General Andrew George Latta McNaughton PC CH CB CMG DSO CD (25 February 1887 – 11 July 1966) was a Canadian electrical engineer, scientist, army officer, cabinet minister, and diplomat.

[2] Both of McNaughton's parents were immigrants from Scotland, and his youth was a happy one, being brought up by an adventuresome father who had once been a trader in buffalo hides and a kindly, loving mother.

[4] His parents had both converted to the Church of England, voted Conservative and like many other Anglo-Canadians in the Victorian era strongly identified with the British Empire.

[7] As an undergraduate, he applied for a commission in the Indian Army with the hope of a joining a famous cavalry regiment, saying it been his boyhood dream to serve the British Empire in India.

[15] McNaughton slept on the floor, consumed the same bully beef rations as the average soldier, saying he was a farm boy at heart and did not need a bed or better food while preferring to be addressed as Andy instead of by his rank.

[17] A technique McNaughton had developed to measure the wear on cannon barrels and make adjustments to their aiming proved to be vital on April 9, 1917, when the Canadian Corps assaulted Vimy Ridge.

[19] McNaughton's role in using operational research to map out precisely where the German artillery guns were on Vimy Ridge and then taking them out made his reputation.

[25] McNaughton wrote that the best way of defeating the "Bolshevik peril" was "to have immediately available an efficient military body with which to overawe this unruly element, and secondly, by education, to convert them from their perverted ideals to a true conception of citizenship".

[26] At the same time, McNaughton was referred to as "a master military bureaucratic politician" who fought hard for more funding for defence and as a general who was so interested in scientific problems who had "attacks of the gadgets" during staff meetings, as he was always fascinated by science and technology.

[26] To secure more military funding from hostile politicians, McNaughton, whom many viewed as the most powerful civil servant in Ottawa during the interwar period, pushed strongly for northern development.

[26] McNaughton's interests reached beyond the military as he became the most powerful civil servant in Ottawa in the interwar period, and promoted the militia as a "school for the nation."

He argued that the "foundations of military efficiency" rested upon providing a patriotic education to male citizens by way of their service in the militia, which would lead to the "creation of a national spirit," the fostering of which McNaughton tended to see as his principal duty.

[29] Ralston vetoed McNaughton's plans to upgrade the equipment of the permanent force militia and to build more arsenals, saying that the Liberals would not be "Merchants of Death".

[26] During the interwar period, McNaughton was widely credited with inventing the cathode ray tube, which enhanced his reputation as a brilliant scientist-general, making him the best-known Canadian soldier and scientist around the world.

[28] As a result, the majority of officers holding senior positions in the Canadian Army in World War II were artillerymen, engineers and signals men.

[28] McNaughton insisted that officers seeking high command attend courses at the Imperial Defence College which provided much training for questions of grand strategy.

[34] What appeared to be a humanitarian effort to aid the unemployed and indigent and prevent the propagation of revolution soon turned into a hotbed of dissent due to the draconian disciplinary measures adopted.

[39] Ralston chose to make an issue of the fact that McNaughton had agreed to send the 1st Division to Norway without consulting Ottawa first, saying this was an illegal act.

Brooke had been the Staff Officer Royal Artillery in the Canadian Corps during the First World War and organized the "creeping barrages" in support of the assaults at the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

[51] McNaughton's reputation was badly damaged by the Exercise Spartan war games held on 4–12 March 1943, which he described as "a dress rehearsal for the full-scale invasion of the Continent".

[56] As Churchill had described Italy as the "soft underbelly" of the Axis, King believed the up-coming Italian campaign would provide an opportunity for easy victories that would not cause too many casualties, and insisted to the British that a Canadian division had to take part in Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, saying the Canadian people would be unhappy with him if the war ended with only battles for Canada being Hong Kong and Dieppe.

[59] Operation Husky began on 9 July 1943, and McNaughton complained much when the initial press releases announcing the invasion did not mention the Canadians were taking part.

[59] In a memo to Defence Minister James Ralston, McNaughton wrote: "The important thing for Canada at the end of the war is to have her army together under the control of a Canadian".

[67] The Canadian historians Jack Granatstein and Desmond Morton noted: "The news of Ralston's sacking put the conscription crisis on the front pages in screaming headlines.

[69] McNaughton tried to appeal to the "Zombies" (men who had been conscripted for the defence of Canada, so-called because they were soldiers who could not legally fight overseas) to volunteer for Europe, but his speeches failed to move his audiences, who instead booed him.

[67] Later on 22 November 1944, McNaughton telephoned King to say as the prime minister wrote in his diary: "The Headquarters staff here had all advised him that the voluntary system would not get the men...It was the most serious advice that could be tended".

[72] Case in a speech stated that it was wrong for the "most British riding in Canada" to vote for McNaughton, whom he accused of pandering to Quebec, a province that was "lacking in courage, loyalty and resolve, a community which has deteriorated till we find them paying tribute to those who would hamper the war effort".

[73] John Diefenbaker, a Conservative MP from Saskatchewan arrived in Grey North to campaign for Case, giving speeches where he claimed that Quebec was the province of deserters while Ontario was the province of volunteers and like Bracken claimed that McNaughton was a weak defence minister who was pandering to Quebec by his alleged order not to prosecute the thousands of Zombies who were said to have deserted since November.

[74] Another journalist, Wilfried Eggleston, reported that had Mrs. McNaughton been a Protestant, the general would almost certainly had won the Grey North by-election, writing that this was "a deplorable factor in a country like Canada, but nobody denies that it is influential".

[2] His son, Brigadier-General Edward Murray Dalziel Leslie (né McNaughton) was commander of 1st Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and served during the Korean War.