Review

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EDITORIAL PAGE x

TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associa te Editor — RITA WHYTE, Business Manager.
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Comment

Authorized as second class mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa

We were to accept the old dictum
at money is the “root of all evil,”
_&€ would be cheering on our doughty
Sred premier who, like a valiant
: hi RN Quixote, plans to lay on with
us trusty sword at the “root” by lop-
Ping 10 cents off our already well-
Tunk dollar as a means of stimulat-
1g trade.
Wearing his infectious Lillooet
juule, Premier Bennett told 500 week-
oe Newspaper editors last week that
| ~aNada’s high-priced dollar is crip-
mane her world trade and generally
q ocking hell out of our foreign and
_ Mestic markets, industrial. profits
D SO on, Altogether a most unhap-
tay State of affairs which he feels
ae be resolved by selling our raw
Taterials cheap and buying our im-
*°tted manufactures dear. As he
— Roted,
Woul
Us d

receive the premium on every
ai dollar it received and, as he
eo to note, every B. C. housewife
“SE ud Pay more for imported goods
»,,200ds manufactured from imported
Materials.

noe OF
It is just possible Bennett may not
ave heard of the Geneva “summit”
“onference, There, at least, it was well
Sahaay that it was the suicidal policies
oe ae war dollar imperialism which
; tri brought about trade barriers, res-
_ “tions and hostilities.

a apparently missed Geneva,
that Would be justified in thinking
tigh CeRRett might stick to the Bri-
{9 Columbia Social Credit Manifes-
he of 1936, published by the party
. Now heads. !
the nder the clause on Foreign Trade
~, Socred Manifesto says:

canetasing power equal to the goods
to; ed and therefore would be able
age all the goods imported. For-
aa trade, dying under old-fashioned
ed Systems, would flourish under

Mo
Sectal Credit.” :
oa Teader is quite free to write
‘dp an Bank of Commerce Socred
‘a tegt (Or, Einar Gunderson for a cor-
ay “Hinition of “old-fashioned” and
M ©xplanation of the premier’s latest!

Coalition government in hand-
Yank our natural resources to the
Pose, €e war trusts, Bennett now pro-

xe
Pere. to give them an additional ten
ang ot to stimulate their looting —
“thigy nother ten percent or more when
yz) Sell the loot back to us.
Wrote Probability ‘the scribe who
Never the Socreds’ 1936 Manifesto
ig -* heard of W. A. C. Bennett. It
hargially likely that. the Kelowna
ur, ~Merchant with his Tory-
Polij.. 2 Ambitions in business and
8tibe never heard of the Socred
Woutg Who predicted that Social Credit
the y.., tse the standard of living of
that ast mass of poorer Canadians to
vow enjoyed by the rich,” and
Sleight. € simple process of a little
bi” Ofhand juggling with a dollar
as ge Most costly experiment as far

€ common people are concerned!
Olay housewife knows that the
Of tp, today is worth about 35 cents
ants Pre-war dollar. Now Bennett
by 15 to solve all our economic ills
tani, eine off another 10 cents and

Soe it “prosperity.”
€r, can you spare a dime?

the Powell River Company |

-. the people would always have |

Premier Bennett's opportunity

QO of the most encouraging
developments in the long

struggle for an all-Canadian na-
tural gas pipeline, is the tentative
agreement between the federal gov-
ernment and the Ontario govern-

. ment to set up a crown corpora-

tion to begin construction on the
Ontario’ section of the pipeline to
the Manitoba border.

It is to be hoped that the pro-
vincial: governments west of On-
tario, and particularly here in Bri-
tish Columbia, will follow suit
and begin negotiations with Otta-
wa, designed to fit into the all-
Canadian natural gas pipeline

grid.”
Last week the Board of Trans-
port Commissioners approved’ the
application of TransCanada Pipe-
lines to begin construction of the
Toronto-Montreal section. A lot
of back-room pressure politics have
been (and are being played) by

“e

powerful U.S. gas and oil trusts
and their ‘‘front’” men in Canada
for control of our natural gas and
only the strength of public opinion
rallied by the LPP, the trade
unions and other groups, has pre-
vented the St. Laurent govern-
ment’s policy of ‘‘integration’
with the U.S. from selling our na-
tural gas heritage across the bor-

‘der. But the issue is not yet

The duty of the B.C. govern-
ment is clear. It should follow
the federal-Ontario lead by estab-
lishing a similar jointly-financed

Crown company in B.C., charged’

with the building of the B.C. link
in a great nation-wide natural gas
grid, thereby assuring to domestic

and industrial consumers the low- ©

est possible cost for a great asset,
and equally important, ensuring
that our’ natural gas resources
shall be used first for development
of our own country.

