The real worth of elections

Last November 23, two constituencies of the province of Quebec went to the polls to fill two vacancies in the Quebec legislative assembly caused by the retirement of Antonio Barrette in Joliette and of Laurent Barré in Rouville.

The previous June 22, these two constituencies had elected, with large majorities, the two candidates presented by the National Union party. Five months later, in November, the same electors reversed their choice, choosing in each of these two constituencies, Liberal candidates. Not only that, they gave the Liberal candidates such majorities that the National Union men lost their deposits!

These two almost contradictory results in the short space of five months do not seem to be indicative of an electorate inspired by convictions. One might be lead to suspect that these particular electors were manipulated by well- organized political machines which played upon the desires of these citizens to be on the winning side (for the sake of favors) the National Union in June, the Liberals in November.

Do, in fact, elections represent the will of a well-informed people who know how to make their demands known without any possibility of error? Or rather, are not elections proven to be occasions for the pushing around of the mas- ses here and there, and the manipulation of mobs, by men who are skilled in organization and mass psychology?

If you attach a doctrine or an ideology to such a vehicle - a political party committed to electioneering - you run the risk of having your ideals dragged through the mud and made a mockery of before the world. This is what is proposed by those who still adhere to that group, brought crashing down by Solon Low, known as the "Social Credit Party"! - an organization to which Caouette of Quebec, a turncoat from the Union of Electors, has attached him- self.

True Social Credit transcends all political parties and all such political activity. Its true and noble vocation is in the field of education, in the formation of enlightened and aggressive citizens aware of their responsibilities and unafraid to shoulder them; its work lies in the transforming of the habits of the people, in bringing about the adoption of new norms in the social and economic relations between men and groupings of men. Its grand aim is the building of a new community, a Social Credit City, a task which demands the utmost of devotion, of tenacity, of virtue, of self-sacrifice and could anything be more diametrically opposed to electioneering, with its arousing of base passions, its breeding of corruption, and for results, uncertainty and perpetual insecurity for the winner, of nothingness for the loser.