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 One Year ee ee eae iets $1.80 Sali Wear S62 ee ee $1.00 ‘APSE SOMONLHS cae isele eyo e316) pinPie (CODY, pace eee uie ae -05 Make All Cheques Payable to: The People’s Advocate 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.” -