Back to Methusalah! ~

OST of us are familiar with

the Socred government's

road construction signs, “Sorry for
the inconvenience, but .. .’’ That

courteous ‘‘but’’ contains a few
gimmicks, one of them being High-

ways Minister P. A. Gaglardi’s rez
cent proposition for construction
of a number of ‘“‘toll’’ roads where

the motorist, already burdened

by numerous imposts, can be tax-
~ ed again for travelling on roads he

has already paid for twice over.

With these polite roadside ap-.

ology signs scattered around on
almost every road throughout the
lower end of this province, the
Bennett government hopes to cre-

work of ‘‘toll’’

ate the impression that it has a vast
highways program scheme under
way, and ‘all that is required is a
little patience. ; : '

Gaglardi’s proposition for a net-
highways puts a
different complexion on the “‘apo-
logies’’ and their sponsors. The

medieval concept of “‘toll’’ roads —

belongs to early feudalism and has

no place -in a modern state, par: .

ticularly when road traffic is
taxed to an extent sufficient to
provide the ‘best in highway con-
struction.

What B.C. needs is more and

_ better highways and bridges, less

“apologies” and an end to tolls!

ICK and Jane, those constant com-
~ panions of our children from the
day they start school, will soon have
to. embark on a trip through space,
to judge by an incident in one of our
grade one classrooms the other day.

One little boy came to the front

_ of the class and solemnly placed on

his teachers’ desk a ball of plasticine
with a pencil stuck into it.

“What is that, Mark?” his teacher
asked. ‘

“That’s a mountain on Mars,” said
Mark. Then he pointed to the pen-
cil. “And that’s a spear a thousand
years old.”

Whether it’s the influence of the
comics, TV, the movies, cereal pro-
motion campaigns or toy counters,
space travel has completely captivated
the newest generation. In imag-
ination, at least, they have already
accepted this greatest adventure
awaiting the human race even while,
in the world they are only beginning
to understand, we are struggling to
ensure that our mastery of atomic
energy shall be the start of this
greatest adventure—not the end.

m a 5° 3

To many of us, perhaps, the idea
of space travel is a little unrealistic,
a little incongruous.

We live in a world where men
still hunt their food with spears and
break the earth in springtime with
primitive ploughs, while the farm ma-
chines of our advanced capitalist coun-
tries pile up surpluses we deny to peo- .
ples crying for food.

On remote hillsides men still stand
in the quiet of night and look up at
the stars in uncomprehending wonder,
as men have done since the dawn of
the race, while other men chart dis-
tant galaxies with all the precision
instruments of modern science.

Within the confines of our world
we retain remnants of our whole so-
cial history, tribal, feudal, capitalist
and now socialist systems. Why seek
other worlds when we have yet to
master our own?

Yet it is precisely this socialist so-
ciety, which has demonstrated its ca-
pacity for raising thé most™backward
peoples to the levél of ‘the most ‘ad-
vanced, that will lead man to the
conquest of space as it will to the
mastery of his own world.

Space travel requires the mobiliza-
‘tion of resources, human and material,
on a scale beyond the capacity of any
one capitalist monopoly. The poten-
tialities of atomic energy, harnessed
to peacetime production, bring into
sharper Outline the contradiction be-
tween the profits of those who own
and the needs of those who labor.

Only a socialist society can fully
plan and organize all its resources
for the conquest of space. The proof
of that lies in the fact that the Soviet
Union, against all the difficulties of a
country trying to reach in decades
the industrial level it has taken the
advanced capitalist countries centur-
ies to achieve, has nevertheless equal-
led and in some instances
the atomic development of the U.S.

So let the young fry dream of fly-
ing to the moon. In the world we
Pioneer for them they will not only
break man’s bondage to himself but
free him of his bondage to Earth it-
self.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 23, 1955 — PAGE 5