Review
Put people's
welfare first

FHE people of this country may

well ask their MPs what they
were doing last week when a cold
War appropriation budget of
b1,755,000,000 passed the
douse of Commons without so
Much as a protest from any
sorner of the House?

These military expenditures
present almost half of the total
lational revenue. We have “‘no
Money’ for education, social
ervices, decent pensions for the
iged, the blind and the disabled.

e have ‘“‘no money”’ for sports,
fecreation or health. But we have
unlimited funds for radar net-
works that are obsolete before
they are completed, for military
spending that the current inter-
hational situation is demonstra-
ting as needless.

The St. Laurent government,
and particularly its cabinet, has
grown fat and arrogant in office.
It has become contempuous of
the people, contemptuous of even
ts own back-benchers. Other-
Wise it would realize that cold
War spending on an undiminish-
ed scale is contrary to: ever
Popular sentiment and need.

This military appropriation is
at once part and parcel of the
selling out of our natural re-
sources to the United States. It
is the burden imposed upon the
Canadian people by the St.
Laurent government's policy of

integration,’ which robs us
of our independence.

_The real defense of the
People’s interests lies in inter-
hational friendship and trade, in
ifting the burden of armaments
So that we can provide properly

for the people’s health and
Welfare,

a

Pacific Tribune

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A: Editor —- TOM McEWEN .
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_. . Comment

Forty-two years afterward

FORTY-TWO years ago this

week, on- thé morning of
August 4, the guns of the First
World War roared their. defi-
ance to sanity and drenched the
world in blood for four long
years.

Long before the actual out-
break of war the battle lines
were already well drawn. All
that was needed to touch off the
holacaust was an “‘incident’? —
and an assassination at Sarajevo
provided it?

Among the millions of dead

and maimed to ‘‘make the world
safe for democracy’ were 60,000

Canadians.

The —“Bie > Four,”

years later to the Second.

Happily, on this forty-second —

Lloyd
George, Clemenceau, Orlando
and Woodrow Wilson conclud-
ed the First World War with
the Treaty of Versailles which
achieved, not the making of the the
world “‘safe for democracy’’ but
the perpetuation of the very that

policies which produced the
First World War and led 21

anniversary of the First World
War the peoples of the new
socialist world. and the old
capitalist world alike are de
claring with ever - increasing
volume and strength — Never
again. 3

Now the peoples are saving
world for peace, ‘their
strength the only sure guarantee
friendship between the
nations will prevail against the
H-bomb maniacs who would set
nation against nation to save
their own imperialist rule.

Tom
McEwen

STALE yarn, written with

the idea in mind that work-
ers have short memories, is go-
ling the rounds. It appeared
first in the New York Times
and a lot of the big dailies, like
crows selecting a piece of carri-
on, have reprinted it. The Van-
couver Sun gave it a whirl in
its July 11 edition.

This yarn is entitled, ‘“Poz-
nan, Pittsburg. Two Strikes
Reveal Difference In Ways of
Red, Free Worlds.’ The theme
is an old one that, when work-
ers go on strike “for bread” in
socialist countries they are met
with tanks and guns and ruth-
lessly shot down.

In the capitalist countries no-
thing like that ever happened or
could happen. Who could even
“imagine” steelworkers march-
ing “through the streets of Pitts-
burg... shouting we want bread

. or that tanks would rumble
down the streets of Gary (Indi-
ana), or that machine’ guns
would be unlimbered in front of
the railway station in Cleve-
land?”

Who indeed, except the com-
mon people who are presumed
to have such very short memo-
ries! With amazing gall this
article tells us, “Our workers
do not have to march for bread,
nor do they have to die to make
their voice heard.”

xt $e % Z

I am not an expert. on what
happened at Poznan. From what
I have read, I think the authori-
ties messed it up a good deal
on two main counts: first, by
failure-to deal promptly with the
workers’ legitimate grievances,
and second, by failure to round
up the hooligan riff-raff on the
U.S. State Department’s ‘Pro-
ject X” payroll, the specialists
in every form of diversion, dis-
ruption and anti-government
activities (under the direction
of Allan Dulles, brother of the
“misguided missile’ who serves
as U.S. secretary of state) who
sought to exploit the workers’
grievances for their own. ends.

But let’s get back to “Pitts-
burg” and our own lily-white
trusts, cartels and corporations.

If we were to use every page of
this paper for the next twelve
months to record the killings,
the terror and the ruthless vio-
lence against American and Ca-
nadian workers by these kindly
capitalists, we would still be
short of space to tell the whole
story!

Ask the hard-rock miners, the
lumber workers, the coal miners,
the furniture and textile work-
ers, the tens of thousands who
lived through the years of the
Hungry Thirties — all struggl-
ing for unionization in order to
win “bread.”

They can tell of armed forces,
of hordes of special police, pro-
vocateurs and stoolpigeons, of
tanks and guns and the cold-
blooded murder of countless
scores of workers who organiz-
ed ‘for bread” and .got a bullet,
a vigifante lynching mob or a
prison cell. .

Yes, things were undoubtedly
bad in Poznan — but only a
fleabite by comparison with how
they have been, and will be
‘again, in all the “Pittsburgs” of
capitalist exploitation. Let’s not
get too forgetful when the mo-
nopoly press sings Te Deums to
our freedom to struggle “for
bread”. Too many graves mark
the trail of struggle!

August 3, 1956 —PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 7