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The Balance of English & French Interests
during the Conscription Crises of World War Two
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By Michael
Suddard
On September 10th of 1939, Canada officially declared war on Germany.
The declaration was in response to the German invasion of Poland that started at dawn of September 1st. The Soviet troops, as previously agreed with Germany, also invaded Poland.
With two forces invading, Poland surrendered. Britain, France, and Canada honoured their pledge to Poland.
The Second World War was now underway.
During the Second World War, Canadian forces suffered heavy casualties
resulting from the several battles including the loss of Hong Kong to the
Japanese (2,000 casualties) and the failed Dieppe raid (3,367
casualties).
These casualties, in addition to the casualties from the other battles,
needed to be replaced with new enlistments.
The Defence Minister, J.L. Ralston, called on the Prime Minister and
Cabinet to impose conscription so that the remaining forces could easily be
re-supplied.
However, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King decided against the
option of conscription. Conscription,
King knew, was an issue that deeply divided the country along its linguistic
lines of English and French. This was
because Conscription was instituted in 1917 during the First World War. The French called the First World War ‘an
English War’ that had no relevance to the Dominion of Canada.
French-Canadians also viewed the war as being punishment to France for deserting “her Canadians a
century and a half ago, had left them in the snow and ice along the Saint
Lawrence surrounded by their enemies”. Therefore, French-Canadians felt
that they had no sense of duty in defending either England or France.
The English, however, were in favour of conscription. They cited the fact that Great Britain was in trouble and needed assistance
and as their largest supporter, Canada should assist.
William Lyon Mackenzie King noticed this deep divide that could possibly
re-ignite itself and deeply divide the country when he needed the country to be
unified the most. Therefore, King made a
decision.
King’s decision would be presented to
the War Committee meeting of April 30, 1941 when he said “that ‘the present
government could have no thought of conscription for overseas service, under
any circumstances.’”
This would be the thesis of the Mackenzie King Government during the
Second World War. This thesis lasted
until the Minister of National Defence, J.L. Ralston, revealed “that there had
been a miscalculation: 15,000 additional trained infantry would have to be sent
from Canada before the new year to meet
estimated demands in Northwest Europe and Italy”.
The issue stunned the Liberal Cabinet.
William Lyon Mackenzie King had no other alternative but to impose
conscription. However, with his cabinet
deeply divided, King realized that he had to balance the interests of both
English and French Canadians over this divisive issue. This balancing of interests is evident when
we study the origins of the conscription question, the Plebiscite of 1942, the
divide of the Liberal Cabinet, and the results of the introduction of the
conscription bill.
William Lyon Mackenzie King was not the
first Canadian Prime Minister to face the problem of conscription and, therefore,
could rely on Sir Wilfrid Laurier for some experience
on how to solve the issue of conscription.
The Boer War that began in 1899 presented the first opportunity for
conscription in Canadian history. On October 9th 1899 Great Britain, lead by Prime Minister Joseph
Chamberlain, declared war on the Boers of South Africa. Canada would be drawn into this conflict
because of its imperial connections that it maintained with Britain.
These imperial connections would cause a political problem for Canada’s Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
Laurier’s problem is best described by Alvin Finkel
and Margaret Conrad in their book the History of the Canadian Peoples:
When Britain declared war against Dutch settlers – called Boers – in South Africa in 1899, many Anglophone Canadians felt it was their war too. Laurier faced enormous pressures to send a
Canadian contingent to South Africa, not only from imperialist minded English
Canadians, but also from the commander of the Canadian militia the British
Colonial Secretary, [and British Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain].
Laurier was
forced to consider the pressure and that he must act; however, he also felt
opposition mainly from French-Canadian Nationalists who thought of the war as
being only ‘England’s conflict’.
Therefore, Laurier knew that if he were to survive politically beyond
the next general election, he would have to find a political compromise.
Laurier required a compromise to this
situation because of the differences in political ideologies between the
English and the French in Canada.
