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[Lady Byng of Vimy]
[strikethough][ST: The Robert Refords][/strikethrough]

Grand Metis

Private

July 21st [1926]

My dear John,

Julian shewed me your nice letter to him, and I was SO
glad you wrote, as we really have had a far far more hellish time than
any of you at home can realise or believe. How much J. will have told
you in his reply I dont know, but I hope enough to show you both what
a scurvy cad M.K. is and always has been. You were both so "entiché"
with him at Ottawa, that you never saw through him, as with more intimate knowledge one did oneself.
Now he has come out in his true colours, as totally regardless of Empire,
Crown, and everything but his own "place in the sun". As for his treatment
of J. all through that recent period it was disgusting beyond all words. For
three solid days he came up and insulted, bullied, threatened him, with
everything he could think of, in the hopes of bringing an utterly upright
man of honour to his own despicable depths of moral degradation.

Power is his watchword - the power of M.K. - and there is not one
other thing in the whole world that counts in his sight. A true Judas
Iscariot he tried to betray J. in the House, with lying protestations of
a sham affection, that had NEVER really existed, and which was only an
incidental handle to him for attempting his own advancement. That he
should have dared behave as he did, even I, who always despised and knew
him- hardly expected, and God knows I expected a goodish deal of filth,
once his power was in danger. He, and various members of his party, are as false
to England, under a mask of faithfulness, as is Bourrassa openly and blatantly.
I believe I prefer an open trator [sic] to a masked one - its a shade