Page Two THH PHOPLE’S & ADVGCATE THE PEOPLE’s ADVOCATE Published Weekly by the PROLETARIAN Be Ee ASSOCIATION oom 10, 163 Ww. Hastings Street Vancouver, B.G., Phone, Trin. 2019 SSR Sai aeons 1.8 ial fevers es ee es ie S03 Three Months en een es -00 SinPlerCo pyee ae eee 05 Make All Cheques Payable to: The People’s Advocate FRIDAY, FEBRUARY ii, 1933 Or CE again the prelim- ; inary Civic estimates fore- cast a huge deficit. And to meet the estimated deficit of $1,900,000 for 1938 a four-mill tax increase is planned. : In addition to the increase in the tax rate the finance committee suggests that, as a means to increase city rev- enus, the cost of water service be increased to consumers, and that a charge be made for the present free scavenging Service. It also points out that the cost of unemployment re- lief has been “a great finan- cial strain on the city.” : There is no doubt that city finances are in a bad shape. When “Gerry” McGeer was running for mayor — using this as a stepping-stone to par- liament — he raised a great hue and ery that the city was bankrupt and that he was go- ing to show them how to stave off bankruptcy and improve the general state of city fi- nances, MeGeer, of course, did not do any such thing. As the chosen representative of Van- couver Bis Business he could only conduct civic affairs to please Big Business, and when he deserted Vancouver city for Ottawa he chose as his successor the present in- eumbent, Geo. ©. Miller. : Mayor Miller has carried on in the best MeGeer tradition; he is a faithful servant of Big Business, as are a majority of the members of the city coun- cil. Hence, to expect them to act voluntarily in the interests of the small businessman, the small home-owner and the workers generally is trying to get blood from a stone. At the Same time it is quite possible for the Vancouver public to bring sufficient pressure on the city council to influence it to a great extent. This in- fluence” should be exerted right now through wide pro- tests against the threat to re- duce relief allowances, to in- crease the cost of water serv- ice, and to charge for scavens- ing services. The amount spent on relief should be increased. The ccst of living is constantly mount- ing and the number of those on relief increasing. The families of the unemployed must be fed, clothed and shel- tered adequately until such time as measures are taken to provide work and wages. There is every reason for accepting the prospect that relief is more or less of a permanent feature of the budgets of all governments, whether they be municipal, provincial or federal. The proposal to charge for scavenging, and to increase the cost of water service, in- dicate two things. First, the callous disregard the city council has for the health and welfare of the people of Van- couver. Second, the fact that it has no intention of collect- ing the needed revenues from where they exist,, that is, from Big Business in Vancouver. A great increase in city revenue eould be realized by imposing a graduated tax on Big Busi- ness, and by increasing the taxation of property belong- ing to the various national banks which have numberous branches in the most valuable portions of the city. What a mess a progressive council will have to clean up when it gets control of the city hall! There must be a clean-up and the progressive labor and middle-class ele- ments are the only ones who ean do it. The time to prepare to elect a progressive mayor and council is now, instead of waiting until a month before election day. “The burden of taxation must be placed where it be- longs—on Big Business, on the BCHlectric and other com- mercial leeches. Municipal reform must not be allowed io be used as vote-catching bait by those of the McGeer ilk, but should be taken up in earnest at once as a slogan for the next election. The Philosophy That Leads To War YTHOLOGY and eco- nomic necessity, civiliza- tion and barbarism—strange dynamos of “culture” which drive Japan forward to her own destruction, menace to the peace of the world. “Japan is the only divine land.” “Japan's emperor is the only divine emperor.” “Japan's people are the only divine people.” “Therefore Japan must be the light of the world.” The divine decree suppos- edly written by Emperor Jim- mu at the founding of the Japanese empire 2,500 years ago, reads: by Kay Heathcote HREE women, an American, a Chinese and a Canadian, Imade news this week in their ac- tivities in the world against fascism. Mrs. Marian Merriman, the American, is the wife of famous Bob Merriman, captain in the In- ternational MBrigade. Knowing through