OL’ BILL SHORT JABS BAD mistake crept into this column last week. In asserting that the hope that education might be forged into a weapon to fight the communists is a vain one, a couple of lines got ‘pied’ and made a meaningless sentence, or rather a misleading one. As published it read “Now this hope, for that all it is, that education, of any kind, can: be fashioned into a weapon to defeat the communists, does not seem to be shared by all the champions of capitalist exploitation. The Catholic Church owner of the Toronto Mail and Empire, which George McCullough said on his return from a trip to Europe recently, is the body best organized to fight communism, has an entirely contrary idea of the matter.” That should have read “The Catholic Church, which George McCullough, owner of the Toronto Globe and Mail, said on his return from a trip to Europe recently, is the body best organized to fight communism, etc.” This explanation will also serve as an introduction to today’s column, The main avenues of boss class propaganda, the press and radio together with the satellites of the same class in the labor movement, not all of them Catholics either, are working one particular topic for all it is worth—“religious persecution.” This topic is brayed at us in editorials in newspapers and the air waves are in a continual state of disturbance with it. But the so- called objectively written news does not bear out the editorializing. I have watched carefully for any evidence which would justify such an opinion but there is none forthcoming, unless perhaps, the ex- communication of Catholic workers daring enough to read papers like the London Daily Workers and the Canadian Tribune; the closest at home being that of Cardinal McGuigan who issued an anathema against Catholics who read, write for, or distribute the Canadian Tribune or other communist publications. This kind of religious per- secution is a little late in the day. The response in many cases will Raps Clark Former assistant U.S. attorney- general General O. John Rogge testified at Senate hearings against appointment of his. ex- boss, Tom Clark, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Rogge _ said Clark had “neither the stature, integrity nor ability’ to be a Supreme Court justice. (See scompanies and a director of an- War vets’ parley urges housing aid OTTAWA | Militant demands by World War I and II veterans for social re- lief on health, housing, unemployment, pensions—all the end-products ~ of the insanity of war—contrasted sharply with appeals made by the — top Tory brass and war-enriched profiteers to delegates attending the Ontario Command Canadian Legion convention. These speeches: made chiefly by Col. L. D. M. Baxter, dominion president of the Legion, and Prime Minister Frost of Ontario ranged from demands for wholesale con- scription into the reserve army for a period of one year for 18- year-olds to the outlawing of the Labor-Progressive party. The report traces, the rise of the housing shortage from the de- pression years and concludes: “We are. convinced that the tragedy of 1919 and the subsequent eight or nine years will be repeated when many veterans lost the home — or farm in which they invested their war service gratuity. Many others are still being subjected — to living conditions which are a disgrace to a nation with the — Physical resources and wealth — Such as Canada _ possebses.?’ It was startling to hear Colonel e Baxter, president of four major other nine corporations covering oil, steel, trust, banking and gold, address delegates as “comrades,” urging them to “prepare” for an- other blood-bath. While press prominence was given to the demand for conscrip- , tion and banning of the LPP, very little space was given to the criti- cal language used during the hous- — The demand for war prepara- ing debate. tions appeared as a jarring note not be much to the liking of Cardinal McGuigan or his master, the| Story below). in a convention which sharply The report points to a housing — Pope. 1 raised many grave social issues | shortage of 400,000 in 1946, and One Vancouver Island worker whom I met a few days ago, put : facing the particular victims of | over-all’ production of housing a4 that response very nicely, in a way that undoubtedly represents the the last two world wars. Most | units in 1946-47-48 of less than feelings of thousands of others. When asked what he though of the ar ro é on prominent of these was the ques- | 210,000. “No impression on th® Pope’s excommunication of Catholics who' do their. own thinking and : tion of housing. In an excellent | shortage” has been made, it con- reading, he answered, “‘He’s too late. I excommunicated him thirty report delivered to the conven- |tinues, indicating that housing years ago.” This is what hurts the -Catholic hierarchy. So many Catholics have excommunicated the Church because of its co-habitation with the robber class exemplified in the militant liasion between Cardinal McGuigan and the millionaire George McCullough. But of religious persecution as the editorial writers, radio commentators and phoney misleaders of labor talk, there is none. At least, not in the countries where the workers are in control. In the days when the church was all-powerful religious persecu- tion was a terrible fact. In the sixteenth century one example of that religious persecution left a black smear on European history when the Church used its political power to launch the St. Bartholomew Massacre on the French Huguenots. That massacre of the French protestants lasted for thirty days and over 70,000 men, women and childten