Mr. Bourassa was acutely conscious of the development of opinion in Quebec favorable to the Liberals, and he sought to retain his hold upon his following by the tactics which in the first place had given him his following—­by going to extremes and outbidding Laurier.  The chief article in the Nationalist creed was that Canada was everywhere a bilingual country, French being on an equality with English in all the provinces.  This contention rested upon a conglomeration of arguments, assertions, assumptions, inferences, and it was backed by thinly disguised threats of political action.  The opposing contention that bilingualism had a legal basis only in Quebec and in the Dominion parliament with its services and courts was interpreted as an insult.  Mr. Lavergne, the chief lieutenant of Mr. Bourassa, was wont to wax furiously indignant over the suggestion, as he put it, that he must “stay on the reservation” if he was to enjoy the privileges that he held to be equally his in whatever part of Canada he might find himself.

Events in Ontario put the test of reality to the Nationalist theories.  A feud broke out between the English-speaking and the French-speaking Catholics over the language used for instruction in separate schools where both languages were represented; and resulting investigation revealed a state of affairs suggesting something very like a conspiracy to minimize or even abolish the use of English in all school areas where the French were in control.  Resulting regulations and legislation intended to put a stop to these conditions gave French a definitely subordinate status.  This fired the heather, and later somewhat similar action by Manitoba added fuel to the flames.  The Nationalist agitation was resumed with increased vehemence in Quebec; and the Ontario minority were encouraged to defy the regulations by assurances that means would be found to bring Ontario to time.  In addition to legal action (which brought in the end a finding by the Privy Council completely destroying the Nationalist claim that bilingualism was implied in the scheme of Confederation) various ingenious attempts were made to apply pressure to Ontario.  The most daring, and in results the most disastrous, was the threat that if Ontario did not remove the “grievances of the minority” the people of Quebec would go on strike against further participation in the war.  That dangerous doctrine operating upon a popular mind impregnated with suspicion of the motives and intentions behind Canada’s war activities, produced the situation which made inevitable the developments of 1917.  The movement against Ontario was Nationalist in its spirit, its inspiration and its direction.  Side by side with it went a Nationalist agitation of ever-increasing boldness against the war.  Ammunition for this campaign was readily found in the imputations, innuendoes, charges, mendacities of the Labor and pacifist extremists of Great Britain and France; they lost none of their