her own experience what it is to face the chatter of ma- chine-gun fire and to be a target for Italian bombs, Mrs. Merri- man describes bitterly the bomb- ing of the workers’ districts in Valencia and Barcelona as show- ing “the utter barbarism of the Hranco forces.” When the rebellion broke out in 1936, she and her husband were travelling through Europe on their way. from Moscow, where Mrs. Merriman had been study- ing Soviet banking on a Univer- sity of California scholarship. Bob Merriman immediately join- ed the loyalist forces, and when He was wounded a few months later, Mrs. Merriman rushed to his side. Since then she has served aS personnel director of the Lincoln Brigade, which she proudly describes as “her brig- ade.” The only official woman mem- ber of the International Brigade is particularly enthusiastic about the fifty “American girls serving as nurses in the brigade’s hospi- tal only one mile from the front line and in base hospitals at Villa Paz and Benicasin. “One great belief binds them together,” she asserts, “and that is the firm con- viction that, if the loyalists win, a threatening new world war will be postponed. They are all fight- ing for peace.” Released from the Brigade shortly before the victory of Ter- uel, so that she could make a tour of the United States, Mrs. Merriman is at present paying a visit to her home in Berkley, Cal. struggle @Qne of China’s most talented women, the famous dancer, Si-lan Ghen, at present in New York, wants her dancing “to symbolize her people’s heroic struggles,” and has dedicated her artistry to raising funds for civilian and medical relief in her country. cs) Short, dark and very slim in her Oriental costume, the daugh= | ter of Eugene Chen, former for- eign minister, Si-lan Chen can remember the trek from Canton to Hankow when the nationalist government was established in 1927. She describes old China as being “a shambles. ... Peasants illiterate and sick, land wasted by flood, railroads almost non- existent, a land stalked by ignor- ance and divided by foreign ex- ploitation.” Led by the students of Sun Yat- Sen, all Ghinese people, including the women, have now been gal- vanized into action. There are four Chinese women aviators, and a women’s infantry brigade. Women nurse in the hospitals, pull plows and work in the war industries. Improvements have been halted by the Japanese in- vaders who have wrecked bridges and railroads, their first targets usually being the universities which might-contain information of Japanese activities. Si-lan Chen is very happy about the boycott, but remarked, “T still see too many women wearing silk stockings.” 7 “Canada’s greatest danger is fascism,” is the opinion of Agnes Macphail, the UFO member for Grey-Bruce, who recently spoke in the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. She cites as examples of this danger the flagrant pad- lock law initiated by Premier Duplessis, a “virtual dictator while still adhering to parliamen- tary procedure,’ and Premier Hepburn, who has “fascist ten- dencies of a somewhat milder nature.” Miss Macphail gave up her pro- fession as a school teacher seven- teen years ago to become a mem- ber of parliament. She spoke fer- vently of the part women can play in polities. “Women have 4 gift for government and will take an increasingly large share in ad- ministration of world affairs,” she declares. “We shall build our capitol all over the world, and make the whole world our do- minion.” The military and school textbooks of the Japan of to- day, citing the above decree, read: “This rescript has been given to us as an everlasting categorical imperative.” e HE mythology of Japan makes strange and inter- esting reading. The gods, Iza- nagi and Izanami, united in marriage, gave birth to the Japanese islands. So with the emperor. The gods who be- gat the islands also gave birth to the Sun goddess, Ama- terasu, whose descendants ruled and still rule Japan. The appellation “Son of Heaven” to the emperor is not merely a mark of respect—it is a widespread belief nurt- ured by the “powers that be” for a very special purpose— that of empire building. Supposedly marching with the armies of Japan today in China, are the souls of mil- lions of dead soldiers, “deified by the emperor himself in spe- cial ceremonies.” How well all this ancient mythology dovetails with modern armed invasion of peaceful neighbors. How well it mirrors the slender veil that divides civilization from bar- barism. How well it serves as a supporting prop to na- tionalism, upon which the edi- fice of Fascism is erected. Nor does this mythology stop with