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| Went
A-Hunting

I went a-hunting,

(For Truth, that shy and tattered bird),

I stalked through the pretty golden leaves
Of Readers’ Digest Magazine

And flushed out many a one

Whose plumage seemed correct,

I scored a left and right

And took them home with hopeful pride,
But when plucked and ready for the pan
All that was left was skin and bones,
Just brittle, brittle bones—

And bitter skin,

After that I chanced my luck :
In the tangled woods of Life and Time.
No birds here, Just smooth-faced apes

Who spoke like men

And clustered round and gibbered

Of their noble ones

Imposing a certain way of life,
Full seven thousand miles away,

In South Viet Nam,

Next, I tried the Paper Plains,

Where all day long it rained and rained
News and Views and Twisted Facts

That blurred and fogged the scene so much

I lost my way,

Then, I said, maybe I’ll hunt in CBC,
That ground that stretches Coast to Coast,
And here at last I caught a fleeting glimpse

(I thought), of my illusive game

Just once or twice.

But every time he got within my range
A flapping flock of foreign birds
All crowded round and hid him up.

And now I know my hunting was in vain:

Few birds of Truth could ever be

In any of those parts where I had Searched so well,
For I could easily have saved my strength

Had I but looked at where he nestled all the time—
Along the Stream of Happenings in my own life.

This Is Humor?

‘ Les McDonald, North Vancou-
er, writes: At a meeting of the
Spine Club of Canada held on
anuary 5 at the YWCA Kenneth
Kiernan, Provincial Minister of
Recreation and Conservation,
.was the guest speaker,

ie his opening remarks I was

ernately amazed and disgust-
ed, to hear him tell what he
assumed to be an amusing an-
€cdote Concerning a stubborn

mule and a“Darkie” in the “Uncle
Tom” style,

: In my opinion there can be
nly two possible reasons for the

Use of such a derogat
ory ex-
Pression, agin!

= Firstly, and simply, the result
@ Yacist outlook on life, or
€condly, ignorance of the fact

that “Darkie” like “nigger” and

“coon” and all the other epithets’
of a fast disappearing era, are
Considered by most enlightened
paces as extremely distasteful
0 Say the very least,

Whichever of the two reasons
are most valid, neither can be
acceptable coming from a cab-
inet minister, One can only as-
Sume that the great civil rights
Movement in the U.S,, culmin-
ating in Passage of the Civil
Rights Bill in Congress, plus
ne honor of Nobel Prize Winner

€stowed on the Rev. Martin
patter King, have gone complete-
ne unnoticed by Keirnan and his

. Every smug patronizing “an-
Cdote” about Negroes, Jews

—John Hope

Chinese, and indeed other races
and nationalities, carries within
it the seed which made possible
the foundation stones for Buchen-
wald, Auchswitz and Belsen.

Calls For Protest

Mrs, Mildred Liversedge,
Lake Cowichan, writes; The an-
cient treaty rights of Native In-
dians to hunt game on Crown lands
out of season were upheld by a
majority decision of the B.C.
Court of Appeal.

The attorney-general’s de-
partment immediately announced
that the decision will be appealed
to the Supreme Court of Canada.

This should prompt all pro-
gressive and right- thinking
people to protest to their MLA’s
and. the attorney-general at such
a betrayal of the rights of our
Indian population.

The right to hunt and fish is
their birthright andthe white man
gave promises and made treaties
to guarantee these people thosé
rights, We took their land, des-
troyed their culture, dignity,
pride of race, now we renege on
our promises!

Is it any wonder the Indian
people distrust the white manand
his promises?

We owe it to these people to
defeat this reactionary move by-
the attorney-general’s depart--
ment. Now is the time to act,

(Mildred Liversedge’s letter
appeared in a Vancouver Island
paper, and since its publication
she has received many acknow-
ledgements of appreciation from
the Indian and other peoples of
the area—Ed.)

By TOM McEWEN

here are some things that

the unerring hand of Time
can never erase or destroy—the
songs and poems of Robbie Burns
among them, When January 25th,
the 206th anniversary ofthe birth
of Scotland’s ploughman poet
rolls around, that imperishable
truth will once again be con-
firmed, So long as Humanity sur-
vives, so also “The Immortal
Memory” of Robbie Burns,

Not only in his native Scotland
which he loved with all the ardent
fire of a patriot genius, buttoday
around the world where peoples
of all climes and color will sing
his songs and recite his poems
in their own tongue, They too will
feel a close and warm kinship
in their own struggles for inde-
pendence, liberty and life with the
inspiring heritage bequeathed to
them over two centuries ago by
a humble poverty-stricken Ayr-
shire plowman,

On the living harp ofScotland’s
national Bard, every natural
human emotion finds exquisitive
‘expression, Laughter, tears, the
will to fight and struggle, the deep
sorrow of, suffering and death,
the horror of war and the un-
surpassed joy of peace—of new
life—of a new future which greets
the day,

