Page Two

ae er Os we eS

ADVOCATE

May 27, 1938.

THE PEOPLE’S
ADVOCATE

Published Weelly by the
PROLETARIAN
PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

Room 10, 163 W. Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C., Phone, Trin. 2019

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ERIDAY, MAY 27, 1938

Continued

on our readers to whom this
paper is also the voice of their
own aspirations. The srowth
of the progressive movement
is our growth, too, and the
building of the paper’s circu-
lation is the spread of prog-
ress.

If everyone of our readers
throughout the province in
the next few weeks will un-
dertake to obtain one new
subseriber our difficulties can
be solved. We don’t think
that this is asking took much
of those who have already
made many sacrifices. It is
possible, without placing the
burden on any one group. We
ask you to see what you can
do, confident that it can and
will be done.

Mien Without Work

T IS a week since the Relief
Project Workers occupied
the post office, art gallery
and the Georgia Hotel. Al-
though they agreed to evacu-
ate the hotel on condition that
they received $500, they are
still “holding the fort” in the
other buildings.
Mayor Miller hurried baclk
from a ‘vacation when he

heard of the action taken. -

According toe the press he
adopted a very blustering,
bellicose attitude. He didn’t
“give a damn” for this; he
didn’t “give a damn” for that;
the men had to be put out at
all costs.

Mayor Miller says the city
can’t afford to keep the men.
But who is footing the bill for
the special police guards sta-
tioned at all public buildings,
department stores and thea-
tres? The city, of course, and
this means the taxpayer. But
Mayor Miller says the city
ean't afford to do anything
about the single unemployed.

The city council was di-
vided on the point of forcible
ejection. Some of the mem-
bers were strongly against a
repetition of the disorders of
1935. It is to his credit that
Police Chief Foster has exer-
eised a restraining influence
on those who have been advo-
eating the brutal treatment
accorded to unemployed men
in the past..

Public sympathy is solid
behind the men in_their sit-
down. When a rumor spread
that they were to be evicted,
150 women formed a picket
line at the buildings, a strik-
ing evidence that the peopie
of Vancouver want to see
fair play.

These men are not outcasts.
They are men without work.
They are men who are ready
and willing to go any place
where there is work for them,
but until a callous govern-
ment, 2500 miles away, pro-
vides this work, they are, in
this struggle for recognition
of their situation, proving
themselves to be of the high-
est type ot Canadian citizens
by refusing to starve.

The depression that has
been growing so rapidly in
the United States is reaching
into BC. Small lumber camps
are closing down, lay-offs
have taken place in a number
of other industries. An at-
mosphere of uncertainty and
fear of the future pervades
business circles. Unemploy-
ment in general is increasing
at a great pace, and it is plain
that the struggle of the Relief
Project Workers for employ-
ment on public works is the
first of a series of like strug-
gles that will have to be car-
ried on within the coming
months.

It is to the interest of us all
that they win at this time.
The capable way in which
their movements are directed
and carried out speaks vol-
umes for their leadership and
for the self-imposed discipline
of the men. They are showing
“how it should be done.”

The Federal government is

being represented here by
Humphrey Mitchell. This is
the individual who sat on the
board to investigate the
Regina Trek, the same man
who was expelled from the
Hamilton Labor Council and
who was repudiated by the
CCF for red-baiting and anti-
working-class activity. His
reputation is such as to lead
us to expect that he will raise
the “red bogey” in this in-
stance, and declare that the
Project Workers are being in-
fluenced and misled by a few
agitators.

In spite of the schemes of
men like Mitchell, there is
every reason to believe the
men will remain solid even
should the struggle become
erucial, but they must beware
and not be misled by those—
whoever they are—who, hay-
ing appointed themselves as
spokesmen for the men, try
to weaken and misdirect the
fight. INo one is so capable of

speaking for the Project
Workers as their elected
leaders.

No Canuck Planes
For Japan!

VER since Japan attacked
China there have been
many people in Canada who
have protested strongly
against the shipment to Japan
of Canadian minerals useful
in manufacturing war mate-

rials.

These ‘protests, however,
have not been sufficiently
widespread to make even a
dent-in the callous attitude of
the federal sovernment which
has calmly ignored them. The
governments excuse appears
to be that an embargo. on
shipments to Japan would
constitute an unfriendly act
to a triendly nation.

This is mere word-slinging.
China is a member of the
Leasue of Nations, so is Can-
ada,.and Japan is not. The
League was formed to protect
the member nations from ag-
gressors, and one would think
that the most elementary act
of friendliness should be ten-
dered to a fellow member of
the League.

