Monday, Feb. 02, 1948

Line of Succession

The dining room of Winnipeg's Fort Garry Hotel was jampacked with eager, attentive Liberals. From all over the province they had come to see and hear Louis Stephen St. Laurent, External Affairs Minister and the man most likely to be Canada's next Prime Minister. As the heir presumptive, he was out to sell himself to the prairies.

Only 48 hours earlier, William Lyon Mackenzie King had stood before the National Liberal Federation in Ottawa and announced his long-awaited retirement (TIME, March 31). Party leader since 1919, and Prime Minister for two decades, Mackenzie King told his audience that he felt the weight of his 73 years. He asked the federation to call a national Liberal convention (probably in August) to choose his successor.

Mackenzie King would not say, in so many words, "I resign." He could not risk spending seven months as a lame duck. He 'could not forget that some crisis might keep him in office. But barring the unforeseeable, Mackenzie King would shortly lay down his stewardship.

It was not yet a cut-&-dried deal that 66-year-old Louis St. Laurent would succeed him. There were other able (and younger) cabinet ministers in the running: Douglas Abbott (Finance), Brooke. Claxton (Defense), J. L. Ilsley (Justice) and James Gardiner (Agriculture). But the word had got around that St. Laurent had received the nod from Mackenzie King, and that alone put him far out in front. Besides, his succession would preserve the growing tradition of alternating

Liberal leadership between men of Anglo-Saxon and French extraction.

St. Laurent was willing. On his arrival in Winnipeg, he told newsmen: "If the national convention feels that it wants me --if the party . . . thinks I could serve my country and promote rather than prejudice the cause of national unity--I would feel it was my responsibility to go through with it."

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