the islands and the emperor. The earliest inhabi- tants of the islands were all gods, and from them sprung direct the Yamato race, “seed of the sun‘” All others of the human race are naturally in- ferior. If one can grasp the significance of this mythol- ogy, then the conclusion taught by the military propa- gandists of modern Japan fol- lows: “Japan is sent to save the world, and world peace ean come only through Japa- nese sovereignty.” Fascist mentality revels in this mythology like a poison- ous reptile in dark slime, spewing its contamination over the masses. GAIN, compare this Japa- anese mixture of myth- ology and militarism with Der Fuehrer’s “pure Aryanism” and the superiority of the Wordie-Teutonic strain over all others, or Il Duce’s adop- tion of the philosophy, power and glory of the Caesars, and his fanatical goal of a “new Roman empire,” and you have an indispensible philosophical adjunct of the fascist state. But the gods Izanagi and Izanami were too skimpy when they “begat” the is- lands, and- too prolific with the Yamato for the terra- celestial territory available. Sixty-five million people on 148,756 square miles boiled over into Formosa; inte a new empire of 91,793,680; into the Philippines; into Asia; into all the islands of the Pacific and into North America. The bulk of these emi- grants dropped their myth- ology and got down to the business of making a living in a world that placed more faith in stock quotations than in ancient dogmas. In most countries the Japa- mese are regarded as enter- prising, hard-working, re- spectable people. Certainly the Canadian-Japanese come under this category. In the islands of the Pacific, in In- dia, in Indo-China and in China itself, many of the male Japanese “seeds of heaven’’ forgot their “heavenly” origin and took to themselves wives from the daughters of other races. =| In North America the Japanese have in the main, retained their racial purity and earned the rights of citi- zenship, according to all es- tablished standards. In this vast melting pot of the Paci- fic, as elsewhere, economic determinism produces new types and the old mystic con- cepts of “racial purity” and “heavenly origin” wane, ex- cept when fanned by the civi- lized-barbarian fascists which capitalism in its dying stages has produced. e ET, despite all this mytho- logical fanning by the Japanese militarists to exalt the Japanese people above all mortals, there are (for the Japanese militarists) many disturbing factors which are the silver lining to the dark clouds of war in China. The number of desertions from the imperial armies of Japan during the many in- vasions of Chinese territory in recent years would indi- cate that the soldier of Nip- pon was not any too happy to know that the “soul of a dead soldier” marched with him on his marauding expedi- tions. In his battles with the par- tisan soldiers of North China and the Red Army, the Japa- nese soldier often placed more dependence upon the speed ot his legs than in the oracles of his ancient gods. The number of arrests, beatings, bodily mutilations, killings of Japanese radicals, suppression of whole trade union federations in recent years by the “heavenly ap- pointed” state apparatus of the “Son of Heaven” would also indicate that, if the pow- er of a ruthless state machine were increasing, at least the virtuous power of the legen- dary gods of that machine was losing out. e ATIONALISM cannot thrive on dialectical pro- cesses. Its life-roots must cling to the past, to ancient mythology and to darkness in order to survive. In building its fascist empires it must combine the most backward and brutal barbarism with all the life-destroying machinery of modern -civilization. Its minions must be imbued with a sense of their own superior- ity and greatness over and above all other mortals. Fervent eyes to the rising sun and the summit of Fuji- B.C. Organizes In the Labor Statesman N 1937 torty thousand new members were recruited to the unions affiliated to the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada. Although this province is not as highly in- dusctrialized as Ontario and Quebec, still British Columbia did its full share in the work of in- creasing our trade union mem- bership. In Vancouver particularly, great organizational gains can be re- corded; hundreds of new mem- bers have joined our unions, re- sulting in better wages, improved conditions, and a happier life for untold numbers of citizens. The best example of good trade union work can be seen in the Trades and Labor Council where every meeting results in some- thing worth while being done