But Canada is supposed to
be friendly to both China and
Japan, we are told. This is
sheer, brazen hypocrisy. If
you are friendly to a man you
don’t give his enemy a gun to
shoot him with; yet that is
what Canada is doing today.
Besides the steady flow of
raw materials to Japan that
has been transported since
the Japanese invasion began,
a new, a crowning piece of be-
trayal of the Chinese people
has occurred. z

Through a question asked
in the House of Commons by
M. J. Coldwell (CCF, Rose-
town-Biggar), it has been re-
vealed that the Lockheed Air-
eraft Corporation, in Eastern
Canada, has accepted a con-
tract for the construction of
30 bombing planes for deliv-
ery to Japan!

Who are the friends of
China? Not the Canadian
capitalists. They are the
friends of the worst enemies
of both the Chinese and the
Canadian people. These buz-
zards have profited because
Canadian materials were
used to slaughter women and
children in Spain. They now
want to increase their pile by
aiding in the butchery of Chi-
nese women and children.
Because they materially have
aided Franco and the Japa-
nese militarists, they are the
avowed enemies of the Cana-
dian people also.

Who are the patriots in
Canada? Not those Judases
who are selling world democ-
racy to fascism for the profits
to be made through the pro-
duction of instruments of
death and destruction. The
Canadian patriots are the
common people who have
protested in the past against
this vile trafficking in blood
and suffering, and who must
now protest more vigorously
against the shipment from
Canada of bombing planes to
Japan.

Wo planes can be exported
to any country without a li-
cense from the federal gov-
ernment. We must see to it
that the Ottawa government
refuses to issue such licenses,
and that it cancels any that
may have been issued to the
Lockheed Aircraft Corpora-
tion.

A Civil Servant Relates How

Japan ‘Cooperates’ With China

‘ANKING, China.—What I am about to relate is anything but a pleasant story. In fact,
it is so very unpleasant that I cannot recommend anyone without a strong stomach
to read it. For it is a story of such crime and horror as to be almost unbelievable—the story
of the depradations of a horde of degraded criminals, blinded by propaganda, who have been,
and now are working their will unrestrained on a peaceful, kindly and law-abiding people.

Wet it is a story which TI feel
must be told. I cannot rest until
Z have told it and perhaps, fort
unately, I am one of a few in a
position to tell it. It is moet com-
plete. God alone Knows when it
will be finished. I pray it may be
soon, but LI am afraid it is going
to continue for many months to
come, not just here, but in other
parts of China. I believe it has no
parallel in modern history.

We here in Nanking have come
through 2 siege. The Chinese
army has left, defeated, and the
Japanese have entered. Then
Wanking was still the beautiful
city we were so proud of, with law
and order still prevailing. Now it
is a city laid waste, ravaged, com-—
pletely looted, much of it burned.
Complete anarchy has reigned for
days. It has been a hell on earth.

Wot that my life has been in

serious danger at any time,
though turning lust-mad, some-
times drunken soldiers out of

houses where they were raping
the women is not altogether safe.
Wor does one feel too sure of him-
self when he finds a bayonet at
his chest or a revolver at his head
and knows it is handled by some-
ene who heartily wishes him out
of the way.

For the Japanese army is any-
thing but pleased at our being
here after “advising” all foreign-
ers to get out. They wanted no
observers. But we have seen even
the very poor robbed of their last
piece of bedding, their last coin
(and it is freezing weather).

Thousands of disarmed soldiers
who sought sanctuary with us, to-
rether with innocent civilians,
have been taken out before our
eyes to be shot or used for bayonet
practice and we have had to listen
to the sound of the guns killing:
them. Women have knelt hys-
terically before us, begging us to
save them.

We have had to stand by and
do nothing while our flag was
taken down and insulted, not
ence but a dozen times. We have
had to watch our homes looted
and the city we have come to love
and to which we have given our
best years deliberately and syste-
matically burned. “

e@
WW KEEP asking ourselves:
‘iow long can this last?”
Day after day we are assured by
officials that things will be better
soon, but each day is worse than
the day before. we By aee

Every day we call at the Japa-
nese embassy and present our
protests, our appeals, our lists: of
authenticated reports of violence
and crime. We are met with sauve
Japanese courtesy, but actually
the officials are powerless.

