Quisling Fever

As harried British troops scurried back across the Channel last week, leaving the Nazis in sight of the chalk cliffs of Dover, Britons all over the far-flung Empire looked anxiously to their arms. No exceptions, Canadians from the Yukon to the St. Lawrence eyed their slow-moving war-expansion program askance, clamored vociferously for action, still more action.

In response, once more Canadian armament was given a slap in the rump. After a four-hour meeting with the War Committee, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King announced in Parliament that "sweeping measures" would be taken. A third and fourth division would be raised by enlistment; the first division, already abroad, would be reinforced: the second division sent abroad as soon as possible. To speed the lagging Empire Air-Training Plan, the Hon. Charles Gavan ("Chubby") Power, twice-wounded, once-decorated veteran of World War I, was appointed head of a new Ministry of National Defense for Air. Work on 100 landing fields would be rushed to completion this summer. Munitions plants and key industries were put on a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week schedule. Amazed and indignant was the Canadian public to learn that in aircraft and tank plants production had been delayed by the reluctance of British patent holders to supply plans and specifications.

Their fear and wrath at the Government abated by the promise of more zip in armament preparations, Canadians were not long in finding other sources of irritation. Royal Canadian Mounted Police in No-mining, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, cracked down on the Fascist National Unity Party. In a wholesale roundup they seized Fuehrer Adrien Arcand, seven other officials, six truckloads of pamphlets, gold-braided uniforms, membership lists. In court, wispy-mustached Newspaperman Arcand was held without bail for hearing this week.

Meanwhile, from Windsor came a fresh scare. Acting on the report of Lieut. Colonel Charles E. Reynolds, president of the Canadian Corps Association, that 7,500 armed German Bund members lurked just across the Detroit River in the U. S., a hundred men of the Essex (tank) regiment were rushed to St. Luke Road barracks on the international line. Special guards were assigned to 24-hour duty at the bridge and tunnel; patrols in the river were increased.

Excitement over fifth columnists mounted almost to panic. The Ontario Liquor Control Board officials canceled licenses for the sale of beer and light wines in all German-Canadian clubs; from Vernon, B. C. came reports of the bombing of a Canadian Legion Hall; in East York one thoroughly aroused businessman, offering the Veterans' Home Guard his full cooperation, put at their disposal his entire fleet of 30 milk trucks.

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