Dutil - Embattled Nation

December 17 will be Domesday. This contest is not an election but a destiny. Beyond all reasonable doubt it is a conflict for the soul of this nation.

Manitoba Free Press , December 13, 1917

C anadas wartime election of 1917 took place in the worst year of the countrys history. It was a time marked by unprecedented numbers of battlefield deaths in places like Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, and Passchendaele, inconsolable sorrow, sad returns home for injured soldiers, endless tears, broken promises, and broken politics. Embroiled in a world conflict, Canadians debated the issues with all their hearts and marched to the voting polls at a rate never seen before or again equalled in the history of this nation. In its time, this election was interpreted as both the justified victory of a bipartisan effort to transcend politics and as a perversion of democracy. Since then it has been recast as an object lesson that in politics the ends do not always justify the means. Sir Robert Borden, the hero of the day, was seen as an arch-Canadian, a patriot, and a supreme defender of the Empire. Today, he ranks low on the scale of those prime ministers who held office for more than one term and he has been largely forgotten, even by some members of the party that he led for almost twenty years.

The plain fact is that the 1917 election was so central to the shaping of Canadas view of the world that in many ways it still has not entirely passed from politics into history. Some excellent scholarship has been devoted to various aspects of this epic confrontation and we stand on the shoulders of those who have preceded us in imagining and reconstructing the issues and debates, the controversies and tensions, and the smoke-filled backrooms seething with gossip, dire predictions, and speculation.

Remarkably, this is the first book devoted exclusively to the khaki election of 1917, and it joins a short shelf of other studies of Canadian elections. Based on standard secondary authorities, published documents, official papers, and newspapers available in print and on the Internet, it also draws on diaries and private letters held in various archives in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Kingston, Washington, D.C., and London (U.K.). Our aim is to flesh out the realities of this extraordinary campaign by documenting the intentions of the central characters and the unique context in which they lived and, in so doing, we have assumed the responsibility for translating all the original French-language sources. We have also followed a chronological sequence to document the ebb and flow of the passions of the day, mindful that the actors in this drama did not, and could not, know how the story would unfold. The book considers military, cultural, social, and economic factors, which have received so much attention from historians over the years, but we have deliberately chosen to emphasize political developments. We have concerned ourselves particularly with what we consider to be the central themes of this electoral campaign nationalism and imperialism, compulsion and volunteerism, ambition and resistance, war and peace.