Page Six ADVOCATE September 3, 1937 The Peoples Advocate Published Weekly by the PROLETARIAN PUBLISHING ASSN. Room i0, 163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C. Telephone: Trinity 2019 @ne Year -..-2 ----= $1.80 Half Year Three Months Single Copy .------- 05 Make All Checks Payable to: The People’s Advocate. Send All Copy and Manuscript to the Chairman of the Eiditorial Board. Send all Monies and Letters Pertain- {mg to Advertising and Circulation to Business Mgr. Vancouver, B.C., Friday, September 3, 1937 Socialists Expel Trotskyists FTER a long period of purblind complac- ancy, the Socialist Party ot New Yorlk has at last had its eyes opened to the real role of Trotskyists in its ranks. When the Trotskyists applied for member- ship the SP made the grave mistake of re garding them as a part of the labor movement and took the vipers to the bosom of the party- Since their admittance the'Trotskyists have earried on disruption and used the SP to fight against the united front just as the Trot- skyists in the CCE do. During the period since they entered the SP the party in the US has lost almost 70 per cent of its membership. Belated though it may be, the action of the Gentral Committee of the SP of New York is welcome news. The expulsion of the latest batch of 70 was based on charges of conspiring to wreck the party in order to build an Amer- jean section of the Trotsky-Hitler “Fourth Tnternational”’ of eounter-revolution, fascist espionage and opposition to the united front against fascism and reaction. Jack Altman, Socialist Party executive secretary, stated that: “Trotskyists who have joined the Socialist parties throughout the world have in the past year been expelled in almost every country as incompatible . .. asa disruptive and undisciplined ele- ment, unworthy of membership in a poli- tical organization which takes seriously its responsibility to the working class.” Trotskyists in the CCF in BC have been doing the same kind of disruptive work as their fellow-enemies of labor and progress in the US. They have been the chief promoters and organizers of opposition to the united front. In the last provincial convention they played a leading role. Stupid ex-SPC doctrinaires with their blind prejudice against Commun- ism and Communists were their allies. : Hi—A— in 5, EDITORIAL FEATURES Tt was this combination which carried on the Red-baiting, slanderous attacks on the Com- munist Party, withdrew endorsement of the League Against War and Fascism and rejected ihe Communist proposal for joint action on be- half of the Spanish government and people. Tt is Trotskyist influence which is respons- ible for the disgraceful role of The Federation- ist in calling for the liberation of the Trotsky- ist agents of Franco in Spain who were caught red-handed in counter-reyolutionary revolt in Barcelona, while not a word appears in its eol- umns ealline for the liberation of Prestes in Brazil or of the heroie Communist leader, Thaelmann, who has been tortured for four years in Hitler’s prisons. To the Trotskyists within the CCF and holding important official positions in it can be aseribed the condition in which the CCE finds itself today. The CCE ean, if it will, learn trom the bitter experience of the Socialist Party in New York, and purge from its ranks this poisonous anti-working class element and bring the party back to health, strength and usefulness through united action together with all other progres- sive organizations in the strugele against reaction and for a better life for the oppressed and suffering people of the province and ot Canada as a whole. Labor Day EXT MONDAY will be observed through- out Canada and the U.S. as Labor Day; not the international Labor Day of the First of May, but nevertheless a day legally oranted to Labor throughout Canada and the United States. It is regrettable that m Vancouver, once Canada’s stronghold of trade unionism, the day will pass without organized labor taking ad- vantage of the opportunity to mobilize the workers and demonstrate its determination to extend organization of the unorganized workers and serve notice on the employers that the rights of the workers to organize into bona tide trade unions must not be interfered with. As it is, in so far as organized labor and the working class movement are concerned, this Labor Day will be little else than an ordinary legal holiday. This is due to inertia in the trade inion movement, and can be remedied by a quickening of the spirit which gave birth to trade unionism and a revival of the militant, organizing, struggling activities which achieved so many glorious victories for or- ganized labor in the past. Oreanized labor is being challenged by the organized employers. The right to organize at all into unions of the workers’ own fashioning or choosing: is in jeopardy. The mactivity of organized labor on this Labor Day will encour- age the bosses in their anti-union driye. One of the thines needed is that the Trades and Labor Couneil and unions of Vancouver emulate the Trades Councils and unions of Halifax. St. John and other cities and organize a real wnion-recruitine campaign with the ob- jective of donbling the number of trade union- ists in Greater Vancouver, where there is an insistent démand by the mnorganized for oi ganization, a demand that is inadequately met. Outside of Vancouver, in the coal and metal mining districts, among lumber workers, pulp and sulphite