When Man to Man the world

ow’er,

Shall brithers be for a’ that,

To all the courageous and de-
termined workers for peace in
this atomic age, in which Man
holds a great potential in his
hand, uncertain as yet whether
to use its great power for human
weal or devastating woe, Robbie
Burns points the way inhis*Tree
of Liberty,” his tribute to the
first great French Revolution:

Wi’ plenty o’ sic trees, I trow,

The warld wad live in peace,
man;

The sword wad help tae mak a
plow,

Th’ din o’ war wad cease, man,

Like brethern in a common
cause,

We’d on each other smile, man;

And equal rights and equal laws

Wad gladden every isle, man,

Those golden words encompass
the hopes and longings of cen-
turies for a peaceful and happy
world of Tomorrow—if only Man-
kind could unite, reach out, and

ROBERT BURNS
‘Man’s a man for a’ that’

take it from the “courtly ver-

‘min” as the Bard described them,

who “grat (wept) to see it thrive,
man,”

Ih his day Robbie Burns knew
his grit and tory windbag politi-
cians much better than a lot of
us do 206 years later, Then as
now these parliamentary aspir-
ants were lavish with their stand-
ard bait for votes, “promises,”
and like their successors of to-
day, equally poor hands at de-
livering the goods,

In his * Address to the Scottish
MP’s in the House of Commons”
Burns wrote:

In gathering votes ye wer’na
slack;

Now stand as tightly by your
tack;

Ne’er claw your lug, and fidge
you back,

And hum and haw;

But raise your arm an’ tell
your crack

Before them a’,

In other words, come back be-
fore the electorate and give an
account of what has been done

People cheer, but

ontroversial Jacques Singer
C2 to Vancouver last
week to conduct two capacity con-
certs in the Queen Elizabeth
Theatre, and was greeted with
enthusiasm from the audiences
and sour notes from the critics,

Too many of us are apt to
forget that the foundations of the
lively musical life we enjoy here
today was laid in large part in
the late forties by Jacques Sing-
er and those he inspired by his
enthusiasm,

He more than anyone else
helped rescue symphonic music
from the exclusive possession of
the mink cape Sunday afternoon
crowd and bring it to the ordin-
ary people — particularly the
young. He shocked the staid dow-
agers by some of his unconven-
tional methods—holding orches-
tra rehearsals in a union hall,

for example, but he was respon-
sible for the tremendously suc=
cessful “pop” concerts and the
concerts for school children.

This isnota musical criticism,
but for this ordinary concert-
goer Monday night’s concert was
an exciting experience, Jan Cher-
niavsky is past his prime as a
concert pianist—true, but he is

Jan Cherniavsky

Time cannot erase songs
and poems of Robbie Burns

for all the fine pre-election
promises mate while “gathering
votes,”

From his deep affinity and love
of all Nature, Burns abhorred
the wanton killing and destruc-
tion of all wild life,

Inhuman man! Curse on thy
barbarous art,

And blasted be thy murder-
aiming eye;

May never pity sooth thee with
a sigh

Nor never pleasure glad thy
cruel heart,

Nowhere in this kinship be-
tween the Bard and Nature’s
children in this close affinity so
poignantly expressed as in his
poem “To a Mouse,” when the
blade of his plow cut through its
little nest of stubble, and drove
the tiny creature out into the
November. chill, fear-stricken
and homeless:

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion

Has broken Nature’s social
union

And justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle,

At me, thy poor, earth-born
companion,

An’ fellow-mortal,

From the hour of his birth on

the morning of January 25, 1759,

to the accompaniment of araging
storm outside—which took the
roof off his parents’ humble * clay
biggin,” to the hour of his death
on July 21, 1796, Robbie Burns
knew little else than dire poverty,
hardship and misfortune, The
stubborn soil of the farms of
Mount Oliphant and Mossgiel gave
little in return save endless toil
and poverty, Yet, as his plow cut
through the unyielding soil, his
Genius poured forth a torrent of
poetry and song that today ree
sounds around the world, giving
all who come within its deeply
human warmth, a new hope and
a new courage to struggle on
SPOras iat. oe

The “Immortal Memory” of
Scotland’s Bard is now a world-
wide heritage, honored and re-
vered by millions of all colors,
races and creeds,

The humble ploughman who
gave to his Scotland a priceless
gift, now belongs to all humanity,
The struggles and hopes and
dreams and happiness of all, find
a brilliant and inspiring reflec-
tion in his songs and poems,

not critics

still able to share with his audi-
ences his own tremendous love
and feeling for great music, and
the orchestra responded to the
conductor with a richness oftone
seldom heard here,

Let us hope that the Symphony
Society will listen more closely
to the opinions of the audience
than to those of the critics, —R.&.

Jacques Singer

January 22, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9

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