Page Two

THE PEOPLE’S ADVOCATE

March 3, i939

THE
PEOPLE’S ADVOCATE

Published Weekly by the Proletarian Publishing
Association, Room 10, 163 West Hastings Street,
Vancouver, B.C. Phone Trinity 2019.

One Wear 2 $2.00 Three Months -__.— $ .60
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Make All Cheques Payable to: The People’s Advocate

Vancouver, B.C. - Friday, March 3, 1939

Sabotaging The Housing Program

FTER a considerable amount of persua-

sion and prodding, the federal govern-
ment has made it possible, at low interest and
with some consideration for owners and ten-
ants, to erect low-cost houses to replace in
part, at least, the slums which disgrace every
city and town in Canada and Vancouver in
particular.

Instead of taking advantage of the federal
legislation, which provides $1,328,000 for a
housing program in Vancouver, a majority of
the city council, acting for the slum owners
and other property interests who are in-
terested in maintaining high rentals for their
wermin-infested shacks and disease-breeding
tenements, are doing all in their power to
discourage and hold back this development
which would provide employment to many
persons, and decent housing at a low level.

The provision that the city can not tax the
new houses above one percent of their value
is a step in the direction of lightening the tax
_ burden of the poor and those of moderate

means, placing a greater share on the shoul-

ders of the rich and taxing those now exempt
to bring into the city treasury the required
revenue.

+

This low taxation is hypocritically con-
~demned as tending to the creation of a “pre-
ferred class” of taxpayers. Reactionary forces
have been able to bamboozle some small home
“owners into opposition with the idea that just
. because the city now taxes their property at
a rate higher than the limit set for the new
houses, they should adopt a dog-in-the-man-
ger attitude. These small house owners
should see that the institution of lower taxes
on the new houses would establish a prece-
dent and would be a powerful lever in lower-
ing the taxes on Al.J. small home owners,
the loss of revenue thus occasioned to be
made up by increased taxation on those well
able to pay.

The building trade unions are strongly in
favor of the program; the dwellers in slums
are for it; unemployed building trades work-
ers want it, and the down-at-the-heels condi-
tion of Vancouver demands it. The small
home owners should shake off the effects of
reactionary propaganda and come out strong-
ly in support of it, forcing the reactionary
members of the city council to take advan-
tage of the federal housing legislation to pro-
wide some decent homes for people of small
incomes.

Befending the Indefensible

T SEEMS that there is no depth of infamy

and treason to democracy to which Cham-
berlain descends that the Vancouver capitalist
newspapers do not follow in his defense. He
was justified by them in his refusal to permit
the sale of munitions to the legally elected
and constitutional government of Spain
through the infamous ““non-intervention”
swindle; he was justified in his betrayal of
. Austria and Czechoslovakia on the lying
pretense that the only alternative to those
acts was world war, when the whole world
now can see that the sellout at Munich only
whetted the appetites of the bandit fascist

‘states and strengthened them immeasurably
for the world war which they are preparing.

And for the recognition of Franco by the
Chamberlain and Daladier governments, for
their stabbing the Loyalist government in the
back when the Spanish people are fighting
with their backs to the wall, all of which was
the result of a well thought out pro-fascist
policy, these papers are claiming justification.

That the ink had not been dry on the
Waunich agreement when the preparations
for war had been speeded up in Britain and
on the continent does not deter these organs
of reaction. That Mussolini has become more
vociferous and impudent in his demands for
the dismemberment of France, and Hitler
more clamorous for the return of former
German colonies, including those under man-
date to Britain, does not deter them.

And when a man of the acumen and attain-
ments of Professor Iaski throws the search-
light of fact and reason and penetrates the
fos of lies and deception laid down by the
press he is subjected to editorial attack as
patently malicious as it is deliberately mis-
leading.

“Unjust to Mr. Chamberlain,’ whines the
Daily Province. Unable to meet the argument
of aski, the editorial tries to make out that
Hitlerism is destructive of capitalist prop-
erty, therefore, concludes the Southam sheet,
Laski was wrong when he stated that Cham-
berlain’s crimes against democracy were
motivated by his desire to prevent the de-
struction of fascism which a defeat of Hitler
would surely have brought about, and that
Chamberlain was and still is ready not only

Behind The Palestine

By CLAUD COCKBURN
Writing in The Week
EAIND official statements
and chitchat at the Pales-
tine conference in London is
being played a much bigger game
than yet suggested; a game
which might shake up and re-
male the whole jigsaw of prin-
cipaliiies and powers in the Near
Mast —meaning the Mediterran-
ean one way, Suez another, and
the great pipeline to Mosul the
other.

