Each Soviet —
Republic now
has own flag

By RALPH PARKER |
MOSCOW

Each of the 16 Union Republics
comprising the Soviet Union now

8S its own flag.

During the May Day celebrations
Moscow, as the capital of the
USSR, displayed mainly the familiar

Viet flag, red with the hammer
and sickle depicted in gold in the
Upper corner near the staff, sur-
mounted by a five-pointed red'star
bordered in gold.

But outside the city most public
buildings flew the new flag of the
Russian Soviet Federal Socialist
Republic, largest of the 16 Union
Republics, :

_ This new flag, which has come
into official used during recent
months, is red, with a narrow blue
Vertical stripe down the edge/par-
allel to'the staff, and a gold ham-
mer and sickle in the top corner
Rear the staff, surmounted by a
Sold-outlined red star. of

National flags, mainly with vari-
ations of either blue, white or
Steen horizontal or vertical stripes
®n the red ground with hammer,
Sickle and star in the top corner
Rear the staff, are now displayed
in all the other republics.

Communists gain
in Scottish vote

LONDON
Communists have been elected to
€ councils of Cowdenbeath, Whit-
burn, and Greenock in the Scottish
tunicipal elections.
. An outstanding victory was won
'a Greenock by Communist candi-
date Phil Canning, who defeated
1s Labor opponent to regain the
Seat he lost to Labor in 1950.
‘aDor won a ,record two-to-one
Majority in Glasgow and made sub-
Stantial gains in Dundee and Edin-
burgh,
_ Kirkealdy has for the first ‘time
in its history a Labor majority on

its council. Labor also won con-
Ol of Paisley, Renfrew and Kil-
Winning,

Q

conference at Hiroshima, Japan.

Returning to Canada from a tour
of Japan — where he found a great
wave of fear and horror still sweep-
ing that country after the US.
hydrogen bomb explosions in the
Pacific — Dr. James G. Endicott,
chairman of the Canadian Peace
Congress, is planning an immedi-
ate speaking tour of Canada to re-
port on his experiences.

Dr. Endicott attended the World
Pacifist Congress in Tokyo, where
Christian and Buddhist pacifists
from Asia, Europe and North Am-
erica’ gathered to press for world
peace. ‘ ;

He spoke at an impressive ser-
vice at the explosion point in
Hiroshima, the city that was
martyred by the first atom bomb
used to destroy men, women and

n.

Poe rabicalt told the Japanese
people of the standing pledge taken
by 1,500 delegates at a national
peace .congress held recently in
Toronto: “In memory of the victims
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. . . we
pledge to work to see that the
atomic horror shall never be visit-
ed upon our children or upon any
children, and ‘to do all within our
power to bring about the triumph
of lasting peace.”

The Canadian peace missionary
held discussions with scientists who

Here Dr. J. G. Endicott (arrow) is shown speaking to a pacifist

Endicott says horror,
fear sweeping Japan

had examined the effects of the
Bikini-spawned radioactivity on the
fishermen and general population
of Japan.

"Some of the fishermen are
dying in agony,” he said. “AI-
most every day a contaminated
boat came into port.”

Dr. Endicott was one of the com-
mittee that drafted the strong re-

solution adopted by the assembled
pacifists on the Bikini tests.

At the Hiroshima session of the
conference a further resolution
warned against “the ultimate de-
struction of mankind” and called
for the “prohibition of all atomic
weapons” even if they should be
used in retaliation.

The conference also met at the
site of the second atomic death ex-
plosion, Nagasaki, as well as at
Tokyo and five other Japanese
cities.

There is a general demand in
Japan for the evacuation of U.S.
troops and a resentment against
the existence of 800 U.S. bases on
their soil. The Japanese people
say: “We are not going to be used
as Asians to fight Asians.”

Widespread fear of contamin-
ated fish, in a country where fish

is a principal item of diet, has
affected the livelihood of many
Japanese people following the
H-bomb explosions in the Pacific.

