The role which Laurier had to play in the successive conferences was
not one agreeable to his temperament. It gave no opening for his
talent. It supplied no opportunities for the making of the kind of
speeches at which he was a master. It kept him from the centre of
the stage, a position which Sir Wilfrid Laurier had no objection to
occupying. It obliged him to courses which, in the setting in which
he found himself, must at times have seemed ungracious, and this
must have been a trial to a nature so courtly and considerate. To
the successive proposals that came before the conference, togged out
in all the gorgeous garb of Imperialism, he was unable to offer
constructive alternatives; for his political sense warned him that
it was twenty years too soon to suggest propositions embodying his
conception of the true relations of the British nations to one
another. There was nothing to do but to block all suggestions of
organic change designed to strengthen the centralizing of power and
to await the development of a national spirit in Canada to the point
where it would afford backing for a movement in the opposite
direction. So Laurier had to look pleasant and keep on saying no. To
Mr. Chamberlain's proposal in 1897 "to create a great council of the
Empire," No. To the proposal made at the same time for a Canadian
money contribution to the navy, No. To these propositions and others
of like tenor urged in 1902 by Mr. Chamberlain with all his
persuasive masterfulness, No. No naval subsidy because it "would
entail an important departure from the principle of Colonial
self-government." No special military force in the Dominion
available for service overseas because it "derogated from the powers
of self-government." To the Pollock-Lyttleton suggestion of a
Council of advice or a permanent "secretariat" for an "Imperial
Council," No, because it "might eventually come to be regarded as an
encroachment upon the full measure of autonomous, legislative and