This conflict split the Liberal Party.
On one side Laurier had Henri Bourassa and other French-Canadian
Nationalists who refused to let Canada become involved in the conflict
because the Boer War had nothing to do with Canada’s interests. On
the other side Laurier found the English Canadian Liberals who, if Laurier
refused to act, would find themselves in political trouble in their English
dominated ridings.
Wilfrid
Laurier appeared to be stuck in a situation that appeared to have no
answer. This is because no matter what
position Laurier assumes, one language group would be upset with him. However, Laurier would surprise his critics
by taking his usual “middle of the road” approach. Laurier proposed that instead of imposing
conscription, that only voluntary enlistment would be necessary. Voluntary enlistment, Laurier felt, would
appease the French Canadians because they would not be forced into conscription
for what they saw as ‘England’s War’. However, Laurier’s solution would appease the
English because they were able to support the ‘mother country’ if they wished.
Laurier also proposed to pay the costs
of transporting the voluntarily enlisted troops to the conflict and equip
them. Laurier, however, refused to pay
the volunteers. The wages of the
volunteers would be left up to Great Britain to handle. “On the grounds that the effort would lost
little financially, he refused to debate the issue in the [House of] Commons”.
Laurier decided not to debate the issue in the House of Commons because
the offers of service were only considered to be from individuals to Great Britain and not in response to the pleas for
assistance from Great Britain to the Government of Canada. Laurier’s position is supported by British
Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain who issued a “dispatch…expressing thanks for
individual offers of service, and stating that four units of one hundred and
twenty-five men each would gladly be accepted, to be equipped and sent to
Africa at their own…cost”. The agreement
of the British, as mentioned in Chamberlain’s dispatch, to assume the costs of
outfitting enlistments and assuming military command over the enlistments would
further support Laurier’s argument for not recalling parliament. The
actions by Laurier would appease both French and English Canadians. The French Canadians would be satisfied
because it could be viewed that Canada had little to no involvement in ‘England’s War’. English Canadians would be satisfied with
Laurier’s solution because of the fact that Laurier had provided an opportunity
for them to support Great Britain’s cause if they so wished.
William Lyon Mackenzie King would
remember Laurier’s reasoning when the Robert Borden Government drafted the
Military Service Act of 1917. In the
Military Service Act of 1917, Borden felt that conscription was necessary in
order to ensure that Canadian troops overseas would be adequately reinforced
when necessary. However,
William Lyon Mackenzie King would not be able to voice his concerns over this
bill considering he was defeated in the riding of York North in the election of
1917. The Military Service Act of 1917
would cause rioting in the streets of Montreal and Quebec City. King realized
that the issue of conscription would deeply divide the country when he needed
national unity the most. Therefore,
King, in 1940, decided that overseas conscription would not be considered when
he drafted the National Resources Mobilization Act.
On the morning of June 18, 1940, William Lyon Mackenzie King drafted the National Resources
Mobilization Act aiming for a typical Laurier ‘middle of the road’ approach to
the situation. As J.L Granatstein writes in his book, Canada’s War: The Politics of the Mackenzie
King Government, 1935-1945, “The Bill, he said would ‘confer upon the government special emergency
powers to mobilize all our human material resources in the defence of Canada.’” To
ensure that French-Canadians were satisfied, King said the bill “will relate
solely and exclusively to the defence of Canada on our own soil and in our own
territorial waters”. King said this
because he realized that French-Canadians would never agree to conscription for
overseas service, but would agree to conscription for the defence of the
Dominion of Canada. King was correct in
this assumption because, as J.L. Granatstein writes
in his book, Mackenzie King: His Life and World, “in Quebec the people accepted the idea that
compulsion for the defence of the homeland was necessary”.
Therefore, King had adequately satisfied the people of Quebec on the issue of conscription.