workers, ete., notable gains have been made in forming trade unions and com- pelling the employers to recognize, deal with and make agreements with them. While there is need for ever greater union organization throughout the province, the greatest need—and opportunity—tor ore@aniza- tion is In Greater Vancouver. Tf the opportunities presenting themselves are fully taken advantage of, the trade union movement will take on a new lease of life, will become a potent forcé for improving the stan- dards of living of the workers. And when Labor Day, ‘September, 1955, comes around Vancouver will not let it pass without a real demonstration and celebration worthy of the tradition of organized labor in British Co- lumbia. A Vicious Anti-Labor Proposal ROM Victoria comes word that the govern- ment is preparing to oppose the Trade Union Bill, which is to be introduced by CCF members during the first session of the next leoislature. The proposed bill would legalize the right of workers to organize, and penalize employers for interference in the organization activities of the workers. This bill has the backing of organized labor and the people of the province generally, and door bx the same token the opposition of the diehard employers of the Shipping Federation, the boss loggers, mine owners and other reactionary eroups. . It appears that the government is willing to grant to the workers the right to organize— providing the workers guarantee in advance that the union will not fight for its members, will not strike nor in any way inconvenience the employers or interfere with their profits. In other words, if the union behayes like a company union. In the usual canting, hypo eritical way, the government poses as defenders of the public from “ruimous industrial war- fare.” Ever working for the employers, the govern- ment is scheming to sidetrack the Trade Union Bill with a bill of its own, a bill more reac tionary and anti-labor than anything yet de vised by the Pattullo tools of the big interests. What they are scheming to put over on the workers of B.C. is a law on the Hitler model, a law which would force arbitration if either side to an industrial dispute applied. While pretending not to abrogate the right of the workers to strike, the government pro- poses to make it compulsory for them to sub- mit to ‘conciliation’ first. But the government does not propose to place such restrictions on the employers before they ean declare a lockout or fire employees for trade union organizational activity. The workers of B.C. demand the enactment of a law which guarantees the workers the right to organize according to thei desires and needs, which legalizes the right to strike and penalizes any or all employers who deny these rights. The workers will not stand for any form of compulsory arbitration or conciliation whose purpose is to deprive the workers ot the ad- vantage of surprise. Any attempt by the Pat- tullo government to pass such an iniquitous law must be met by the united opposition of the labor movement and all allies who can be mobilized on the side of labor against it- Dangerous Thought Department—“1 have been instructed to deny the Japanese troops im: China carry any poison gas equipment, Japan- ese Consul Ishii said. ‘Hyrthermore,” the country around Nankow Pass is not suitable for the use of gas.”—Victoria Tumes. International Labor Movement Must Unite .-- Dimitroff WO years ago, in August, 1935, i the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, giving an analysis of the international situation and seeking ways and means for the struggle of the working class against the attacks of Fascism, pointed out the indis- soluble connection between the strugele against Tascism and the struggle for peace. Fascism is war, declared the Congress. Once Fascism accedes to power against the wishes and in- terests of the nation, it seeks a way out of the growing jmternal diffi- culties in ageression against other countries and nations, in a redis- tribution of the world by means of a world war. Peace means certain destruction for Fascism, but the preservation of international peace gives the en- slaved masses in the Fascist coun- tries the possibility of rallying their forces and preparing the overthrow the hated Fascist dic- tatorship; the international work- ing class gains time for the estab- jishment of unity in its own ranks, for the solid amalgamation of all adherents of peace and the crea- tion of an insurmountable barrier against war. When the Seventh Congress de- scribed Fascism as the fomentor of war, when it pointed out the increasing danger of a new im- perialist war and the necessity of ereating a mighty united front for the struggle against Fascism, plenty of people—even within the Labor moyement—did not hesitate to accuse. us Communists of de- liberately imputing such an im- portant part to Fascism and exag- gerating the danger of war for the purposes of our own propaganda. Some of these people did so as conscious champions of the inter- ests of the ruling class, and others merely because of their political short-sightedness. Wowever, the Jast two years have made the ab- surdity of such an accusation suf- ficiently obvious. Both the friends and the opponents of peace are by now openly discussing the im- minent danger of a new world war, and it would be difficult to find any serious people who would now doubt that it is the Fascist gOv- ernments and no others who act as the