The facts are that the British
government has two alternative
notions about what might come
eut of this conference. WNotion
Wo. i is that perhaps absolutely
nothing will come out of it, in
which case—after a bit of “riding
for a fall’—the British would at
the worst be “justified” in “re-
suming freedom of action.” iINo-
tion Io. 2 is altogether bigger
and brighter, and will remain the
central aim unless and until it
turns out to be hopeless.

It is nothing more nor less
than the proposal of a Confeder-
ated Arab Kingdom, ruled by a
King of the Royal House of
Egypt, and including within its
borders Syria, Palestine, Trans-
jordan and Lebanon. (With, ac-
cording to what they are telling
some of the Zionists, “autonomy
for the Jewish national home and
Lebanon.”’)

“The candidate for the job is

Abbas Hilmi Pasha, father of
Prince Moneim, leader of the
Egyptian delegation.

e@

OING into details we get the
following picture:

The idea of such a federated
kingdom—ruled by a scion of the
Egyptian dynasty—has been pop-
ping up here and there in the
Wear Hast and in London for
several years.

It was a pet scheme of the
late King Fuad, but in those
days, with the British situation
in the Mediterranean notably less
tough than it is now, nobody went
into it very seriously — except,
maybe, Fuad.

The first plan, so far as can be
gathered from a mass of rather
tangled diplomatic data and “con-
fidential’” memoranda, was that
of a restoration of the Caliphate.
Furthermore at that stage there
was certainly the intention of
ineluding Iraq in the “kingdom
to come.”

The CGaliphate issue,—referred
to by the Sunday Times Cairo
correspondent— was deliberately
raised and flown as a kite to see
what would happen. What hap-
pened was an uproar, led by the
Turks, with the result that, ac-
cording to our present informa-
tion, the Caliphate plan is no

pS se Tass ae

While Britain invites Pal-
estine Jew and Arab liead-
ers to discuss a “solution”
te the Palestine question,
Foreign Office experts be-
hind the scenes plan a dirty
“new deal’ in the Near
East.

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longer—or net for the moment—
@ serious plan at all. A king is
what theyre talking about.

Ss

ITH the Caliphate issue out,
they started talking can-
didates for the king job. The
first names proposed stanl too
ebviously of Whitehall and were
too evidently mounted on the
“cavalry of St. George’ to be
of much use. -

There was Farouk, But it ap-
pears that he was rejected for
a whole list of reasons, of which
two are highly significant.

it was said that if Farouk were
the man, iraq as a possible com-
ponent of the federation would
be ruled out from the start, being
unwilling to play an obvious sec-
ond fiddle to Egypt.

It was also said—and at this
point the scent of a bigger and
maybe darker game becomes
noticeable—that “Berlin and
Rome would actively oppose
Farouk, and it is desirable to
leave a door open to them.”

So they came down to Abbas,
who is claimed by the British ex-
perts to be a “safe” British man,
easily run by Farouk, but never-
theless not so “outstanding” as
to raise more opposition than is
absolutely necessary. Abbas has
been talking Arab federation as
a policy of appeasement in Pal-
estine for quite a long time.

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OQ THEN comes the Syrian

question, and the French,
and the whole game begins to
broaden out to the point where
its bearing on the post-Munich
erisis begins to be evident.

There have been for some time
negotiations between the British
and French governments—or at
least between their experts—in
which the possibility of Syrian
Federation in an Arab kingdom
“protected” by certain “great
powers” was touched upon gin-
gerly.

Sole conerete result to date is
an agreement by the French to
postpone, in the teeth of a
strongish left demand, ratifica-
tion of the Treaty with Syria
which would have to some ex-
tent strengthened Syrian indepen-
dence and which the British
therefore thought “inopportune.”

