To the ordinary man on the street, a general election is only an intermittent opportunity for registering his more or less casual opinion as to men and measures. To the politician such an occasion is a decisive battle, long prepared for, upon the issue of which his political empire hangs.

The average elector takes himself seriously enough. He imagines that he weighs records and that he forms matured judgments quite apart from outside influences. He delights to hear himself referred to as one of the “free and independent electors of the grand old county of X.” The politician, however, looks upon the voter very much in the light of a pawn upon the chess-board, moved this way or that according to the nature and the intensity of the forces brought, by careful design, to bear upon him.

Probably neither estimate is wholly correct. Unquestionably there are times when the voter acts upon his own initiative, to the utter disregard of the most carefully prepared plans made on his behalf; but, as a general rule, he is influenced in no small degree, in the supreme act of marking his ballot, by agencies, outside himself, deliberately created and set in motion for the express purpose of securing his support for a particular policy, candidate or party. Hence the raison d'être for organization in political warfare.

The political affairs of Canada are carried on under a system of party government. That party which, for the time being, is dominant in Parliament, determines the policy and supervises the administration. His Majesty's loyal opposition, save in the capacity of critics, have little part in the conduct of public business.