to strengthen ourtrade union move- ment, and we can truly say that the Vancouver Trades and Labor Gouncil is one united body. This does not mean that differences of opinion on policy do not exist, but it does mean that personali- ties are a thing of the past and when a vote is recorded on any question discipline prevails, and all delegates unitedly work to carry out the council’s decisions. The healthy situation in the Trades and Labor Council is an inspiration to every trade union- ist and this has no doubt been one of the chief reasons for the excellent work being done in the various local unions. C) OR the greatest increase in membership the honor goes to the Teamsters’ Union, which by Charles Stewart only had a skeleton organization one year ago. Today it has 1500 members and union agreements with practically every haulage contractor in the city. Local 28, Hotel and Restaurant Workers, come a close second, and has increased its membership from 150 eighteen months ago to almost 500 today, and has secured signed agreements in the two largest hotels, and the union card displayed in most of the res- taurants. Good organizational work has been done by the Barbers’ Union, Bakers, Bakery Drivers and »um- bers of others. A considerable number of new unions haye been set up within the past year, including Building Laborers, Shipyard Laborers, a local of the Ladies’ Garment Workers; the latest addition to our family is an enthusiastic local of the Imternational Boot and Shoe Workers of America, which is making good headway and expects soon to have the in- dustry completely organized. The Street Railwaymen’s Union has been successful in organizing and securing a signed agreement for all the auto mechanics employed by the BC Blectric Railway Com- pany, resulting in improved working conditions, and wage in- ereases ranging from $8 to $26 per month. This success has had the effect of stimulating a desire for organization amongst auto mechanics employed in other garages. s Se OME unions have not taken full advantage of the favor- able objective conditions to build up their membership, but the apathy is being rooted out, and numbers of locals are initiating organizational campaigns with the assistance of the Trades Council Organizing Committee. Although much has been done we cannot afford to slacken our efforts. Thousands of workers in this district still remain unorgan- ized. It is our duty and our re- sponsibility not to rest until every unorganized worker becomes a member of our unions. The Organizing Committee of the Trades and Labor Council is desirous to give all possible assistance in this work and an appeal is being sent out to all local unions to take up the task of collecting names and addresses of workers employed in industry who are unorganized and send them to the Trades and Labor Council. Every contact received will be interviewed and advised as to which union he or she should join. & Tf our present union member- ship will only take up this very necessary work in earnest, by the end of this year another 10,000 Members can be added to our rolls, and we will be in the happy position to tell the British Colum- bia government when the Legis- lature convenes, that organized labor in this province must have a trade union bill that will be of real benefit to the working people. Editor, People’s Advocate: Dear Sir,—The total proceeds of the tincanners’ ball which was put on by Local 10, Relief Project Workers’ Union in aid of the boys fighting for world democ- racy in Spain, amounted to $101, which was augmented to $105 by four of our crew, and sent to the FMPB in Vancouver. The ball was a great success. The people attending praised its efficient handling and enjoyed the fun. It was our efficient social committee which made it the huge success it was, by canvass- ing the Powell River district. A great many friendships have been created through these social contacts. The people in Powell River and district have been very good to Open Forum us, sending magazines and other gifts; some being fortunate enough to obtain suits of clothes. BE. MARSH, Secretary, Local 10. Powell River, BC. Editor, People’s Advocate. Sir: Further elaboration of the part played by Coquitlam pro- gressives in the recent municipal elections should prove interest- ing to your readers. Vincent Yates, a member of Butcher Workers’ and Meat Cut- ters’ Federal Union, Local 94, topped the poll for councillor for a two-year term. Yates, who is a member of Burquitlam CCF Club, received 377 votes in a field of four for the two council seats. Emmanuel Gueho defeated John W. Dawes in a contest