The victorious army must have
its reward, and this reward is to
plunder, murder and rape at will,
to commit unbelievable acts of
brutality and savagery on the
very people the Japanese have
come to “‘protect and befriend,”
as they so loudly proclaim to the
world. In all modern history
surely there is no page that will
stand so black as that of the rape
of Nanking. E

; @
OQ TELL the whole story would
take too long. The tragic thing
is that by the time the truth gets
out to the rest of the world it will
be “cold’’—no longer “news.”

However, I am going to record
some of the more important events
of this period as I have jotted
them down in my diary.

December 10: We are now a
community of 27—18 Americans,
5 Germans, 2 Russians, 1 English-
man and 1 Austrian. The other
foreigners have left. How many of
them have met their fate we do
not know.

December 12: Airplanes have
been overhead constantly for the

past two days and the shelilfire
has been terrific. The wall has
been breached and the damage in
the south part of the city is tre-
mendous. No one will ever know
what the Chinese casualties were,
but they must be tremendous. The
Japanese themselves say they lost
40,000 men in taking Nanking. The
general rout started early this
afternoon. General Chang Chung
asked our assistance in arrang-—
ing a truce with the Japanese—
but it was already too late. The
first soldiers who streamed
through the city from the south,
many of them through the Zone,
retreated orderly, but when Gen-
eral Ghang fled this evening and
the news got out disorganization
became general. There was panic”
as the Chinese made for the gate
to Hsiakwan and the river. The
road for miles was strewn with
the equipment they cast away.
Trucks and cars jammed, were
overturned, caught fire. At the
gate more cars jammed and were
burned. The holocaust was ter-
tible and the dead lay feet deep.
The gate blocked, terror-mad
soldiers scaled the wall and let
themselves down on the other side
with ropes, puttees and belts tied
together, clothing torn to strips.
Many fell and were killed. But at
the river was perhaps the most
appalling scene of all. A fleet of
junks was there. It was totally
inadequate for the thousands now
in a frenzy to cross to the north

This letter was written
to a young Vancouver
business man by a
friend in China. it tells
what happened in
Nanking after the last
newspaper correspon-
dent had left—an eye-
witness story which
mo other paper has
printed. ;

side. The overcrowded junks cap-
sized and sank, drowning thou-
sands. Thousands of others made
rafts of the lumber at the river
front only to suffer the same fate.

December 13: One small detail
of three companies rallied under
their officers, crossed the San
Chia So, three miles up-river, and
attacked the Japanese forces com-
ing in from that direction: They
were hopelessly outnumbered and
practically decimated. Only one
seems to have succeeded in getting
back. He happened to be the
brother of a friend of mine and
appeared in my office this morn-
ing to report the story. A fellow
officer drowned while the two of
them were swimming the tribu-
tary to the Yangtsze. Before day-
light this morning he managed to
seale the wall and slip in unob-
served. This morning we in the
Zone were busy disarming soldiers
who were unable to escape and
who came to the Zone for protec-
tion. We assured them. on the
strength of assurances given to
us by the Japamese, that if they
gave up their arms they would
not be shot. But it has proven to
be a vain promise. All would have
preferred to die fighting than sub-
mit, as they are being forced now,
to being shot or used for bayonet
practice.

December 15: At our staff con-
ference this evening word came
that Japanese were taking all 1300
men in one of our camps to shoot
them. The men were lined up and
roped together in groups of about
a hundred by soldiers with
bayonets fixed. Then by the lhght
of our headlights we saw them
marched away to their doom. Not

a whimper came from that entire

throng. Gur own hearts were lead.
How foolish I had been to tell
them that the Japanese would
spare their lives, although IT had
eonfidently expected the Japanese
would live up to their promises.

oe

ECEMBER 16: This morning
cases of rape began to be re-
ported. Over a hundred women
we knew of were taken away by
soldiers, seven of them from the
university library, but there must
have been many times that num-—
ber who were raped in their

homes. ~
December 17: Robbery, murder,
rape continue unabated. A rough
estimate would be at ieast a thou-
sand women raped last night and
Guring today. One poor woman
was raped 37 times. Another had
her five-months infant deliber-
ately smothered by a brute to stop
its crying while he raped her. Re-
Sistance means the bayonet. The
hospital is rapidly filling up with
victims of Japanese cruelty and
barbarity. Bob Wilson, our only
surgeon, has his hands more than
full and works far into the night.
December 18: A day of complete
anarchy. Several big fires, started

. by the Japanese, are raging. The

American flag was torn down in
a number of places. There are
still many corpses on the streets,
most of them civilians. Smythe
and I called again at the Japanese
embassy with a list of 55 addi-

tional cases of violence, all au-
thenticated, and told Messrs.
Tanaka and Fukui that today

was the worst so far. We were
assured that they would “‘do their
best.”” But it is obvious that they
have little or no influence over
the military and that the military
have no control over the soldiers.
We were told that 17 military
police had arrived who would help
in restoring order. Seventeen for
an army of 50,000!