English Canadians supported instituting
conscription citing the fact that many of their sons had been killed or injured
when they were conscripted for the First World War. However, their feelings would change when Germany, on May 10th
1940,
launched “her blitzkrieg against Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium and France”.
English Canadians felt that after Germany had completed the takeover of
mainland Europe, the British Isles would be next. Therefore, English Canadians called on the
Mackenzie King government to institute full conscription for overseas service
in order to ensure that Great Britain would be adequately defended. King refused citing the fact that French
Canadians would be against the issue of conscription, and, therefore, he did
not want to jeopardize Canadian unity when he required it most. King also responded that if they were
interested in supporting Great Britain’s defences, Canadians were free to
voluntarily enlist overseas service. The
voluntary enlistment idea was originally a part of the Laurier compromise
during the Boer War. King felt that he
had solved the issue of conscription by referencing the experiences of his
political predecessors.
William Lyon Mackenzie King would be
correct that he solved the issue of conscription. However, in 1942 the issue would once again
come to the forefront. In 1942, King
would be forced to re-evaluate his position when the Defence Minister, “Colonel
Ralston, pressed for the further expansion of the army overseas”.
King realized that any further expansion of the army overseas would
require the possibility of conscription.
Conscription would be required because voluntary enlistment had only
given the military 609,000 men that were still left in Canada who could “conceivably be called to
the colours”.
However, Ralston had laid out a plan that would require the use of more
men then were currently available.
Ralston’s plan:
hoped to
expand…into a five-division army of two corps, an army that would undoubtedly
require extraordinary effort to maintain at full strength with reinforcements
once the hard fighting had began. The
difficulty, as a Cabinet manpower study clearly demonstrated, was that only
609,000 men were left in Canada who could
conceivably be called to the colours. Of
that number untold thousands were required to fill the jobs in industry while
the navy
and air
force programs would take at least 175,000.
This was not the only problem for the King administration. Hong Kong had already
fallen to the Japanese on Christmas Day of 1941. Therefore, King feared the Japanese might
look at invading North America. He also knew
that Pearl Harbour had occurred the day before the attack on Hong Kong had been launched. Therefore,
the Americans would be requesting the Canadian government to help defend North
American from the Japanese.
King knew that without a national recruiting
campaign that Ralston’s plans would never work.
The Prime Minister also had reports coming in saying that the war was
not going well in Europe, France had fallen and Great Britain was under siege from the air. King knew that it was only a matter of time
before a land invasion into Great Britain by the Germans would occur. King decided to call a national plebiscite to
occur on April 27th of 1942 in order to delay his decision just a
little bit longer.
William Lyon Mackenzie King feared what
French-Canadians would think of the plebiscite.
Therefore, the plebiscite question did not have the word ‘conscription’
within it. The question, as the voters
would have found it in the polling booth, was: “Are you in favour of releasing
the Government from any obligations arising from military service?” In
other words, the plebiscite was asking Canadians whether they agreed or
disagreed on letting the government institute whatever means necessary in order
to support the war, including the possibility of conscription. The word conscription, King felt, was not
necessary because it was associated with sending men overseas. Mackenzie King felt, as he says in one of his
speeches to Canada on the CBC, “the way conscription
was introduced [in previous wars], and the way it was enforced, gave rise to
bitter resentment”. King addressed
the fact that there were other issues that required manpower in order to supply
the war effort. These come out in Angus
Macdonald’s notes of the interview that Ralston, King, and himself had over the
issue of the plebiscite. In the
conversation King said, according to Macdonald’s notes,:
We must be sure we would get more men
under conscription than without it. We
must fill the needs of industry, farming, home defence, as well as the needs of
the armed forces…Conditions in this country might get so bad that no-one could
govern the country. If you use machine
guns, what would be the use of conscription?
King addressed the plebiscite in this way in order to not offend
French-Canadians. He also recognized the
fact that if conscription needed to be instated, the requirements of supporting
the military cause would not just be in sending men overseas, but would also
require men to labour in Canada in order to supply the forces overseas. Supplying the extra forces overseas would
require increased food production, munitions production, and providing men for
defending the homeland.