Self-styled ‘murder agent’ now in Washington

Spy

BERLIN
“Captain” Nikolai Khokhlov,
Self-styled Soviet “murder agent”

ee is the central figure in the
“atest U.S. spy scare, is now recit-
‘0X8 his testimony behind closed
doors in Washington and presum-
“oe Won’t be available for ques-
‘oning until he has smoothed out
© many flaws in the sensational
hed he told to a carefully staged
'“S. press conference at Bonn re-
ently, - :
. This week Khokhlov was appeat-
‘8 before the U.S. Senate internal
Curity. committee at whose be-
st he was flown from Britain to
the yg’.

Earlier, British officials who had
testioned Khokhlov and examin-
Is evidence — he claimed to
4ve been sent by the Russians to
in tder an anti-Communist emigre
ing tankfurt—were reported as be-
S “favorably impressed.”
ety they should be so impress-
the.» Curious. To say the least,
lasve are parts of his story calcu-
ated to strike anyone as being odd.
(M. s, Handler, New York Times
‘respondent in Berlin, cabled on
fart 28 that Khokhlov’s “reasons
t defecting to the West are being
Atestioned by an increasing num-
®t of persons ‘in Bonn.”)

co

Strangest thing about his story

is that part dealing with the weap-
ons which were supposed to have
been used in the murder mission.

These consisted of electrically
fired silent pistols and dummy
cigarette-cases, discharging poison
bullets.

U.S. official at the press confer-
ences said these weapons were of
“a yery unusual nature” and had
been specially manufactured by the
Russians. :

But a spokesman for the world-
famous firm of London gunsmiths,
E. J. Churchill Ltd., said there was
“nothing new” about such weap-
ons. oe

imilar weapons are repor
i seat Te in Buffalo and other U.S.
cities and are fairly common among
U.S. gangsters.) ;

Weapons in the shape of cigar-
ette cases and lighters and foun-
tain pens had been made in Eur-
ope “for years,” according to the
spokesman for the London firm.

Khokhlov — he was once an
“artistic whistler” in variety — is
31. Yet he is said to have told
U:S. officials details of the part
which he claims Russian agents
playad in the murder of Leon
Trotsky in Mexico in 1940. ;

is also supposed to have
vee details of the facts behind
the unsolved disappearance of the

yarn full of holes

featit General Kutepov in Paris in
1930.

Khokhlov would have been 17
at the time of Trotsky’s death
and only seven when Kutepov
disappeared, but the world is
asked to believe that he was tak-
en into the confidence of those
who are said to have directed
these operations.

A strange way for a secret ser-
vice to operate, but it becomes
even stranger when Khokhlovy’s
background—as he himself told it
—is considered. ‘

He seenis to have done little to
inspire confidence. During the war,
he told the press conference, he
was given instructions to kill Von
Papen in Turkey.

His nerves were in too bad a
state so he never made the trip.

More recently, he was asked to
go on a murder mission to France.
Again he got out of the job by
saying that his nervous system did
not permit him to “accept such a
responsibility.”

Yet the twice-nervous “spy” was
apparently given another chance
to make good.

The U.S. sub-committee, seek-
ing political grist for its mills,
is interested only in questioning
Khokhlov. The public will be
more inclined to question his
story!

Dr. Bellamy points out

radiation in the world by an

“Concurrent with this,” he says,
“has been a corresponding increase
in the number of persons potenti-
ally exposed to these radiations.”

Dr. Bellamy warns that radia-
tion exposure is extremely insid-
ious.

“None of the human senses can
detect it. The effects of radiation
exposure may not show up for
weeks, months or years.’””