December 23: A man was led
to headquarters with his head
burned cinder black, eyes and
ears gone, nose partly, a ghastly
Sight. I took him to the hospital
where he died a few hours later.
His story was that he was one
of several hundred who were tied
together, then gasoline was

thrown over them and set afire.

He happened to-be on the outer
edge and the gas burned his head
only.

December 24: Rabe, a German,
does not dare leave his house as
Japanese soldiers come over his
wall several times a day. He al-
ways makes them leave by the
way they came instead of by the
gate. When any of them object
he thrusts his Nazi armband in
their faces, points to his Nazi
decoration and asks them if they
know what it means. It always
works!

@

4 is perhaps no purpose

to be served in going further
With this story and telling the
acts of horror committed since.
It is now January 11 and while
eonditions are improved, there
has not been a day without its
atrocities. The plight of those
Chinese left in Nanking is pitiable
in the extreme. Kroeger, who
managed to slip out of the east
gate the other day, tells us that
all the villages as far as he went,
for 20 miles, are burned and that
not a living Chinese or farm
animal is to be seen.

I have written this in no spirit
of vindictiveness. War is brutaliz-
ing, especially a war of conquest.
The destructive force that now
menaces the East may some day
menace the West and the world
should know the truth of what is
happening. How this situation is
to be dealt with I shall have to
leave to abler minds than mine
to consider,

na A Woman’s Diary

by Victoria Post

FIERE are numerous stories of women’s assistance and moral support which has enabled
their men to win strikes. In many instances, in the 1935 waterfront strike here, for exam-

ple, the presence of women has been the means of preventing attacks on the men by the police.
Women have staged parades and sit-down strikes of their own in municipal buildings until
they obtained what they wanted.

We have all read of all these
things happening to other peo-
ple Now it is time to do some-
thing curselves

The single unemployed boys
are staging a wonderful fight in
the Post Office and Art Gallery.
I went in to both these places
yesterday and found the boys do-
ing their best to relieve the
tedium making the best of the
sweltering heat and hard stone
floors. Some were playing crib-
bage, others were listening to a
radio, which, although right in-
side the Post Office, has no
license ;

So far they have been fed by
the valiant efforts of the Moth-
ers’ Council with the support of
one or two other organizations.
The city states that it intends to
“out wait’ the strikers—in other
words, starve them out.

Women are rapidly organizing
under a commissariat which
meets frequently at the Ukrainian
Labor Temple. Food is the first
consideration as it’s no easy task
providing each boy with one
sandwich, let alone 2 decent meal.

Pians are being made to canvass
all districts for donations of food,
ete., to send delegations to the
mayor to demand action. We in-
tend to show the boys that all
sections of women are backing
them.

More helpers are needed. Any-
one who can spare a few hours
should get in touch with the com-
mittee at the Ukrainian Labor
Temple, 805 East Pender, and
find out how they can help best.
Particularly needed are people
with cars.

@

UNE 10-12 is te be a National
Spain Week. The Spanish sov-
ernment is making great gains
just recently but with heavy loss
of life and limb. We have a big
responsibility to the Spanish peo-
ple who are fighting our battle,
the battle of all democrats. They
need more ambulances, more sup-
plies, more homes for the little
Spanish refugee children. above
ali the desperate need is food.
The Canadian: Commiitee to
Aid Spanish Democracy has

pledged itself to raise $5,000
worth of canned milk, and $5,000
wortk of food for the Spanish
government during Spain Week.
In addition, various branches of
the committee have undertaken
to adopt Spanish children. eG
costs $5 a month to keep a Span-
ish child and every organization
that possibly can should under-
take the upkeep of a child in one
of the homes in Spain. Let’s rally
around and put Spain Week over
the top.

OMPANY consumer groups
as well as company unions
have now appeared on the scene.
Flashing the magic word “con-
sumer,” many phony organiza-
tions are springing up, trying to
cash in on the popularity of the
genuine groups which are receiy—
ing wide support from labor.
There are at present six con-
sumer organizations in the United
States. Three of these are okay
and worthy of support, but the
other three should be dumped
overboard.

