by John Buchan
. . . .
“Went to church alone last week. It was communion Sunday. Old Watson (a farmer), who was taking the collection at the door, earnestly pressed me to stay with the congregation: ‘They’re a’ wrang, thae sections in the Kirk: we’re a’ gaun to one place.’ I said I hoped we were, but I did not stay, much as I felt inclined to do so; I hadn’t strength of mind enough, I suppose, to break through the old custom, for I never recollect any of my people doing so. I remained for the service, however, until just before the giving of the sacrament. There is much that is to me more solemn and impressive about the Scots ceremony in a village church than about the ordinary English celebration. Old Watson and Ainslie (who used to be the smith) are the elders, and to see these handsome old men standing at the Communion Table waiting for the commencement of the ceremony had a reality and sternness about it that made me think of the old Covenanters, and brought home to me the honest true religion which plays such a deep part in Scots character.”
. . . .
“The other day the Duke of Argyll, speaking in the House of Lords on religious teaching in the schools, said, ‘There is a God, there has been a Christ, and there will be a future state.’ In this age of scepticism it is refreshing to hear words of simple faith and strong belief from a learned and brilliant man, when philosophers are inclined to believe in nothing, and the pigmies of the world follow suit for the want of a logical proof to which they consider their Lilliputian brains entitled.”
IV
Minto thought 1897 “a very happy year”; it was to be the last year of his peaceful life as a private gentleman. In March 1898, while he was busy working at Army Estimates, came the news of Mahmud’s advance to the Atbara, the prelude to Kitchener’s triumphant campaign, and once more Minto’s thoughts began to turn towards what he had once called “the way of ambition.” The Governor-Generalship of Canada would be vacant that autumn; Wolseley had always urged that he was well suited for the office, and he now told Wolseley privately how greatly the post appealed to him. Nothing, however, happened for several months. He had no claim on the politicians, for, while he liked and admired Mr. Chamberlain, he had not hesitated to criticize him, and he had never held even the humblest office in the political hierarchy. His work had been military, and his friends, who trusted and admired him, were soldiers. However, forces were at work on his behalf, and in his journal he writes: “My Canadian negotiations are still proceeding. I have done nothing directly myself; friends, however, have done a great deal: Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Chamberlain, Arthur Balfour, have all been approached, and whether I go or not it is pleasant to think one has so many warm supporters.”
The likelihood of his appointment was talked of that summer, though Lord Lansdowne warned him privately that there were strong candidates against him. India was also vacant, and his soldier friends had visions of sending Minto there, so the time passed in a maze of rumours and hopes. Then on the 21st July he received a letter from Mr. Chamberlain informing him that he proposed to submit his name to the Queen as the successor to Lord Aberdeen in Canada, and five days later the papers announced the appointment.
In such fashion did one who had small political purchase, who had never canvassed or schemed for preferment and who had been content to perform his duties far from the limelight, attain one of the highest posts in the gift of the British Crown. Minto’s nature was too sanely balanced to be upset by either success or failure; in the hunting phrase he could “take his corn,” and the journal to which he confided his thoughts sets out very modestly what he considered to be his qualifications, and descants on the loyalty of his friends: —
“I am pleased, and so is Mary-and-well — I suppose, writing in the privacy of one’s own journal, I may say that I feel proud. Anyhow it is a position to be proud of. I can’t help looking back over my past career and feeling that it has not been the path that usually leads to great appointments. With me it has been as a boy athletics, then steeplechase riding, then soldiering, till the love of a military career became all-absorbing. But through it all I have gathered a good deal of experience of other men in many countries, and the older I grow the stiffer has become my rule of doing what I thought right in the line I had taken up as soldier and country gentleman. This, with a certain amount of reading, a little writing occasionally for reviews, and a good deal of intercourse with those people who are helping to make, or are interested in, the world’s history, both men and women, has helped me to where I am. It does not seem much, and yet it has often meant hard work, and the sacrifice of many social engagements and other things which to the society world may often have seemed inexplicable, as there was little to show for it. I am thinking chiefly of my Volunteer commands: the work they have given me has frequently been very heavy, and always very thankless, the military authorities alone knowing the value of what I was doing. . . . My present appointment I know I owe largely to the firm support of friends, and the furtherance of my career to Lord Wolseley more than any one else: on service and at home he has helped me more than I can say. . . . I have had shoals of telegrams of congratulation all day. Certainly till the last few months I never knew I had so many friends.”
BOOK II.
CHAPTER 6. GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF CANADA, 1898-1904
The Problem of Defence
The hot summer of 1898 was filled with great events; death removed two men of the first rank from the arena of politics — Gladstone and Bismarck; in the first week of September the battle of Omdurman gave the Sudan to our hands; and presently came the difficulties with France over Fashoda. Minto spent his time in a whirl of interviews with Cabinet Ministers and with men like Lord Strathcona, who could talk to him of Canada. Then he repaired to the Borders to bid good-bye to his old friends and to receive the freedom of the town of Hawick.
