Review

and crooked

jt IS rumored that Prime Min-
ister Louis St. Lauent tends
'0 drop his avuncular pose
Whenever his government is
| “arged with having sold this
“| Ountry’s resources and indepen-
nf Cece to the U.S. financial royal-
Ms. To this charge his publicity
tides give the stock reply —
““ommunist propaganda.’
Down at Colorado Springs,
ai Where the Continental Air De-
‘nse Command maps its strat-
“sy, the U.S. top brass are not
m 8 all considerate of St. Laurent’s
+ Political difficulties. To them this
ck Ountry is not only a ‘49th
“| “fate” whose people can be ut
am} Sly disregarded in the atomic
“struction for which they plan.
Borders,’’ they state, ‘“‘mean
Mothing.’’ Their plan is to “‘hit
“a enemy as far f rom our bord-
+ © aS possible.’’ With the So-
wet Union tagged as’ ‘‘the
‘Nemy,”’ Canada is destined in

| their eyes to be an atomic battle-
/ Sound.

‘2B

IU: Y their own admission, the
“8. top Brass have made it
j that the independence of
" Fa country “‘means nothing”’
|. ‘he nightmare of nuclear war-
tte ever becomes the reality.
I. heir statements have demok
i med all St. Laurent’s attempts
gi “lsmiss the painfully obvious
at “hsequences of his government's
an Policies as “communist propa-

a

=
SS
st

a

; Cleay

4 .

A ot so Canadians a new nation-
fi Icy of peace and friendship
all countries becomes a
5 ‘estion of national’ survival.
. a need to free our country
| fan ae dangerous cold war en-
Perens is inseparable from
.~ ight to regain our real na-

}0nal ;
— 4 independence.
—

IPacific Tribune

. Published weekly at
i Roo

m 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.

: Phone: MArine 5288
E Aso etitor — TOM McEWEN

I Ry ctte Editor — HAL GRIFFIN
~ness Manager — RITA WHYTE
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Mraight talk

EDITORIAL PAGE

Small frog -
large pond

“a VERY small frog in a large

pond’’ was how one Toron-
tonian described Premier W. A.
C. Bennett’s debut in Massey
Hall last week.

The arrival of several Social
Credit bigwigs in Toronto, pre-
ceded by a big advertising build-
up and fascinating pictures of
the B.C. and Alberta which have

emerged since the advent of So-
cial Credit, failed to stir Toronto.

Premier Bennett was in his
best form and wearing his most '
fetching smile. Members of the
audience who hailed from this
province often had to pinch

_ themselves to realize that he was

extolling the happy state of life
they found themselves in as a
direct result-of a benificent So-
cred regime.

‘‘He’s got a good line,’ an-
other old Toronto resident with
an Empire Loyalist outlook com-
mented, ‘‘but why swap a.good
Tory for a hybrid?’’

Comment

Tom
McEwen

pant WEEK I travelled from
Ottawa to Winnipeg in a coach
crowded with Hungarian “free-
dom fighters” and their families,
a part of many boatloads still
scheduled to come here under
the St. Laurent-Pickersgill scheme
for flooding this country with
cheap labor. '

Frankly, I felt very sorry for
those people, the victims rather
than the promoters of counter-
revolution. A few had jobs to
go to at the end of their journey,
but many -were simply being
transferred from British hostels
where they have been since the
Hungarian events, to Canadian
compounds like Abbotsford, Na-
naimo and other centres of a
similar character.

Some of these Immigrants were
hopeful that things would work
out “good” for them in Canada,
while others were clearly pessi-
mistic and: wondering if just an-
other “run-around” awaited them.

Of course, our Canadian gov-
ernment was a “very nice” gov-
ernment in the sense that it was

providing transportation, a sub-
sistence allowance, and unlimited
promises. I agreed that this “nice”
government was doing much bet-
ter by its Hungarian “freedom
fighters” than it was by its senior
citizens and other pensioners who
had fought for and built Canada,
and that in neither case was the
term “nice” sufficiently descrip-
tive. In this I don’t think my
observations registered very
deeply.

Some of these “freedom fight-
ers” spoke of the conditions back
home before the U.S.-sponsored
counter-revolution in Hungary;
of their social and health ser-
vices, their jobs and their homes.
Not too good, because of those
blankety-blank Communists, but,
and I noted a nostalgic note in
the narratives, a great deal bet-
ter in some respects than they
(or the rest of us) are likely to
have here for some time to come
yet.

e3 neg a

Having been an ‘immigrant my-
self some 46 years ago, with noth-
ing in my pocket and a north of
Scotland dialect almost as alien
to Canada as the halting English
of some of these Hungarian “‘free-
dom fighters,” I could understand
their fears, worries, and some of
their hopes.

Theirs is also the added handi-
cap of being a victim of or a
participant in cold-war counter-
revolution against their own peo-
ple and class — the latter never

an asset in starting life in a new
country, be it capitalist or so-
cialist.

Often I studied the faces of
these Hungarian immigrants as
they watched the panorama of
Canada rolling past. The surging
rivers breaking the long ice-bound
chains of winter; the rich ver-
dant greens of the forests taking
on the new mantle of spring; the
vast prairies once again pregnant
with their new life of abundance.
All this the Hungarian “freedom
fighters” drank in with wonder,
amazement and joy.

What they didn’t see would
have been futile and cruel to try
to tell them. at the moment. That
they will learn themselves — the
hard way, as indeed many of
their compatriots are now do-
ing in old army compounds or in
the homes of hospitable but bad-
ly confused Canadians who “took
in” a Hungarian family ahd are
now, themselves being “took in”
by what looks like a permanent
imposition of dumped “freedom
fighters” on their doorstep.

While the trains roll westwards
to the ‘free world” with their
new quotas of “freedom fighters”
hundreds of Hungarian immi-
grants are now demanding that
the powers who uprooted them
from their socialist homeland get
busy and help them to return.

They are learning that fancy
promises of jobs and wealth don’t
fill bellies or replace Socialist
gains!

TMM OCH OMT AIL

MAY 3, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 7

TMT