SHORT
JABS

CoD
By
OL’ BIEL
tc : Though the King
Canada - government allows
Standard” itself to be dragged

behind Werr Chamberlain's fas-
cist war-chariot, the drugged in-
dividualism of the bourgeois
trader is sure.to come to the top.

Pressure from the exporters of
Canadian manufactured goods
as compelled the government to
five consideration to a proposal
whereby “Canada standard” prod-
ucts will bear a “hall-mark,” to-
wit, a picture of the head of an
RCM Policeman.

When the scheme reaches frui-
tion we may see Canadian nickel,
lead, zine, copper, “scrap iron,
planes, shells, TNT and other war
materials being shipped to ag-
eressors to murder innecent Span-—
ish and Ghinese women and chil-
dren with an artistically vulgar
or vulgarly artistic replica of the
dial of one of the Regina thugs
who won fame on Dominion Day,
1935, or of one of the crackshots
of the Calgary division called out
by Sir Herbert Holt to shoot down
the striking builders of the CPR
at Beaverdell.

Or maybe BC lumber and
shingles will find the way to the
world markets, stamped with a
beautiful engraving of one of the

RNMP stools who helped to
smash the old Lumber Worsers’
Union.

What could be more appropri-
ate on a can of BC salmon than
the countenances of the fishy
mounties, Sergeant Harry Wilson,
chief of the stool pigeon detail
which framed the members of
the Russian Workers’ Circle in
Vancouver, who was later hanged
for murdering his wife, or the
social leper “Doc” Smith, who ini-

tiated eleven-year-old girls into
the mysteries of ‘hitting the
Ppipe.”’ :

And maybe Canadian whisky
will go to the heathen with the
visage of Sergeant Leopold-Essel-
wein or the mountie who was
pinched near Blaine trying to run
a wagon-loaf of booze into the
arid territores of Uncle Sam dur
ne the dry spell in the State of
Washington. :

Other kinds of exportable dope
manufactured in Canada also
could be suitably labelled with
echromoliths of Eccles, Smith and
Fernandez of Canada’s patrician
band, convicted and jailed in Vic-
toria a few years ago for opium-—
smugsinge.

Whichever ugly mug goes on

“Canada standard” goods, one
thing is certain,—International
Wickel, Consolidated Smelters,

Sir Herbert Holt, Harvey H. Mac-
Millan, Vietor Spencer and their
exploiting tribe will be the only
ones to profit.

The storybook and movie tra-
dition of the mounties is a build-
up; the RCMP is primarily a
strike-breaking force; for smash-
ing political as well as industrial
strikes. That is why the Canadian
manufacturers desire to put a
mountie’s head hallmark on their
“quality goods.’

Discrediting Humor in the capi
talist press is Dot

The Police. to be found in the
comic strips. Sometimes it is in
the editorials) and on occasion it
gets on the front page with a
scarehead and a two-column lead.

For instance, on the front page
of a recent issue of Yancouver’s
leading daily, Chief Foster was
quoted te the effect that attempts
to discredit the police here was
the work of city “con men” and
‘bunco artists.” On another col-
umn of the same page Judge Man-
son raps the city police for wan-
dering ‘all over the country
attending conventions in Timbuc-
too” instead of attending to their
business.” TI don’t know whether
Manson is 2 con man or a bunco
artist, but I am willing to admit
they are both right.

It is otherwise in Toronto.
There it is the Communists who
discredit the police, at least this
is the tenor of an editorial in the
Mail and Globe sent me by 2
reader in Ontario. Fhe Giloben-
mail is wroth because Alderman
Stewart Smith has voiced the in-
dignation of the democratic peo-
ple of Toronto in protest against
an attempt of General Draper,
Toronto police chief, to reinsti-
tute the sadistic brutalities which
he was guilty of in 1929.

At a demonstration before the
German and Ttalian consulates
against the rape of democracy in
Spain, police, acting on orders
from Draper, illezaily seized plac-
ards from the pickets, mounted
police rode down men and women
on the sidewalks exercising a
legal right, and when Alderman
Smith asked the city council to
request the Police Commission
to instruct the police not to inter-
fere in future with the demo-
eratie rights of the people, this, in
view of the panjandrum who edits
the Glovenmail, is “discrediting
the representatives of law and
order.”

Waturally such a reactionary
dope-sheet could only shiver at
the greatest May Day parade in
the history of Toronto and call
upon “all responsible citizens to
view the situation with alarm.” -