champions of war. In some countries the war is actually going on already. The Italian and German intervention- ists have been carrying on a war against the Spanish people for the past year under the eyes of the syvhole world. After the annexation of Manchuria the Japanese Fascist Military clique has again attacked the Chinese people and is now waging a new war in North China. Manehuria, Abyssinia, Spain and North China are stages on the road to a new great war of pillage on the part of Fascism. They are not isolated acts. The Fascist ag- eressors and fomentors of war have formed a bloc uniting Berlin, Rome and Tokyo. The German- Japanese anti-Communist agree- ment, which, is, a5 We kmow, an agreement of a military nature swhich Mussolini has also endorsed, is already being applied in prac- tice. Under the flag of the struggle against the Comintern and against the “Red menace,” the German, Italian and Japanese conquerors are trying by means of partial wars to occupy strate- gic positions, take possession of junctional points of land and sea routes, and conquer sources of the raw materials for armaments neded for a further development of imperialist war. The Wascist aggressors and war- mongers blackmail the West Huro- pean states by threatening their territorial interests. They are pre- paring an attack on the Soviet Union. They exploit to the utmost the connivance of the ruling cir- cles in Britain, Prance and the United States of America. Proposing that they should come to an understanding among them- selves concerning the plundering of Spain, China and the small countries, they spare no effort to gain the goodwill of the British Conservatives and a number of Liberal and Labor leaders in order to separate Britain from France and the other democratic coun- tries. Holding out the same kinds of tempting prospects, they are mak- ing unbelievable efforts to bring abcut an understanding with the French reactionaries, in duce France to repudiate the Franco- Soviet pact and thus isolate that country from the Soviet Union. The Fascist states withdrew from the League of Nations in order to have a free hand for their ageression. They are terrorizing the weak countries by threatening to attack them from without and to organize conspiracies and rebel- lions from within. The Fascist fomentors of war make use of treasonable elements, and especially of Trotskyists, to earry on disruptive and disorgan- izing activities within the ranks of the working class with the object of breaking up the People's Front in Spain and HMrance. The recent rising in Barcelona was a clear example of how the Fascist wire-pullers use the Trot- skyist organizations in order to stab ‘the People’s Front in the back. ° : The Fascist fomentors of war also turm to very good use the activities of the opponents of the unity of the international work- ing Class withim the ranks of the LSI and the IFTU, and are as- siduously recruiting agents ev- erywhere. Special efforts were made by the Fascist invaders—this was disclosed at the recent trials of the Trotsky- ists and spies—in order to send saboteurs and spies to the USSR and in order to use their Trotsky- ist agents for disruptive activities in the Soyiet Union, the great country of Socialist achievements. The Hascists reckoned that if they succeeded in breaking the strength of the Soviet Union, that faithful guardian of peace, they would have in the main ensured the suc- cess of their plans of military ag- gression. } Hence one can easily understand the furious howls with which the Fascists and their accomplices re- ceived the news that the organs of the dictatorship of the working class, supported by the whole So- viet nation, had mercilesly de- stroyed the traitors to the great Socialist country. Was the fact that the Japanese militarists were allowed to invade Manchuria not an encouragement to the Fascistifomentors of war? Was the complete lack of any de- cisive opposition to the bloody campaign of Mussolini against the Abyssinian people not an encour- agement to the Fascist aggressors? Was the whole farce of ‘“non-inter- vention in Spanish affairs’? played for a whole year under the direc- tion of the British government or the present negotiations on belli- gerent rights for Franco not an actual approval of the war carried on by the Fascist states against the Spanish Republic? Is the present complacent atti- tude towards the insolent invaders of China not a revolting encour- agement of unchecked Japanese militarism which is out to enslave the great Chinese people? How can the peoples of Britain, france, the United States of Amer- ica and of other non-Fascist states remain indifferent to these facts— how can they tolerate this: system- atic connivance at and encourage- ment of Fascist aggression which facilitates the criminal machina- tions of the Fascist fomentors of a new world war? These facts show up clearly the tremendous historical responsibil- ity falling on the shoulders of those leaders of the LSI and TU who obstinately stand in the way of the united action of the inter- national working: class, of the pur- suance by its organizations of a Fascism Exports Its Poison VEVH WARTED by the strength of the people’s front in France, and by British distaste for totali- tarian doctrines, Hitler and Mussolini have undertaken to export fascism in new ways. Dispatches from England reveal interesting details that centre round the recently expelled Wazi