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 Subscription Rates: ba One Year: $4.00 Sy Six months: $2.25 toygatadian and Commonwealth Ne ties (except Australia): $4.00 ana Year, Australia, United States all other countries: $5.00 one = year, 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