Mackenzie King also recognized the fact
that the average Canadian could not decide whether if conscription was
necessary. This is because “the question
of conscription…is a military question”.
William Lyon Mackenzie King felt that the only place was to discuss the
issue of conscription was in Parliament.
Parliament was the institution that needed to debate the issue “in the
light of all national considerations”.
King was referring again to the fact that conscription would be required
to ensure that food production and munitions production was increased and not
just for sending men overseas to war.
Therefore, he was requesting the people of Canada not to vote whether they wanted
conscription instituted, but whether Parliament could use the option of
conscription when it was absolutely necessary.
The results of the plebiscite had both
positive and negative aspects. The
results display the differences in support of conscription between the English
and the French. “Overall 64 percent of
Canadians voted ‘yes’, at least 85 percent of Quebec Francophones
demanded that King honour his original promise” of no conscription. The results of the plebiscite only confirmed
King’s thesis that conscription was still a very divisive issue no matter what
terms were associated with it. Therefore,
“King continued to resist imposing conscription”.
However, he could only resist for so long.
The Defence Minister, J.L. Ralston, did
not interpret the results of the plebiscite as being an order by Quebec to resist conscription. In fact, Ralston believed, “the results…were
a clear go-ahead signal”.
Ralston questioned if the overall results were not important, then “what
other purpose had the plebiscite had?”
However, Ralston failed to notice the differences in results when
contrasting along linguistic lines.
Mackenzie King had done this and realized, as Sir Wilfrid
Laurier had during the Boer War, that the English were still interested in
supporting the mother country, whereas the French were only interested in
protecting Canada from invasion. Because Ralston failed to see the results of
the plebiscite from King’s angle, Ralston would continue with his campaign to
increase the military’s forces through the use of conscription.
William Lyon Mackenzie King would be
able to avoid the issue of conscription until the month of October 1944. After returning from an inspection of the
troops in Great Britain, the Defence Minister met with the
Prime Minister. The discussion is best outlined by J.W. Pickersgill
and D. F. Forster in their book The Mackenzie King Record, when Ralston
said: “that the fighting had been more intense than had been anticipated.
[Ralston] spoke of the numbers in the reserve being considerably less than had
been anticipated when the estimate was made”.
After Ralston had finished delivering his message to Mackenzie King,
King responded by asking Ralston how, after the allied forces were liberating
one country after another, “the people of Canada would understand why [the
government] should resort to conscription?” King figured
that if conscription were imposed when the Allied forces were making so much
progress with the resources that they already had, why would the Allied forces
require more men? King also questioned
why Canada needed to increase its support of
the war when “our war effort had been larger in proportion than that of any
other country”.
King also feared the demand for more men to be sent overseas would split
his Cabinet.
Mackenzie King was correct in this
assumption. Ralston delivered his
findings to the Cabinet meeting. Ralston
said:
I must say to Council, that while I
am ready to explore the situation further, as I see it at the moment, I feel
that there is no alternative but for me to recommend the extension of service
of NRMA personnel to overseas.
In other words, Ralston recommended to Cabinet that some of the men that
were conscripted for the defence of Canada, should be sent overseas. The Prime Minister responded by saying that
he disagreed with Ralston, citing the fact that the allied forces were
progressing well and that the voluntary enlistments for overseas use had more
than adequately replaced the casualties in the past five years of the war.
King, however, wanted to see the
response of the Cabinet. “Three-quarters
supported [King’s] position, but those opposed included some of the most
important English-speaking ministers.
The French-speaking cabinet members, of course, supported King against
Ralston”.
King had won again. The Prime
Minister was not willing to side with English Canadians and loose the support
of French-Canadians. This was true
considering not one of his French-speaking cabinet members had supported
Ralston’s plea for conscription.