for a one-year term. Both success- ful candidates received the sup- port of the local progressive movement. Thomas B. Allard failed to eapture the reeveship. Once sup- ported by progressive voters which made him councillor, his stand during this election was “independent,” and no organized support was solicited for him. Coquitlam, BC. VOTER. yama do not answer the ques- tion. Neither does the “Ary- an’? German girl, exhorted to physical culture, to the end that her body may become a perfect physical machine for the production of cannon-fod- der, to the “honor” of Teu- tonic traditions. The answer lies, not in the state imposition of darkness, but in the crystal-clear dia- lectic light of day. The “chos- en’ people of all the ages are those people who have con- tributed to culture, brother- hood and peace. And we can be sure the Japanese people will ultimately find this light even now shining through their fascist darkness. Stage and Screen By John R. Chapiin Ho” Associated Film Audiences rates the new films: THE GOLDWYN FOLLIES — Technicolor super-musical with lavish lineup of talent from radio, concert hall, opera and classic ballet. Even some ordinary movie actors. Adolph Menjou in the lead, but Charlie McCarthy and boss carry off comedy honors. Weak in spots, but dependable entertainment. RADIO CITY REVELS—Built around swingy tunes and thin plot about Bob Burns’ ambition to be a song-writer. Few paying customers will walk out on this one, but fewer will need walk very far to see it. A YANK AT OXFORD—Robert Taylor travelled al the way to England to make this picture, proving he’s no sissy. Fairly ex- citing romantic comedy. LOVE IS A HEADACHE — Mildly amusing comedy with a burlesque comedy. WALKING DOWN BROAD- WAY — Melodrama, with songs, about six chorus girls. Score: two deaths, one prison sentence, three marriages, OLLYWOOD.—Up-and-coming Republie Pictures, one of the most important of Hollywood’s so-called independent companies, is currently shooting or preparing four pictures of special social in- terest. They are Prison Nurse, from the novel by Dr. Luis Berg, showing the disastrous conditions in southern prisons and depict- ing the Mississippi flood situa- tion; Sidewalks of New York, with a script written by liberal writers, Louis Weitzenkorn, Sam- uel Ornitz and Horace McCoy, dealing with a boy and girl of the New York slums who, through foree of circumstances and environment, are thrown into the grip of racketeers (starring Lew Ayres, Helen Mack and Ali- son SkKipworth); and Plane Miss- ing, and Fly-By-Night, dealing respectively with air company negligence resulting in acci- dents, and with the travel agency racket. A pat on the back for Para- mount,—which handled distribu- tion of the government-made film, The River, on a non-profit basis. - . . Anna May Wong, leader of the Hollywood movement to send aid to Chinese victims of Japan- ese imperialism, and recently be- come one of the officers of the anti-fascist Motion Picture Art- ists Committee, has moved from her Hollywood apartment, be- cause the view from its windows was a Japanese garden. She feels worried enough, without that con- stant reminder. Max Fleischer, animated car- toonist, has decided to move his studios from New York to the west coast, following the strike which hit him so hard last sum- mer. This will be an added im- petus to the Cartoonists Guild organizing drive, which is cur- rently negotiating with the Leon Schlesinger outfit here and will soon get around to Disney. ... Wew York’s Group Theatre, cur- rently doing well with Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy, has scheduled for early production a play titled Casey Jones, to be followed by Odets’ Silent Partner. ... Will- jam Dieterle, director of Zola, just out of the hospital after a ser- ious auto wreck, has been signed to direct The River Is Blue, for Walter Wanger. This story, with a Spanish war background, star- ring Madeleine Carroll and Henry Fonda, was written by Clifford Odets, with final polishing by John Howard Lawson. Real reason for Warner Oland’s one-man strike, which put an end to all plans for further Charlie Chan films, is that the star is very badly upset over domestic troubles. The studio is now plan- ning a series of Adventures of Charlie Chan’s Son, starring No. 1 son Keye Luke. The all- Negro film, Harlem On the Prairie, is being given a first-run on Broadway at the Rialto, and in Harlem at the Apollo. This is the first time an all-Negro film has crashed the Great White Way. ... Packing boxes used in making The Joy of Loving Gvith Traffickmes With Murder! tional govern-j