It is thought in London that

Conference

the French will porbably not be
immediately willing to allow
Syria to enter into such a fed-
eration— in which case the plan
is to have the Nashashibi delegza-
tion, which is in London primar-
ily for that purpose—propose
simply a federation of Palestine,
Lebanon and Transjordan, with
an “open door” to Syria and Iraq
“at a later date.”

UT over and above and beyond

all this there is a very dif

ferent -element in the game—the
Bis.

It can be stated on the very
best of authority that there
have already been discussions
between the “Diumicheers” as to
the possibility of a joint “Four
Power Guarantee” for the pro-
posed Arab Kingdom, with Bri-
tain, Germany, FErance and
italy to do the guaranteeing.
And about here is where the
political dynamite in the con-
ference begins.

For the position is that: (1) the
axis—despite the Anglo-Italian
agreement—is only -less active at
the eastern end of the Mediter-
ranean than at the western end.
Pressure of propaganda, pressure
of money, and finally pressure of
smuggled arms, is certainly no
less, and according to reliable
British and American sources, is
greater than a year ago, and get—
ting heavier. (2) The notion of
a federated Arab kingdom has
been represented in some quar-
ters as a British stroke against
the axis—and as such in the
minds of many officials it is con-
ceived. (3) But the more the
“pressure” from the axis threat—
ens to blow up the “appease—
ment’ in the eastern Mediter—
ranean, the more the MBritish
*“Municheers” and the Hrench
partisans of the same policy are
persuaded that the thing to do
is to “get the axis in on this.’ (4)
Therefore the notion of the Arab
kingdom seems now to be used
to suit other purposes, namely,
as the first formal entry of the
axis into official power and in-
fluence in that quarter, and—per-
haps more far-reaching still—
as the first precedent for a four-
power arrangement of the kind.

Therefore, according to infor-
mation from Berlin, the possibil-
ity of collaboration with the Bri-
tish “appeasers” along these lines
is viewed in Berlin as the great—
est stroke in the battle for the
Berlin-Bagdad route, for the pipe
line, and for a straddie on the
route to India, since the first
great defense line on the south-
eastern route—the fortifications
of Sudetenland—was surrendered
to them in the name of a four-
power peace.

Canadian Railway Facts

WN 1920 the total operating reve-

nue of Canadian vrailways
amounted to a little more than
$492,000,000, while labor costs
amounted to $290,510,518. In other
words, out of every dollar of total
operating revenue, 59 cents was
required to pay labor costs. In
1935 the total operating revenue
had declined ‘to a little less than
$307,000,000, a decrease of 37-7
percent. Labor costs in 1935 had
$173,000,000, a decrease of 40:5
percent. Instead of using 59
cents out of each dollar of oper-
ating expenses to meet labor
costs as was done in 1920, only
56.4 cents was required in 1935, a
decrease of 4.4 percent.

Wow let us look at the other
side of the picture.

In 1920 the funded and unfund-
ed debt of the Canadian railways
stood at $846,324166 and progres-
sively increased until at the end

side of the picture as far as
railway workers are con-
cerned — none of which
George McCullagh or Sir
Edward Beatty would feel
like answering.

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of 1935 it was a little better tha
three billion dollars, an increase
of 257.6 percent.

The interest on this debt in
1920 amounted to $59.270.289, and
in 1935, after six years of depres-
sion, it amounted to $116,789,750,
or 97 percent above 1920.

In 1920, out of every dollar of
total operating reyenues, ZA
cents was required to pay in-
terest and 59 cents to pay
labor costs.

But in 19385 it required 39-1

cents to pay interest and 56.4
to pay labor costs.

While labor costs fell during
the period by 40.5 percent, the
wages of bondholders increased
by 97 percent.

Then in the face of these facts,
the government is asked to pass
the necessary legislation to en-
able the railroads to effect an
estimated saving of from 15 to
17 percent in labor costs, by clos-
ing the door to employment in
this industry during a five year
period.

Why, we might well ask, should
the real cause of the financial
difficulties of the railways not be
investigated?

Why should railway workers
be asked to sacrifice either their
jobs or the potential avenue of
employment for their sons to
satisfy the pyramiding claims of
the financial interests?

to betray democracy to fascism, but to sacri-
fice British national interests in order to safe-
guard the interests of the exploiting class of
which he is an outstanding member and rep-
resentative.

