than anything I myself am called upon to do, except to suffer perpetually from a Tory mob.”
Overall, King felt that, as the spirits of Lord Grey, Gladstone, Theodore Roosevelt, and the family had predicted, the trip was a success. It had begun with the wonderful flight over the ocean on a Liberator bomber. When he was a boy Willie had daydreamed while looking at the sky through the branches of the trees at Woodside. At nearly seventy years of age it was a tremendous feeling for him to be near those clouds, knowing his dreams of being prime minister were fulfilled. As night fell, he lay on a comfortable cot covered with the Mackenzie tartan and awaited sleep. He was flying – quite a feat!
When King arrived in Britain, Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, had updated him on war happenings. He spoke about his recent communications with Roosevelt off the shores of the British colony of Newfoundland. Then Churchill had assured his colleague that, although he was glad to have Canadian troops guarding the shores of Britain, overseas conscription hardly seemed necessary. Canada was doing her part as a British dominion.
King knew that in Canada, a mood of conflict threatened to split the nation open. The issue – not one he addressed in his speeches to the Canadian soldiers – was conscription.
The Farm, Kingsmere, Quebec
April 17, 1942
King found solace in one regular ritual. At least once a month during the war he consulted the spirits with Joan. They told him what his dreams meant. They let him know how the war would go. They confirmed he was on the right path with his policies and let him know that they would help.
Father: Good evening. Love to all.
As usual Father was the first to greet them. The rest of the King family, Sir Wilfrid, Gladstone, and others were also regular speakers. And there were new guardians in Heaven.
Pat is leaping wildly with delight, Mother told him, whenever he hears your name.
Other voices, recently added, had been familiar ones to King as political colleagues before they had been called to the Other Side. Norman Rogers, the minister of defence, had been killed in a plane crash while en route to a speaking engagement in Toronto on June 10, 1940. King had been breaking the news to Mrs. Rogers when the announcement was made that Italy had joined Germany in the war.
The increasing worry and burden of war had directly contributed to the deaths of some of King’s nearest advisers. His chief adviser of foreign affairs, the head of the Department of External Affairs, O.D. Skelton, had died at the wheel of his car, as he suffered a fatal heart attack from a condition worsened by the large amount of work he carried out with the civil service. And the stress of all these announcements had finally made Lapointe succumb to heart problems. On November 29, 1941, a parade of mourners with their heads bowed shuffled silently down the snowy streets of Quebec City. They followed the horse-drawn hearse that carried the body of the big bear of a man who had been King’s staunchest supporter in French Canada.
King felt these losses deeply.
What most Canadians did not know was that his personal research gave him hope. It not only confirmed the Christian precept that there is life after death – it proved to him that the human personality survived after death.
After Father opened the seance, Sir Wilfrid came to speak: I have been doing all I can to get an appreciative vote in Quebec. The clergy are helping in the campaign today.
King had been forced to take action on the conscription issue. The new minister of defence, James Layton Ralston, had spent considerable time since his appointment on June 5, 1940 campaigning for this end. In fact, he had threatened to resign over what he felt was an unreasonable delay in conscripting for overseas service. King had merely held onto his resignation and as a compromise, arranged for a plebiscite, which was to occur the next day, April 27, 1942. The nation was to vote on whether or not it would release the government from its promise of no conscription. The vote would not mean the automatic adoption of the measure.
King worried what the results would be.
Lapointe informed King, Quebec will be true to you. They will give you a majority in the vote.
King: “I don’t believe that.”
Lapointe: You will see that I am right
Rogers: The vote tomorrow will be 80% over the entire nation.
King: “I don’t believe that.”
The ghosts promised he would be stronger than ever. King thought the government might win the vote, but not in Quebec.
How could he go on, he wondered, if only Quebec voted against the plebiscite and Parliament eventually found it necessary to enact such legislation?
Before the spirits said goodnight, they bade him remember that God loved him and had a special mission for him. King knew he must go on.
The next day, although French Canada remained solidly against conscription, the overall results of the plebiscite were in favour of releasing the government from its anti-conscription promise. That night King had another dream. Two stones – like pillars – were in his hands, and he was trying to hold them together. It was up to him to join the French and the English parts in one solid country, and what he was doing seemed to be working.
1. “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” words by Frances Jane (Fanny) Crosby, 1868.
8
The Price of Peace
The Connaught Building, Ottawa
October 19, 1944
“How are you Chubby?” James Layton Ralston, the minister of defence, inquired in a low, growly voice as the maître d’ showed the minister of air defence, Charles Gavan Power, to his seat.
“Better than you, it seems!” Power replied, his blue eyes twinkling. “You sound terrible.”
“I’ve got a bad cold,” Ralston sniffled, taking out his handkerchief and applying it to his hawkish nose. Even his dark eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses seemed to be running.
Power clucked sympathetically. “Catch that overseas?”
Ralston shrugged.
Chubby ordered a drink. Ralston noted the choice. Powers notorious reputation for alcoholic consumption was strongly disapproved of by the prime minister.
“How was Europe?” Power asked in an upbeat tone. He knew the answer would be less jolly.