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Preface Frank Hawkins Underhill, son of Richard Underhill and Sarah Monk• house was born 26 November 1889 in Stouffville, a village about thirty miles northeast of Toronto. His paternal grandfather, a cobbler, emi- grated in 1867 with his family from England to Canada. His father founded a successful boot and shoe business in Stouffville, the centre of a prosperous farming community and one that produced doctors, lawyers, and a bishop. Although young Underhill excelled in mathematics, the high school principal George H. Reed, a classics graduate of the Univer- sity of Toronto and a great teacher, interested him in the study of Latin and Greek and persuaded his parents to allow their son to spend a sixth year in high school preparing for the provincial government's senior matriculation and entrance scholarship to the University of Toronto. Underhill won top honours in the province and the Prince of Wales entrance scholarship.1 In the classics course at the University of Toronto he made continual translations into English of Greek and Latin, and vice versa. Plato, Aris- totle, Thucydides, Cicero, and Tacitus, from whom he learned much of his prose style, interested him most and in these subjects he was well taught, but in poetry and Greek tragedy his professors seemed lacking in sym- pathy. While at Toronto he also took a second honours course in English 1 Much of the following account of Underhill's career until the mid-thirties and of his early years in Stouffville (pp. 17-4;), comes from W.D. Meikle, 'F.H. Underhill Interviews' (1967). The original of this and the 1968 interview are being deposited in the Public Archives of Canada. x I Preface and history. In history he was fortunate in having G.M. Wrong, who interested himself in his students and who brought Underhill to the De- partment of History in 1927. In his fourth year he was awarded $75 for the best fourth-year essay, and promptly bought sets of John Morley and Matthew Amold.2 Graduating with first-class honours in classics and thus winning a Flavelle fellowship of $750 (half the value of a Rhodes Scholarship), he entered Balliol College at Oxford. Together with an 'exhibition' from Balliol and support from his father he got by as well as other Canadians. Indeed in his first year he embarked on a book-buying spree and toured Britain and western Europe, being especially impressed by Renaissance painting. He joined many clubs, notably the Fabian Society as an associate member and the Ralegh Club, which was concerned with imperial relations. He was stimulated by the intellectual atmosphere of pre-1914 Eng- land with its brilliant talk, London weeklies, writings of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, H.G. Wells, and above all Bernard Shaw, though in Toronto he had already come upon the latter two writers. At Balliol, one of the colleges taking only honours students, Underhill continued the study of Latin and Greek classics in 'greats.' In effect this was a study of the classical spirit and a critique of ancient and modem civilizations. The course required the writing of a weekly essay discussing the pros and cons of a problem. Much hard digging for facts and ideas went into the essay, one aim being to make a point 'as succinct and as incisive as possible.' It was then read to his tutor, the main one in philoso- phy being A.D. Lindsay (later Lord Lindsay). After winning a first in greats, Underhill spent a third year at Oxford studying modern history.8 Underhill was offered two positions at the end of the academic year in 1914; a lectureship in history at the University of Manchester or a pro- fessorship of history at the University of Saskatchewan, then only five years old. He took the second. After an uneventful first year in Sas- katchewan, he returned in the summer of 1915 to Toronto. Its war fever and the feeling of shame at reading London Times casualty lists of Oxford contemporaries induced him to join the 4th University Company of university graduates, which was sent overseas to reinforce the Princess Patricias. Bored by nearly a year's drill in England, he managed to trans- 2 Ibid., 43-66 ~ Ibid .. 67-12~. So-go xi/ Preface fer to an English territorial regiment, and after the necessary training became a second lieutenant. In 1917-18 he had two turns of duty in France, the period between being spent in an English hospital, Underhill having been wounded in the March 1918 German offensive. Meantime he continued to read widely. After 11 November Professor Wrong got him out of the English battalion to teach history to Canadian troops at the Khaki University of Canada which was part of the Canadian military effort. 