Canada: THE DOMINION: Preventive Medicine

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Conscription & Compromise. Mackenzie King won his first House of Commons seat in 1908; a year later he became full-fledged Minister of Labor. It was not long before he was one of Sir Wilfrid's closest friends and advisers, and recognized on Parliament Hill as his heir in the Liberal Party. In 1919, Sir Wilfrid Laurier died.

Canada and the Liberals had been torn by savage, riotous dissension over the issue of military conscription in World War I. With Sir Wilfrid's death, the Liberal Party needed a conciliator who could hold the French-speaking and the English-speaking Liberals together. At the party convention, King, whose talents for compromise had already shown themselves, was picked on the fourth ballot. Two years later, 47-year-old King became Prime Minister of Canada—the youngest in the Dominion's history. Except for a five-year interruption, when the Conservatives came back in 1930, he has been Canada's head man ever since.

He works hard at his job. He gets up at 8 o'clock, breakfasts lightly, reads the morning papers, listens to a newscast. Between 9 and noon he reads his mail, dictates, studies government matters and ticks off appointments at home. Around noon, the Prime Minister is driven to his Parliament Hill office, where he meets his Cabinet. Unless there is a special luncheon, the noonday meal is a catch-as-catch-can affair. After that, if Parliament is in session, he attends its opening. But unless matters of importance are being discussed, he will leave early for more office work. He is home for dinner by 7, in bed by 11. On Sundays, he goes to St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church.

His favorite form of exercise is walking, usually with Pat II, at his summer home at Kingsmere, 15 miles from Ottawa. For diversion he likes to read poetry and philosophy. During the 1944 conscription crisis he sent to the Parliamentary Library for David Grayson's Adventures in Contentment.

He detests ostentation, dresses in dark suits and stiff high collars, rarely allows himself to be photographed in any but the most sedate poses. No nickname has ever stuck to him. Behind his back, he is frequently referred to as "Willie," but to his face only the smallest handful of acquaintances dare call him even "Mackenzie." It is always "Mr. King."

An unspectacular man in all respects, he does not govern Canada by showmanship, or by oratory, or by sensational moves, but rather like a Boy-Scout leader herding his charges along on a Saturday hike.

After Pasteur. His formula, he thinks, is simple: the secret of political success is to avoid mistakes. "It is like preventive medicine," he says. "You keep the disease from developing. The important thing is not what action you take to make desirable events happen, but the action you take to keep bad ones from happening. There is a force in human affairs that keeps them going toward good ends if nothing interferes. The political job is to prevent such interference. That is unspectacular, but it succeeds. It is unspectacular because the world never sees what evil might have happened if you didn't prevent it. Take Pasteur. For all we know, the whole world might be dead but for what Pasteur did."