Chamberlain stands exposed not as a
blunderer or an inept and shortsighted states-
man, but as a shrewd, cold-blooded and cyn-
ical pro-fascist working hand in glove with
Mussolini and Hitler, a co-butcher with
Franco of the Spanish people, and just what
Gallacher called him in the House of Com-
mons, a traitor to the people of Britain.

The latest deception practiced by Cham-
berlain was his statement that he believed
that Mussolini told the truth when he said
_if he ever said it—that when he won a
military victory over the Loyalists he would
withdraw his troops. This Chamberlain le
appeased the innocent pacifists whose policy
of avoiding coming to grips in a showdown
with the fascist criminals only leads straight
to a world war.

But already Mussolini has announced that
he WILL NOT get out of Spain until Franco
wins a political victory, which would mean
the extermination of every opponent of fas-
cism in Spain. And even then Mussolini
would not get out of Spain, despite the eye-
wash, as false as it is absurd, printed in the
headlines that Franco the puppet has
“ordered” Mussolini to “get out of Spain.”

With the exposure of the Chamberlain plot
to aid and maintain fascist rule in Germany
and Italy, and his efforts to introduce it in
Britain, the capitalist press is hard put to
make out a case, hence the false reasoning,
downright lying and cheap sneers at those
who do the exposing.

Dupes of the Anti-Embargoists

NE of the methods adopted by the fascist
radio ranter, Tom MaciInnes, the cap-
italist press and the counter-revolutionary
Trotskyists and their dupes, to counter the
splendid work of the Embargo Councils is
the assertion, given wide publicity, that trade
between Germany and the Soviet Union is
increasing.

It is exceedingly unfortunate that in this
week’s issue of the Federationist there ap-
pears a contribution by “W.” under the head-
ing, “Capitalist Democracy,’ which repeats
this slander by stating that “in a recent year”
the Soviet Union supplied 52 percent of the
ferro -manganese, essential in armament
manufacture, used by Germany.

The authority given for this serious state-
ment is Forward. “W.”’ doesn’t say where
this paper is published, but it is presumed
that it is Abraham Cahan’s reactionary, anti-
Soviet rag published in New York and which
was long an organ of the right wing of the
now defunct Socialist Party of that state,
which party was stabbed to death as well as
poisoned internally by Trotskyists.

Cessation of all trade between a single so-
cialist country with capitalist countries, even
fascist states, cannot be achieved overnight.
But it can be reduced tremendously by the
socialist state. And that has been done. The
New York Times, of February 16 of this year,
a publication by no means friendly to the
Soviet Union, states that recent figures avail-
able show the Soviet Union last in a list of
seven countries exporting oil to Germany,
having dropped its exports to that country
73.9 percent in 1938. This, says the Times, is
in line with ALL Soviet-German trade, and,
we can add, including ferro-manganese.

SHORT JABS

A
Weekly

Commentary

By Ol’ Bill

2 When“ we began to study
A Vile English literature we had to
Slander. digest large gobs of “the boy

stood on the burning deck,” “It was the good Ship
Hesperus,” “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” and
so forth. This was elementary stuff, but some of
the students sot themselves so smeared over with
it that they never developed any further. Believing
themselves to be literary geniuses, however, they
stayed with the seribbling business, and when they
grew to manhood’s years without becoming real
men, they secured jobs as editorial writers on
papers like the News-Herald, published in. Van-
couver.

One such was on the job in that putrescent rag
last Saturday morning. The leading editorial dealt
with the situation in Spain brought about through
the machinations of Herr Chamberlain, the inva-—
sion of Moorish, Italian and German conscript ar
mies led by mercenary officers and the treason of
the hired army officers of the Republic.

In the midst of the verbiage which passes for
writing on the News-Herald appears the following
passage: “It is rank hypocrisy for us in Canada
to pour out the vials of our wrath and hatred on
dictator countries who offered their aid (to Fran-—
co) while at the same time we condone the action
of the Camadian citizens who served under the
Loyalist banner. Im both Cases these men were
hired to fight, just as the Hanoverian soldiers of
fortune were pressed into service a little over a
century ago.”