were slaughtered in. cold blood. In spite of the Sun editor and the phoney laborites of the Carey, Murray, Pat Conroy type, no such persecution obtains in the countries of the new way of life, nor any other religious persecution either. These creators of false public opinion base their claims on the trials of such scoundrelly traitors as Cardinal Josef Mindszenty. A book has just been published in Canada entitled Cardinal Mindszenty: The story of a modern martyr.” It is written by one Bela Fabian. It may be a coincidence, but that was the name of one of the conspirators who hoped to overthrow the peoples’ government of Hungary. Mindszenty was not a martyr, -nor was he a hero. He was no diffrent to William Joyce, known during the struggle against fascism and Nazism as “Lord Haw-Haw,” an English traitor who was hanged for treason no worse than Mindszenty’s. The charges against Mindszenty were “high treason, espionage and black market manipulating.” Notwithstanding his protestations and those of his Catholic backers about how he would die for his religious principles (which were not involved), when the Hungarian government laid the evidence they had*amassed before the court, and he could no longer deny the accusations (of working for the return of the Hapsburg monarchy; of pleading with British and American. political representatives to send troops into Hungary to overthrow the government; of conspiring with Cardinal Spellman and other Church dignitaries to the same end) he showed how little hero and martyr he was. He proved to be a craven coward. He was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made and he tried to dicker with the prosecution on the understanding that he would in future recog- nize the sovereignty of the government. I have just read a transcription of the court hearings and the world newspapermen’s comments on the trials. It covers the trial of Mindszenty and all his fellow conspirators and it is illuminating in several ways; in how little it had to do with religion; in how despicable a cardinal can become when she turns traitor to his country; and how little of the trial got into ‘our local press. LPP Membership Meeting RUSSIAN HALL 600 CAMPBELL AVE. AUGUST 31 at 8 p.m. Admission: By Membership Card Only BECKY BUHAY, N.E.D., WILL ADDRESS MEETING oil companies gravy train By ART SHIELDS WASHINGTON Oil trust stains bite deep into the record of witch-hunter Tom Clark, President Truman’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court used to be a paid mercenary for the three toughest oil monopolists in the United States. His job was to help them crush their smaller competitors, said a report of the Texas Senate’s gen- eral investigating committee in 1937. Clark’s Texas paymasters _in- cluded: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., boss of the Standard Oil companies, real head of the American oil trust and a bitter enemy of labor, whose gunmen have killed many union members. Harry Sinclair of the Sinclair Oil Co.,. who went to prison in the early 1920’s for seven months after his attempt to loot the Navy’s Teapot Dome oil reserves was ex- posed. ; J. Howard Pew, chairman of the Sun Oil Co., who gave more money to _ fascist organizations than any magnate in America ex- cept Lamont duPont (see the U.S. Senate Lobby Committee’s re- ports). Lamont duPont himself. J. P. Morgan, Jr., who was then living. ; Clark was hired as a Texas state lobbyist by these magnates in the mid-1930’s at a salary of $12,000 a year. The money was furnished by the Texas Petroleum Council, which Rockefeller, Pew, Sinclair and Morgan had set up. Clark's job was not to kill work- ers....The oil companies’ gun- men would take care of that. His job was to help the trust kill off the little oil companies that were giving it competition. “The extermination of smaller competitors” was the petroleum eouncil’s one objective, the Texas Senate’s general investigating com- mittee reported. Clark was able to help in this extermination through his contacts with the State Attorney General, who could make things hard for the little oil men in many ways. This State Attorney General, William McGraw, was Clark’s jaw partner in Dallas. Clark had in- vested much time in getting him elected. tion the demand for subsidized housing, multiple housing units, encouraging. building of homes by those with modest incomes, and calling of a dominion-pro- vinci conference on housing, was strongly voiced, creating the construction has only paced new © family formation, and fallen fat behind the needs as in 1946. coe PATRONIZE OUR most spirited debate during pro- ceedings. ADVERTISERS 5 “ Oe ad TAM WL PRINTER’ | HAVE BEEN ON THE . : PICKET LINE AROUND THE DAILY PROVINCE | FOR 38 MONTHS “Until I was foreed on the picket line by the Southam Co. in June, 1946, I had worked in the. composing room) or the Daily Province for 14 years. “{ contributed my fair share to the building of the Province, and I worked there long before the Southams of Montreal moved into Vancouver with their millions @? bought the paper. There never was any trouble until the : Southams took over, ee ee : “Southams rewarded my lifetime of service with . months on the picket line, obtained a court injunction, SU on members of my union for damages in the Supreme COU and imported individuals from all over Canada to my job. mye “I am still on the picket line with my fellow ea printers. We will be there until the Southam C0. wi abandon its union-wrecking policy and sit around the ste ference table in good faith.” os ASK YOUR SUPPORT | = BE? PACIFIC TRIBUNE — auGusT 26, 1949 — PAC”