ment of Britair and the junta of murderers under | Franco is being made plainer daily. These “‘Einglish gentkemen’® whose high standard of ethics would not allow them to trade with the rebel workers of Russia for years after the revolution, have no ethical prejudices against trad-: ing now with capitalist rebels against social order in Spain. : When British shipmasters at-/ tempted to carry foodstuffs to the loyal Basques defending their gov-. ernment in Santander and Bilbao the government of Baldwin Chamberlain and Eden sent the British navy to stop them. Today the ports of Leith and Grangemouth are kept busy by the shipping plying between the) Biscay ports and Britain. In one? fortnight, twelve ships loaded with ; iron from Bilbao entered Grange mouth and a continuous stream of vessels sail between the pirate controlled port of Santander and Leith. ce e s : Although the Girls’ Brigade February ship_/ Exhibition. ment of ciga- rettes and other battlefield luxuries for the boys in the Mac-Paps has gone, that does not mean that we should con— sider our duty performed. Providing smokes for our ad- vance-puard in the fight against [| fascism is one of those -ood deeds in which we should try to cut- shine the Boy Scouts, by having, not one, but two, to our credit every day. 4 This is brought home to us by a letter from one of our heroic young comrades in Spain. Basil Brown, writing to one of his friends in the city, says he is lucky as he has a pipe and so can smoke all the “butts.” That is more expressive than volumes and points our duty for us here. 4 In his letter is also a personal’ note for me which may interest the readers of this column. He says: “Ol' Bill, the machine gun, is OK and has done his work on several fronts and got lots of fas- cists.’ Although apparently recogniz- ing that they are faced with de- feat, Mussolini, Hitler and Franco — The kinship be: tween the na-. — Scena cont on on U-eorenl are not yet downed. There is much to be done in Spain before they are driven into the sea’ In the New Year preeting card issued by the Volunteers of the 15th Inter- national Brigade and their. brothers in the Spanish Repub- lican Army, a copy of which I have just received from one of the tank-fighters, there is a little verse about the boys in the firing line that everybody in Canada should know. It reads: He gives, but he has all te gain. He watches not for Spain alone. Behind him stand the homes of Spain, Behind him stands his own And behind him stands our homes! It is his fight, their fight, that inspired Goebbel’s Angriff to advise the Japanese fascist im- perialists, as early as last Sep- tember, to call a halt to the un- declared war against the Chinese people and be satisfied with what they had won as they “might one | | day encounter not only Chinese resistance, but Chinese flags with Soviet stars or International Br- gades.” We will be doing part of our duty if we roll out in thousands to support the Girls’ Brigade of the League for Peace and Democ- racy when they stage their bazaar and exhibition of Spanish war posters in the Moose Hall Friday and Saturday, February 25 and 26. Spanish painters, knowing the treatment that has been meted out to art in all its forms where fas- cism is in the saddle, have played a magnificent role in the war against the Franco bandits and pirates. This exhibition will besa demonstration of the breadth and sweep of Spanish democracy. e Tough elements who Pleasant © created disturbances Saturday that prevented the Evenings! Orange Hall dances being successfully carried on will have a hard time pulling off any monkey business on the new tenants of that hall. The Vancouver Sports Club, which opened up with whirlwind programs to packed houses the past two Saturday evenings, is well qualified to do its own bounc- ing (the cash customers are also), and people who go there to enjoy the Ail ecards of box-fighting and “rassling’ may rest assured that that is just what they are going to get. It is a good move on the part of the Vancouver Sports Club and will help them to extend the field of their activity among the youngsters, about 150 of whom are now benefitting from the training of the club’s instructors in tumbling, acrobatics, boxing and wrestling. This is a good place to spend a Saturday evening and the bene- fit will be mutual; you will gain and so will the sports club. For next Saturday’s program turn over to the back page. Irene Dunne and Doug Fair- banks, Jr.) had to be repainted, they were supposed to be loaded on a ship bound for China, and they all carried the stencilled in- scription “Made in Japan.”