Along with the doggerel re-
In Good ferred to at the befinning of
Company. the above paragraph, we also

had dealt out to us extracts from “The Pleasures
of Hope” by Thomas Campbell. One phrase of
Gampbell’s sticks in our head yet. “Preedom
shrieked when Koskiusco fell.”
pundit of the News-Heraid would not be interested
in that line because Koskiusco was fighting against
the then aggressors, Russia, Germany and Austria,
who were partitioning Poland among themselves.
But another Gampbell is needed to write of what is
happening to freedom today-

In every war in which national independence,
liberty, freedom are involved, the solidarity of
foreign elements is demonstrated by volunteers to
whom the issues at stake are the only things that
count. Lafayette and the French and other foreign-
ers who fought under Washington; Tom Paine and
the “etrangers”’ who helped to defeat feudal reac-
tion in the French Revolution; Byron and the
English Brigade battling side by side with the
Fiellenes in the struggle for Greek independence;
English and Frenchmen who fought under Gari-
baldi in the war of Italian liberation and unitfica—
tion; all these were fighting against reactionary ele—
ments and for human progress. They were all in
the same catezory as the International Brigade
which inchided the heroic Canadians of the Mac-
Pap battalion.

The boys who have just returned from Spain are
not, and were not, hirelings or mercenaries or con-
scripts. They did not go to Spain fora price, but
to fight in a cause in which they believed, the pres-
ervation of democracy—the democracy which is
wide enough to allow the News-Herald editor to
slander them.

= > The editorial in the News-
His Master = Herald is the echo of the
Voice. master’s voice. It is the amp-
lification in print of the whispered policies, needs
and desires of the gang behind the so-called ~“co-
operatively owned” paper, the gold Mine owners
and oil brokers of BC; of those money barons on
«hose loans the News-Herald remains afloat The
writer is a hireling in their pay, for by writing
such slander he earns his living.

John Swinton, one of the greatest of American
editors, described these ‘GIndependent press” editors
well years ago. Answering the toast of an “inde-
pendent press” at a banquet in his honor, he said,
‘What folly is this to toast an independent press!
Qur talents, our responsibilities are the property of
rich men. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the
strings and we dance. We are intellectual prosti-
tutes.”

The Mac-Paps have saved Canada from the full
measure of shame that the King government
brought on it. Their exploits on the battlefields of
Spain will make a page in history like that of La-
fayette and Byron, and when the WNews-Herald
slanderer has been eaten by the maggots of the
boneyard and his name forgotten, these brave

Canadians will have their names inscribed with ~

those of William Lyon MacKenzie and Louis Joseph
Papineau as the makers of a Canada worth living in.

Mussolini’s castor oil treat—
ment and Hitler’s concentra—
tion camps do not seem to
have much effect on the old line Social Democrat.
The efforts of the fascists and Nazis to exterminate
social democracy to the last individual by the
bloodiest repression recorded in human history, the
long lists of tortured, maimed and broken Sociai
Democrats, appears to have been forgotten by at
least one Social Democrat leader.

Fiere is the most disgusting item to appear in the
pages of a newspaper for many 2 long day: “A
proposal that the Nobel Peace Prize for 1938 should
be siven to Hitler has been sent to the Wobel Com-
mittee of the Norwegian Government by Senator
Brandt, member of the Swedish Social Democrat
Parity.”

This is almost as bad as the other proposal that
the umbrella-man half of the Munich betrayal
pact, Chamebriain, should be given that honor.
Shades of von Ossietsky!

Incurable!

Tt has become necessary in
New Language this year of grace for us to
Needed. jearm a new language. The
old meanings of words no longer apply. in the
House of Commons on February 28, replying to
Clement Atlee, Chamberlain said his government
was debatins “a decision to recognize another gov—-
ernment.” The bandits and brigands of Franco
were the other government.

The London Times of the same date speaks of
“successfully preserving peace and Maintaining
Spain’s political independence.” Ex-ambassador
Loughlin of the US says “Franco represents true
democracy and the Loyalists destroyed the Spanish
Republic in the spring of 1936.”

And Chamberlain’s friend Franco, charges the
Spanish sovernment are the traitors and criminals.
Tts members are to be tried for treason — when
they fall into his hands.

Our language is surely in the throes of a dialec-
tical process!

But the editorial —

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