Mackenzie King thought that conscription would be unnecessary because
the war was practically over. This
thought is supported by King’s diary entry:
I believe that we shall get through
without conscription and that the same power which has guided me in the past
will continue to guide me through another very difficult period.
King thought that
God was on his side and that God would guide him through the problem of
conscription. King believed that Ralston
was the one behind the move towards conscription.
Therefore, on November 1st of 1944, “Ralston was replaced…by
General A.G.L. McNaughton, an artillery commander in
the First World War and King’s choice in 1939 to command the army overseas”.
McNaughton
promised William Lyon Mackenzie King that “the reinforcements could be obtained
on a voluntary basis.” Obviously this
statement pleased King. The Prime
Minister thought he had overcome the slide towards conscription by replacing
his Defence Minister with an experienced general who had a first hand encounter
with the front lines in Europe.
King figured that he would not have to worry about the issue of
conscription because McNaughton would be able to find
enough voluntary enlistments both from the general public and the Canadian
conscripts. King thought he, like
Laurier, had balanced the ideologies of both the English and the French on the
issue of conscription.
However, this would not be the case
because McNaughton failed in his attempt to recruit
enough voluntary enlistments that were required to be sent overseas. In fact, McNaughton
was not even close to the quota of 15,000. McNaughton, “between November 1 and 18, only [found] 549
men…for overseas service”. The
Defence Minister phoned King with the news.
The Prime Minister had to face the consequences and upset national
unity.
First, King had to convince the
French-speaking members in his party to support him on the introduction of the
bill for conscription. The Prime
Minister would rise in the House of Commons to deliver his speech in order to
introduce the conscription bill. As J.L.
Granatstein writes in his book, Conscription in
the Second World War 1939-1945, “When he rose to address the House of
Commons on November 27, King turned his back on the opposition benches and
spoke directly to his own French-Canadian M.P.’s”. The
biggest plea for support from his French-speaking Cabinet Ministers comes at
the end of his lengthy speech when King, as quoted from the Hansard
of that day, said:
If there is anything to which I have
devoted my political life, it is to try to promote unity, harmony and amity between
the diverse elements of this country. My
friends can desert me, they can remove their confidence from me, they can
withdraw the trust they have placed in my hands, but never shall I deviated
from that line of policy. Whatever may
be the consequences, whether loss of prestige, loss of popularity, or loss of
power, I feel that I am in the right, and I know that a time will come when
every man will render me a full justice on that score.
The speech was a
success. “Of the fifty-seven French-Canadian members of parliament voting on
the government’s policy, twenty-three supported King, a striking high number in
view of the opposition to conscription in Quebec”.
Mackenzie King had successfully balanced the interests of both the
English and the French over the issue of conscription. King had shown to French-Canadians that he
had tried every alternative but conscription.
Therefore, the Prime Minister hoped, that French-Canadians would support
his decision. Canada would only send 16,000 conscripts
overseas immediately.
The issue of conscription in the Second
World War, King feared, would deeply divide the country along its linguistic
lines. However, in the end William Lyon
Mackenzie King was able to show French-Canadians that the Liberal Government had
tried everything in its power to avoid conscription. The plebiscite, King had hoped, was to show
his Cabinet how divisive the issue of conscription really was between English
and French Canadians. The plebiscite was
a success. The result showed just how
divisive the issue was. The results
displayed that eighty-five percent of the Quebec francophone population was against
conscription. However, by politically
manoeuvring his way through the situation, King was successfully able to
balance the interests of both French and English Canadians. William Lyon Mackenzie King would be the last
Canadian Prime Minister to have to balance the issue of the French and English
interests over the topic of conscription.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Dominion of Canada Official Report of Debates House of
Commons. Volume VI
(1944). Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier,
Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1945.
King, William Lyon Mackenzie. King and the Fight for Freedom. New York: Hawthorn
books, Inc., 1972.
Secondary Sources
