Canada at War: THE DOMINION: Tory Triumph

For Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, it was a crushing defeat. In the by-election in Grey North, Ontario, the Tories this week elected stout, ham-handed Garfield Case to Parliament.

The campaign had been fought almost solely over one supercharged issue: the Dominion Government's policy of partial military conscription. The Liberal candidate was the man charged with making that policy work: National Defense Minister Andrew G. L. McNaughton. The voters had heard Tory orators toss flat charges of inadequate reinforcements and shipboard mutinies among draftees. General McNaughton had denounced such stories as "lies," and three times Prime Minister King had asked for McNaughton's election. The riding had returned Liberals to Parliament in 1935 and 1940. But this time it was different.

Just as joyful to eye-rubbing Tories was a dawning hope. CCF Candidate Albert Earl Godfrey, who ran a dismal third, had stood on the campaign's fringes shouting hallelujahs for the promised land of socialism. If Grey North was any indication of Dominion sentiment, the lusty CCF had lost a lot of its abracadoomph.

Almost out of the question now was another session of Parliament. Mr. King himself said there would be no purpose in holding one without Minister McNaughton in the House. He would, he said, give ''immediate attention" to the necessity for a general election.