4 This teaching came to an end in the following year when Canadian troops rioted to speed their return to Canada. In the same year Underhill returned to teaching history at the Univer- sity of Saskatchewan. From this period dates his only extensive piece of historical research- on Canada's military contribution in the First World War. His account appeared in The Empire at War, edited by Sir C.P. Lucas. Its tone is not anti-war or anti-British, but proudly Canadian. In his years in the west, his Canadianism was also made more conscious by the writings of J.W. Dafoe in the Winnipeg Free Press. He was much moved by observing western democracy in action - the Progressive party, the grain pools, and the protests against eastern manufacture and finance. Thus his first research venture into Canadian history was an analysis of western Ontario farmers' movements of the 1850s and 186os.11 In coming to an understanding of the succeeding period of Canadian history from 1867 to 1914, the writings of Goldwin Smith provided a kind of key. The realistic analysis of English-French relations by Andre Siegfried also attracted him, as did the writings of Charles A. Beard and Carl Becker, which were concerned with the relationship of ideas to politics, relativism, and emphasis on the present time. In 1927 Underhill moved to the University of Toronto, where he taught history until retirement in 1955. He was not really an historian, but a student of ideas and political institutions and a commentator on politics, whose extensive reading on the past and present, and ability to express himself with wit and clarity, help explain something of the reason for his excellence as a teacher and his following among students. His forte was the essay and the commentary on public affairs. In the period 1930-42 The Canadian Forum became the medium for much of his writing energy. This journal, founded in 1920, endeavoured to articulate a 4 Ibid., 124-56 5 Ibid., 157-72 passim xii / Preface Canadian point of view.6 Underhill himself espoused the point of view of western farmers in the journal; he strove to enlist intellectuals in the definition and solution of social and economic problems. Implicit too in much of his writing is the aim of transforming the country's climate of opinion. His point of view could be found in hundreds of signed and un- signed editorials and reviews of books on politics, history, and the political and economic institutions of Canada, Great Britain, the Empire, the Com- monwealth, and the United States. As the depression worsened, Underhill' s thought moved in a socialist direction and concentrated on the deficiencies of Canadian capitalism and the need for an organization to make Canadians aware of those deficiencies and to provide remedies. In 1932 Underhill, Frank Scott of McGill Univer- sity, and other Canadian intellectuals founded the League for Social Re- construction.7 Its name defines its purpose, and in the seven years of its existence the League exercised considerable influence. It published a book, Social Planning for Canada (1935), as well as pamphlets, and its leaders made frequent speeches for a socialist Canada. They also contributed a great deal to the founding and the policies of a Canadian socialist party - the ccF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) - a party of farmers, intellectuals, and trade unionists. Underhill himself wrote the first draft of the 'Regina Manifesto,' which proclaimed the goals of the ccF (1933). He also made many addresses spreading the social gospel and was in frequent consultation with ccF leaders. But the teacher, the essayist, and the public gadfly was unhappy as a compromising politician. His thought was drifting from social action to the liberty of the individual. Fear of fascism and the prospect of war accentuated this drift. The probability of Canada's participation in another war especially aroused his vigorous opposition. His use of anti-imperialist arguments against participation led his thought in an anti-British direction. One of his most notorious anti-British comments was made as a result of the establishment by Prime Minister King and President Roosevelt in August 1940 of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. Canada, Underhill affirmed, had 'two loyalties - one to Britain, and the other to North America ... The relative 6 For Underhill and The Canadian Forum, see below, 'F.H.U. of The Canadian Forum,' by Margaret Prang. 7 For an account of the League see Michiel Horn, 'The League for Social Reconstruc- tion' (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Glendon College) xiii / Preface importance of Britain is going to sink no matter what happens.' Because of discouragement to recruiting implied in this statement, Arthur Meighen in effect requested the minister of justice to have Underhill interned, as was done with the neo-fascist Camillien Houde, former mayor of Mont- real.

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