The French-Canadian nationalist and editor Joseph-Henri-Napoleon Bourassa (1868-1952) was one of the leading political figures of Quebec, a splendid orator, and the founder and editor in chief of "Le Devoir," a leading Montreal newspaper.

Henri Bourassa was born in Montreal on Sept. 1, 1868, and educated at schools in that city and at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. As a young man of 22, he was elected mayor of Montebello, a small town to which he had gone to recover his health. Six years later he won election to Parliament as a Liberal and as a follower of Wilfrid Laurier, the first French-Canadian prime minister. But before his first term in the House of Commons had run its course, Bourassa had broken with his chief.

The issue was Canadian participation in the South African War, to which Laurier had been forced reluctantly to concede by the demands of English Canadians...