If Sir Wilfrid had been called upon to choose only between these two camps he could perhaps have made a choice which would not have been ultimately a political liability.  But the situation was not so simple.  There was a third factor which, alike by inclination and political necessity, Sir Wilfrid had to take into account.  This was Canadian nationalism, in contrast with the racial nationalism of which Mr. Bourassa was the apostle.  The backing upon which Sir Wilfrid relied at first to resist the military and naval policies of the Imperialists was the timidity and reluctances of colonialism; but he knew that this was at best a temporary expedient.  To urgings that Canada should assist in the upkeep of the Imperial navy by money contributions and should also maintain special militia forces available for service in Imperial wars overseas, Sir Wilfrid felt that some more plausible reply than a brusque refusal was necessary; and he met them with the contention that Canada must create military and naval forces for her own defence which would be available for the wars of the Empire at the discretion of the Canadian parliament.  These views put forward almost tentatively in 1902 ultimately bore fruit in definite policies of national defence.  Thus the answer to demand for naval contribution, to which policy all the other Dominions had subscribed, was to declare that Canada should have her own navy; and this took form, after numerous skirmishes with admiralty opinion, which was scandalized at the suggestion, in the Naval Service Bill of 1910.

This course, which was thus urged upon Sir Wilfrid by events, earned him the displeasure of both the Imperialists and the Little Canadians.  To the former Laurier’s policy seemed little short of treasonable, particularly his insistence that while Canada was at war when England was at war the extent, if any, of Canada’s participation in such war must be determined solely by the Canadian parliament.  His own countrymen on the other hand viewed with disquietude these first halting steps along the road of national preparedness; might it not lead by easy gradations to that “vortex of militarism” against which Sir Wilfrid had voiced an eloquent warning?  Where there is opinion capable of being exploited against a government the exploiter soon appears.  In Quebec, Monk, Conservative, and the Nationalist, Bourassa, who entering Parliament as a follower of Laurier had developed a strong antipathy to him, were indefatigable in alarming the habitant by interpreting to him the secret purposes of the naval service bill.  It was nothing, they claimed, but an Imperialistic device by which the Canadian youth would be dragged from his peaceful fireside to become cannon fodder in the Empire’s wars.  Meanwhile in the English provinces, the government’s policy was fiercely attacked as inadequate and verging upon disloyalty by the Imperialists.  The Conservative opposition, after one virtuous interlude in 1909 when they showed a fleeting desire to take a non-political and national view of this matter of defence, could not resist the temptation to profit by the campaign against the government’s policy; and they joined shrilly in the derisive cry of “tin pot navy.”  These onslaughts from opposite camps were a factor in the elections of 1911; especially in Quebec where twenty-seven constituencies (against eleven in 1908) elected opponents of Laurier.