“Kissed hands at Balmoral. . . . The Queen, as she always seems to be, quite charming, full of conversation and in good spirits. On my alluding to the appearance of a rapprochement between the United States and ourselves, she said she could see none. . . . Mary was then sent for. The Queen told her she felt sure she would uphold the position, and above all she must never give her name to any scheme that might be criticized, but only to those above suspicion, adding: —
‘Your father advised me to make this rule nearly forty years ago, and I have never deviated from it.’”
In the series of farewell dinners in October one stood out especially, that given by Etonians to Minto, Mr. George Curzon, and the Reverend J. E. C. Welldon, who were leaving for the Governor-Generalship of Canada, the Viceroyalty of India, and the Bishopric of Calcutta. Lord Rosebery was in the chair, and made one of his happiest speeches. He pointed out that of the last six Governor-Generals of Canada all but one had been Etonians, and he spoke thus about his old school contemporary: —
“To most of us he is better known as ‘Melgund,’ to some of us as ‘Rolly.’ Lord Minto’s position raises in my mind a controversy which has never ceased to rage in it since I was thirteen years old. I have never been able to make out which has the greater share in the government of this Empire — Scotland or Eton. I am quite prepared to give up our fighting powers to Ireland, because when we have from Ireland Wolseley and Kitchener and Roberts I am sure that Scotland cannot claim to compete. But when, as in Lord Minto’s case, Scotland and Eton are combined, you have something so irresistible that it hardly is within the powers of human eloquence to describe it. Lord Minto comes of a governing family — indeed at one time it was thought to be too governing a family. Under former auspices it was felt that the Elliots perhaps bulked too largely in the administration of the nation. At any rate, whether it was so or not, it was achieved by their merits, and there has been a Viceroy Lord Minto already. There have been innumerable distinguished members of the family in the last century, and there has also been a person, I think, distinguished above all others — that Hugh Elliot who defeated Frederick the Great in repartee at the very summit of his reputation, and went throu
gh every adventure that a diplomatist can experience. And now Lord Minto goes to Canada. I am quite certain, from his experience, from his character and knowledge, from his popularity, that he is destined to make an abiding mark.”
Attended by felicitations and goodwill in which there was no note of dissent, Minto, accompanied by his wife and children, left England on 3rd November, and on Saturday, 12th November, arrived at Quebec, where he was met by the outgoing Governor-General, Lord Aberdeen, and sworn in. The Mayor of Quebec presented an address, in which there were graceful references to Lady Minto’s family connections with Canada and to Lady Eileen as Canadian-born.
A word must be said on the position of Canadian affairs at the moment when Minto assumed office. Sir John Macdonald’s great public career of over forty years had ended only with his death in 1891. Thereafter followed dissensions and difficulties for the Conservatives, culminating in their defeat at the polls in 1896, when the Liberal party under Sir Wilfrid Laurier entered upon a term of power which was to endure for thirteen years. The change of party did not involve a change of policy, for the old Liberal free-trade dogmatism was dropped, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier carried on the protective system of his predecessor, which by fostering her native industries aimed at making Canada economically independent of the United States. He maintained the close connection with Britain, indeed he drew it tighter, for it was under his auspices that a preference was granted to the products of the mothercountry. There was thus no violent divergence of political views within the country, and the old racial difficulties between French and British were quiescent under a Prime Minister of French-Canadian blood. There were many questions outstanding with the United States, chiefly with regard to the coast fisheries, questions which were to give trouble in the future, but at the moment none were urgent. It was a season of political inertia.
But with the ordinary life of the citizen it was otherwise. There was a stirring on the face of the waters, the beginnings of an immense change in economic conditions and in the outlook of the Canadian people. In 1870 the development of Canada appeared to have come to a standstill, and it seemed as if all that was worth reclaiming from the wilds had been reclaimed. In the ‘eighties, in spite of a protective tariff, the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and a modest boom in the North-West, the country still halted. But about 1896 the veil began to lift. The settlement of America’s virgin lands was almost complete, and the American pioneer began to turn his attention to Canada’s hinterland. The minerals of the East and the corn-lands of the West were developed more swiftly, and lumbering, which had been a decaying trade, was revived in the form of the wood-pulp industry in papermaking. A new activity in railroad building began, and the revenues of the Canadian Pacific rose by leaps and bounds. Little townships in the prairies suddenly expanded into cities, and towns appeared where before there had been only a shanty. Both Federal and Provincial Governments instituted a vigorous immigration policy, and the proportion of the immigrants which came from the British Isles largely increased. A wave of hope and confidence passed over the land, and men looked with a correcter judgment at the immense assets which before they had forgotten or undervalued.
Joined with this pride in their own possessions was another kind of pride, which marked a further stage in Canada’s progress to self-conscious nationhood. The advent of Mr. Chamberlain at the Colonial Office had wrought a miracle in imperial administration. He had determined to understand for himself the mind of the overseas dominions, and make it understood by every home official. The vision of imperial development, to which Cecil Rhodes had given a captivating power, was being changed into a reasoned policy, which yet did not lack the glamour of a dream. The effect was remarkable in Britain, where the colonies became a fashionable interest, and lost that atmosphere of dreariness which had repelled earlier generations. It was still more notable in the Dominions themselves, where politics suddenly ceased to be parochial, and the imperial tie was transformed from a platitude into an inspiration. The Canadian, proud of his own land and newly awake to its possibilities, found his efforts stimulated by the consciousness that that land was a part of the greatest confederation known to history, which too, like Canada, was but at the outset of its triumphant journey. To an economic revival was added a spiritual enlargement.