journalists. Messrs. Crome, Wrede and Langen improved their leisure time by establishing five fascist centres in merrie England. These gatherings, often held at fashion- able hotels,{have been known to the British government since Oc- tober 1935. The wife of a cabinet minister joined the German ambassador and prominent members of influ- ential circles to plan the work of fascist espionage. The three Nazi journalists were closely linked with this activity. So elosely, in fact, that the British Home Office took the usual peace-time step of expelling them. Since Joachim von Ribbentrop was appointed ambas- sador to Great Britain, the Na- tional-Socialist Party has doubled its foreign organization—and in consequence the activity of fascist groups on English soil has grown. tremendously. The Week, a well-informed Eng- lish news service, reports that more than sixty-five thousand franes went from Berlin, via the Wazi party of Luxemburg, to one fascist organization in Britain. This is said to have roused British backers of fascism—Lancashire cotton interests, two bankers, and a large motor car manufacturer. Not wishing to lose control of their own movement through heavy foreign subsidies, these patriots put pressure on the cab- inet to oust Hitler's agents. The sums involved seem small, however, when compared with re- cent fascist exports to France, where Colonel de la Rocque, chief of the dissolved Croix de Feu, somehow got his hands on nine million frances to purchase the left radical Petit Journal. For years de la Rocque has been supported by ex-Premier Andre ‘Tardieu. Wow it is revealed that Mussolini has been in direct contact with the colonel, using members of Jabotinsky’s fascist-inclined Zion- ist-Revolutionist group as go-be- tweens. M. Jacques Doriot, deposed mayor of St Penis, has likewise turned to journalism. Doriot pur- chased the ultra-reactionary Li-. berte just before government in- quiry into a coal scandal forced his removal from office. Former Premier Laval is said to have sup- plied the purchase price. Another curious angle to this deal is that Liberte, with a rapidly falling cir- culation now less than forty thou- sand), owes an enormous debt to the Semard printing works, and M. Henri Simond, director of Semard’s, has Doriot to pay the sum in easy in- stallments. The Semard works are owned by the Echo de Paris and M. Beghin, publisher of the Paris Soir. Until recently M. Simond was proprietor of the Echo de Paris. He resigned when the Blane family, which owns 57 per cent of the paper, demanded to know why the Echo de Paris was not returning a profit. M. Simond did not care to explain that the profits of the Semard printing works were being used to carry former mayor Doriot’s venture in fascist journalism. You Cheering Market Trends... Pocket your itching palms. Sing the old sweet songs about prosperity. Draw your across the multitudinous sick, the too- soon dying- We will not be seduced. headline curtains The blood of the people is in the steel. The blood of the people is in the coal and in the copper. The gone forever heartbeats of the people are in the dynamos and in the locomotives. These are the people's. They have bought them with their bloed. They have bought them with the years they didn’t live. —Joseph Kehoe. agreed to allow “militarists in Chima. united co-ordinated international policy against the Fascist foment- ors of war and of the ereation of 2 powerful international peace front. Fascist intervention in ~ Spain has been considerably streneth- ened. To it has now been added the jJatest aggression of the Japanese And yet it should be clear that now, when the Spanish people is making a su- preme effort to repulse the ar- tacks of the Fascist intervention- ists, when the G@hinese people is rising against the attack of the Japanese miilitarists, the inter- national working-class organiza- tions must at last unite their e1 forts and resolutely take the field in all their might for the defence of international peace. The situation has now arisen in which the preservation of interna- tional peace means in the _first place the necessity to secure the defeat of the Fascist invaders in Spain and China. They must be given a seyere lesson. They must be made to feel very tangibly that the international working class and ~ all progressive and civilized hu- manity will nso longer tolerate their miltary aggression and their invasions of foreign territory and are prepared to do everything in order to prevent the Fascists from carrying out their criminal plans of launching another world war. Ts it possible that the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions will again limit themselves to seneralized declarations and pious wishes about peace, but will in practice again avoid that joint action of all organizations of the international Labor movement which is so necessary? And yet joint action of the in- ternational working-class organiza- tions on national and international seale is the only force which can mobilize progressive humanity for the struggle against war, bar the, way to the fomentors of war and influence the official policy of the most important non-Fascist powers in the direction of putting a check on the excesses of the Fascist ag- @ressors. Qne cannot seriously tale ac- tion for the preservation of in- ternational peace unless one first takes all the necessary steps. to establish the united front of the working class in each country and to bring