Both Dr. Bellamy, who is chief
of California’s division of radio-
logical services, and his assistant,
Dr. John N. Heslep, ‘a consultant to
University of California’s atomic
energy project, are concerned over
the effect atomic explosions may
have on human life by raising the
level of radioactivity. :

Dr. Heslep estimates that the ex-
plosion of even one A-bomb, of the
type dropped on Hiroshima, leaves

Radiation is
health menace

SAN FRANCISCO

, The increasing level of radioactivity in the world may

constitute a threat to the health of millions of people.
This is the blunt warning made by a University of

California professor of biophysics, Dr. Albert W, Bellamy.

that over the past 10 years

‘‘man has deliberately increased ‘the amount of high-energy

enormous amount.

some 100,000 curies of radioactivity
“somewhere in the world’s environ-
ment” a year after the blast.

This, he adds, is one hundred
times the power of all the radium
in the world processed for use.

“We have not lived long enough
with radiation to know yet just
how much long-continued, low-level
radiation — both internal and ex-
ternal — we can live with without
injury,” says Bellamy.

Heslep points out that there is
a higher incidence of leukemia
among radiologists.

“We know little about the effect
on human beings,” he says. “But
we do know experiments with
lower animals have demonstrated
that radiation has significant gen-
etic effects, increasing the number
of freaks.”

Fall of Dien Bien Phu

LONDON

The fall of Dien Bien Phu marks
the final fiasco of the much-boosted
Navarre Plan, through which the
French Government and its US.
backers sought to crush the people
of Viet Nam.

It also presents a tremendous
opportunity for peace negotiations
which people in France, of all
political parties, have been de-
manding for months.

And it marks the most striking
defeat so far of the U.S. plan for
Asians to fight Asians, and for
French troops also to do the fight-
ing while Washington poured in
weapons and cash.

It strengthens those forces in
Asia, Europe and in the United
States which have been’ demand-
ing an end to all wars of colonial
aggression.

Dien Bien Phu in November of
last year was just another quiet
orderly village deep in the libera-
ted area of northwest Viet Nam.

At the end of last century it had
been used by the French as a stock-
ade and garrison point from which
they launched their attacks to
conquer the whole of this area.

_ During the Second World War
the Japanese had used it too, and
had built an airfield there.

It was on November 20 last year
that thousands of Fren¢h para-
troops were dropped on Dien Bien
Phu, deep in Viet Nam territory,
which had been liberated for over
a year and whose people were liv-
ing peacefully under the Viet Nam
Democratic government.

Seizure of Dien Bien Phu was
ifitended by the French High Com-
mand to provide a dramatic mili-
tary coup which would hit the
headlines if it did nothing else.

Since then the people of France
and the world have been asking
who was responsible for this deci-
sion and why was it taken.

First action of the French troops
on arrival in Dien Bien Phu was to

French policy
ends in defeat

round up all the inhabitants and
force them at bayonet point to
start.on the construction of exten-
sive defense works which turned
this village into a field fortress.

Tanks and heavy artillery were
flown in in parts and assembled,

as well as vast stores of ammuni-
tion.

; General Navarre’s headquarters
in Saigon boasted that from here
French troops would begin “mobile
warfare” and wipe out the Viet
Nam People’s Army. ;

As~ commander-in-chief of the
Viet Nam People’s Army, General
Giap pointed out in an interview
at the beginning of April:

“When they seized Dien Bien
Phu the enemy intended to make
of it an air base which from its
geographical position would be one
of the most important in all South-
east Asia,”

Many so-called. experts have
sought to lay all the blame for the
fall of Dien Bien Phu on General
Navarre. While his military efforts
were not brilliant, the decision to
sink so much in Dien Bien Phu was
a political one, taken in Paris and
Washington. . :

On December 1, Ho Chi Minh,
president of the Democratic gov-
ernment of Viet Nam, through an
interview with a Swedish news-
Paper, made offers of negotia-
tion with the French govern-
ment, which the French govern-
ment knew were serious moves
for peace. -

Bolstered up by reports of
phoney successes from General Na-
varre, the French government
ignored these offers and decided
to continue with its U.S.-designed
policy of “negotiating from
strength.”

And when the Berlin Conference
fininshed on February 18 with the
decision to hold the Geneva Con-
ference, the French and U.S, aim
was to provide a “victory” for the
opening of that conference.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 14, 1954 — PAGE 3