Minto thus entered upon office at a most critical and fascinating epoch in Canadian life. The Prime Minister with whom he had to work was the most notable figure in Canadian politics since Sir John Macdonald. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, now fifty-seven years of age, had already won a reputation which might well be called international. He had visited England the year before during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and had attended the first Imperial Conference ever held, and by his eloquence and breadth of vision had impressed both the British and the French peoples. He seemed to combine what was best in both cultures, and to understand both traditions; his devotion to his own race and Church was free from particularism and clericalism, and he could mellow the bustling matter-of-factness of British Canada with sympathy and imagination. Though the Liberal leader in his own country, his temperament was naturally conservative — cautious, loving precedents, sensitive to tradition, strongly rooted in the past.
In such a man Minto had a like-minded and sympathetic colleague, whom he could regard with both admiration and affection. But it was a colleague and not a dictator. In the nature of things, with imperial and Canadian affairs closely interwoven, and with Mr. Chamberlain at the Colonial Office, it was impossible for the new Governor-General to be merely a spectacular figure, opening and dissolving parliaments and giving automatic assent to ordinances. He was a representative of a new school of imperial thought which Canada could not ignore; and with this new spirit abroad his office took on a greater significance. While he must rely often on Laurier, he brought much to the partnership. Sir Wilfrid was a statesman, but he was above all things a consummate politician, whose first business it was to harmonize conflicting races and parties and interests. It is a primary duty and a necessary task, but in it a man is apt to lose simplicity. The devotion and integrity of the Prime Minister were beyond question, but in the honourable opportunism which his work required there might sometimes be a lack of perspective and a want of vigour. To the manipulator of a political machine a risk may seem greater, a set-back more final, than is the fact. It was Minto’s supreme merit that he saw things clearly and simply, without the irrelevant subtleties with which the practice of law or politics clogs the most honest minds, and that his broad humanity enabled him sometimes to read more correctly the heart of the plain man than the plain man’s official exponents.
A Governor-General in an autonomous Dominion walks inevitably on a razor edge. His powers are like those of a constitutional monarch, brittle if too heavily pressed, a shadow if tactlessly advertised, substantial only when exercised discreetly in the background. Once in conversation Sir Wilfrid Laurier gave his view of the position: “The Canadian Governor-General,” he said, “long ago ceased to determine policy, but he is by no means, or need not be, the mere figurehead the public imagine. He has the privilege of advising his advisers, and, if he is a man of sense and experience, his advice is often taken. Much of his time may be consumed in laying corner-stones and listening to boring addresses, but corner-stones must be laid, and people like a touch of colour and ceremony in life.” Sir Wilfrid Laurier was too shrewd a man to underrate the ceremonial side of the duties of His Majesty’s representatives (“Let not Ambition mock their useful toil”); and he put his finger on one vital function, that of advising their official advisers, the custody of the custodians. But a second function, not less vital, he omitted — their task of interpreting to Britain the ideals and aims of the Dominion, and, conversely, of expounding to the Dominion the intricate problems of the mother-country. These two functions — often obscured for the ordinary citizen by the fog of ceremonial — are of the first importance in our imperial system, and of a high degree of delicacy and difficulty. Advice to Ministers in t
heir administrative work, and a constant effort to make sure that Britain and the Dominion see with the same eyes and speak the same language — these are duties which make far greater demands upon character and brain than the easy work of a dictator. There have been many failures among those sent abroad to represent the British Crown, due largely to the narrowly circumscribed area from which they are chosen; but that does not derogate from the tremendous importance of the office or belittle the success of the rare few who have succeeded. For the first task-advice — the main qualification is experience and native shrewdness; for the second-interpretation — an alert sympathy and an open mind. In the conversation which has been quoted Sir Wilfrid had something to say of the Governor-Generals he had known. Minto he held remarkable for his sound sense and “a stronger man than was thought” — a high compliment, for no Governor-General should have a popular repute for strength: it breeds suspicion in a young nation. “When he came to Canada first, he was absolutely untrained in constitutional practice . . . but he took his duties to heart, and became an effective Governor, if sometimes very stiff.”* The first sentence is the truth; Minto had no training in methods of government, and had all his experience to acquire. In his function of adviser, consequently, he had to bide his time till he learned his business. But on one subject, that of armed defence, he was already an expert, and, as it chanced, this subject came to the forefront in the earliest months of his term of office, and he played a part in advising, controlling, and stimulating his Ministers which was new in the annals of the Dominion. It was in this connection, no doubt, that he earned with them the reputation of being “very stiff.” In considering Minto’s Canadian record it will be well to deal first with this group of military questions; they were the subjects of all others to which his interest was pledged, and in which he could speak from the first with clearness and authority.