King of Canada

The man who has been head of a government longer than any other living leader won another round last week. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King sat in the House of Commons, heard it for the fourth time in eleven years vote unanimously for a Government bill. The bill: an act to authorize payment of cash allowances to Canadian parents for every child under 16 (TIME, July 3).

Prime Minister King beamed. He had triumphed in his favorite role: the champion of the underdog.

"Political Bribery." Tory Leader John Bracken, who does not sit in Parliament, had called the measure "political bribery." Cried outraged Mr. King: "I do not propose, now that I am in my seventieth year, to begin a career of bribery."

In the end the Tories voted with the Liberals because, like them, they live in mortal fear of Canada's up-&-coming socialist C.C.F. Said a Tory after the roll call: "Everyone in Canada is a reformer today."

Politically the victory was well-timed.

Mr. King's Liberal followers planned next week to toast an occasion: the 25th anniversary of his election as party leader.

At Ottawa's Chateau Laurier, 900 of them would pay $2.00 to eat gumbo creole and tenderloin steak, toast Mr. King in water (since the war, King has felt that liquor is out of place). Emil Ludwig, biographer of Bismarck, Napoleon and Franklin Roosevelt, would also publish a 62-page study of Mr. King's career. It described him as Mr. King hoped history would remember him—the great conciliator of Canada's contrary elements.

Publicity and History. History was unlikely to be as flattering as Biographer

Ludwig. But even the self-assured Ludwig had had his difficulties. He spoke of his subject's deep aversion to personal publicity, added wistfully, "publicity is a great help to history. . . ." Canadians could understand his problem. They know King's egg-shaped figure, his odd, sliding walk, his academic voice tolling the long, heavy-laden sentences. They do not know much about the man himself.

For the Prime Minister has retreated more & more into the book-lined attic study at his home, Laurier House in Ottawa. This is the real center of Canada's Government. He is at work there at 9 (and except for the daily Cabinet meeting and Parliament) he is still there at 11 o'clock at night. His most constant companion is an Irish terrier, Pat. The only man who calls him by a given name is Franklin Roosevelt (he calls him "Mackenzie").

Politician and Mystic. In his study at Laurier House the picture of Mackenzie King's mother is illuminated like a shrine. She was born in New York, in exile, the daughter of his rebel grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie who led the abortive Canadian rebellion of 1837. Khig worships his mother. She left him her devout Scottish Presbyterian belief, a deeply religious strain that sometimes makes King seem self-righteous. An exasperated follower once described him as "a mild megalomaniac with a St. Peter complex."

The description is unfair. Mr. King never intended to be a politician. He gave up law for social science, studied at Hull House under Jane Addams. Sir Wilfred Laurier made him over into a politician. In a tough game Mr. King became as tough as any of them.