A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
THE arrival of Mr. Mackenzie King in Canada at the end of this week will be made historic by the fact that before he left this country he had completed a longer term of office as Prime Minister than any predecessor in that great Dominion. It is a most -notable record, and Mr. King has been a most notable Premier. His whole political career indeed has been striking, and it is no accident that he takes his three Christian names from his maternal grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie, whose rebellion against government by a privileged oligarchy in 1837 was one of the factors which led to the despatch of Lord Durham's Mission of the famous Durham Report. Mr. King has, if not rebellion, at any rate an ineradicable Liberalism in his bones, a flag that has dipped very near the dust in this country but flies defiantly at the mast- head there. How many years the Prime Ministei will add to his present record remains to be seen ; he is to -all appearance as fit physically today as when I first met him more than twenty years ago and though he indicated that this would be his last spell of office the demands of the political situation a few years hence may well prove too much for his resolve. There is no doubt that his visit to this country has, like that of other Dominion Premiers, been of great value, not in forging closer formal ties—Mr. King is no believer in that—but in the attainment of a common understanding on a number of immediate issues.
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