about united action of the international organiza- tions of the working class. it is jmpossible to make a serious fight for peace without mobiliz- ing all the forces of the working class movement and of the broad popular miasses for the speedy ex’ pulsion of the Fascist invaders from Spain and China. The international Labor move- ment now disposes over sufficient forces and means to Stop the in- tervention of German and Italian Fascism in Spain and the invasion of China by the Japanese military and to safeguard international peace. In order to achieve this, however, it is necessary that the tremendous forces and resources of the international Labor move- ment should be united and directed towards an effective and unswerv- ing struggle against Fascism and war. OL’ BILL Who Is When Europe was AM juried in the tomb o 3 ? Aggressor? of the Dark Ages philosophy Was only another name for religious dogma. Philosophie ® disputation and discussion centered = around such knotty problems as® “How many angels can dance on the point of a needile?’’ All the priestly scholars in Europe argued and debated this question, which almost split the Catholic church in twain. We have emerged from the Dark Ages; we have reached the peak of civilized culture; if the priests opened a discussion on that sub- ject. today they would be laughed to scorn. But before many- weeks are gone we may witness a dis— eussion equally puerile and futile, for all our advancement in science and philosophy. Soon we may see the spectacle ef batteries of lawyers, the elite of capitalist brains from whose ranks are chosen those who sit in judgement, drawn from all comers of the globe, gathered around the mahogany tables in Geneva, ferret- ing out of their owlish wisdom, or lack of wisdom rather, the answer to a question that the League of ~ Nations must answer: “Who is am aggressor?” Confronted with a concrete prob- lem such as the League of Na- tions §; faced with today in Spain and China, any 10-year-old school- boy would answer the question offhand and correctly, but enough of the Middle Ages mentality—the class concept—still dominates the Capitalist wiseacres. so that the question ma ybe debated for months and then remain un— _ answered. The Ieague has accomplished one thing, however; it has made the aggressors carry on war with- out making an open declaration of war. Bullying, imperialist, Fascist na- tions like Italy, Germany and Ja= pan invade, in a piratical fashion, Spain and China and if these na- tions. with full moral justification, declare war they become in the eyes of the aforementioned “elite” the aggressors. The ‘“‘elite”’ un- doubtedly does not read the dic- tionary! It is not surprisine then, to fing in a manifesto issued by over 806 Spanish intellectuals in support of the legitimate geovernment of Spain, names from every branch of literature, art and science, but not one lawyer. * Junking One result of the in- Their vasion of Spain by the hordes of Hitler and Heroes! Mussolini has been demonstrated in SGritain during the past month. iron ore, the raw material of the iron and steel industry, has com- pelled the Iron and Steel Iedera- tion of that country to initiate & “national scrap’ campaign, am appeal for the patriotism of the people to dig up all metal scrap of the kind that Japan has been buyine so much of in BC of late, So acute has this need become for the British iron industry that one business paper, “The Mercen= The shortage of 4 tile Guardian,” is led to make the following suggestion: “Town coun= cils might perhaps be strong minded enough to throw into the meltine-pot statues of forgotten or discredited rulers and states men, frock-coated aldermen and other cumbersome junk.’’ Such is the measure and thé worth of the appreciation the good bourgeois shows to the individuals who have placed his capitalist sys tem in the dominant position it cecupies today in society. These are his aforetime gods. and since he can get alone now without them—to the serap-pile with them, That the Canadian bourgeois 18 no different from his British brother is proved by the recent news item about the fate of the erave of Sir John A. MacDonald, “the father of our country,” 1B Catarqui Cemetery, which the owners of the cemetery threated to seize because nothing has bees paid for its maintenance for niné years. : x Me About the beginning Without of the century. a Van ithou ceouver journalist, 4 God! MacGrescor Gordowt, editor of a humorous paper called “Phe Hornet,” achieyed a modle eum of fame with his poem “Me Und Gott.” Wis inspiration came from tH® last sword rattling emperor Germany, Kaizer Willie. During the ferment arising out of thé Boer War that royal bully had broadcast the information that the affairs of the world were going @ be set right by himself and God If MacGregor write his Gordon were @ poem today he would lave to substitute Hitler for the Hohenzollern degenerate and there ywould be no room in it for © 54. Goebbells and his propagands battalions have played upon the theme that Hitler is greater tat God and so persistently that i¢ 18 beginning to be accepted by their dupes as gospel truth. The old customary announce ments of death in the “Fateh, Match and Dispatch Column,” that told how the deceased died ‘firm in the belief in God’ no longe holds good in Naziland. Whet 4s national-socialist dies | the en: nouncement reads, “He died fire sn the belief in Adolph Hitler.” “believing in der Pulner.”