Page Two

THE PEOPLE’S ADVOCATE

THE
PEOPLE’S ADVOCATE

Published Weekly by the Proletarian Publishing
Association, Room i0, 163 West Wastings Street,
Vancouver, B.C. Phone TRinity 2019.

One Year ——___--$2:00

Three Months
Hraif Year

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Make All Gheques Payable to: The People’s Adyocate

Vancouver, B.C. Friday, May 19, 1939

Laber Salutes the Seime Fishermen

r I (HE past few weeks have seen a number of

striking developments in British Colum-
bia’s labor movement.

We've seen the election of Mrs. Laura
Jamieson, the huge vote for CCF candidate
Alfred Hurry, the launching of an organizing
campaign by the Trades and Labor Council,
in itself the most potentially significant devel-
opment in years, and new gains in the or-
ganizing of the hardrock mining industry.

Wow there’s new cause to cheer—we refer
of course to the smashing victory scored by
+he Salmon Purse Seiners’ Union and the near
success of the Pacific Coast Fishermen’s Union
in the 1939 salmon price negotiations.

The significance of the seiners’ agreement,
which brought union recognition from some
of the biggest fishing companies on the con-
tinent, is much greater than the actual num-
ber of men affected would indicate.

The fact is that the purse seiners occupy a
strategic place in the fishing industry. In the
past the canners have been able to take ad-
vantage of their weak organization by
cramming any old price down their throats
and as a result have been able to hold down
prices to fishermen using gillnet and trolling
-gear. This week’s union agreement with the
ecanners has greatly altered the situation, has
aided the gillnetters and trollers in winning
increased prices and has literally given the
full speed ahead signal to 100 percent or-
ganization in the industry and future amalga-
mation of the numerous fishing unions in one
powerful sroup.

The settlement also provides something of a
lesson to another group of unions now ne-
gotiating under a so-called Central Price Com-
mittee. It was this same outfit that last year
forced fishermen to accept a lower price than
was demanded through capitulating to the
operators. Only the SPSU and PCFU stuck
to their demands and through a show of mil-
jtance and a brilliant strike of the seine fleet
last September were able to boost prices to a
higher level.

It is significant that this year the progres-
sive and militant unions have signed contracts
while those union officials too eager to play
stooge to the canners are still negotiating.

So hats off to the men of the seine fleet.
They’ ve given a real boost to unionism in the
fishing industry and officially opened the or-
ganizing campaign of the Trades and Labor
Council, a campaign which will yet put Van-
couver on the map as the first 100 percent
union town in Canada.

Why the Pussyfooting With
Hitler’s Spies?
GNES MacPHAIlL, M-P., has called upon

the government to take action against
the network of Nazi propagandists operating
ep our territories.

Arthur Slaght, M.P., declares that German
and Italian agents are ready at a moment's
notice to use bombs, dynamite and poison

serums to paralyze this country at the out-
break of war. —

Delegates at the German-Canadian People’s
Society, meeting in convention at Kitchener,
have brought forth additional proofs of the
operations of the Gestapo in our country.

The evidence piles up! But Ottawa con-
tinues to pussyfoot while the fascist axis
agents carry on their criminal, subversive
activities!

It is a public scandal that this should be so.

Wir. Slaght went into detail about the espion-
age-terrorist ring that was directed by Count
Von Bernstorff from New York in the years
1914 to 1917. He recalled that Ambassador
Bernstorff spent $150,000,000 on espionage
and sabotage in those years and that he used
the German diplomatic corps to direct opera-
tions.

Now, Mr. Slaght is not a back-bench Lib-
eral. He is a prominent figure in the Liberal
machine, an intimate of Mitchell Hepburn and
other leading Liberal lights. Mr. Slaght has
access to information gathered by the federal,
Ontario and Quebec authorities.

He knows, as we know, that Count Von
Bernstorfi’s criminal activities are being
duplicated today by Hitler consular officials,
by pseudo-business men such as J. orimen
and Werner Haag.

For every dollar that the Kaiser spent on
spying and sabotage in foregin countries the
Hitler regime is spending a hundred!

Tt is high time that Ottawa got down to busi-
ness to clean up the dangerous mess. The evi-
dence is there. The danger increases. An
end must be made to all this pussytooting.

Canadian democracy must assert itself and
talce all the necessary measures to protect our
country and the people from the peril which
is financed and directed by the Berlin-Rome-
Tokio war axis.

‘Gen. Krivitsky’ Alias Ginsberg

Several weeks ago there
burst on the “literary” scene
via the stoutly reactionary Sat-
urday Evening Post a series
of articles by a “General Kri-
vitsky” purporting to “tell
all” about the Moscow trials

of the Trotskyists and traitors
and containing the startling
information that Stalin was
really in league with Hitler.
Thousands of people were
somewhat astonished, perhaps
concluded that Post Editor
Wesley Stout had a bad case
of the DT’s. It remained for
the famous magazine New
Masses to investigate and dis-
cover that “General Krivit-
sky” is really Shmelka Gins-
berg, Paris night club bum,
and that the infamous Trot-
skyist Isaac Don Levine actu-
ally ghosted the hoax stories.
But read the exposure for
yourself, as carried exclusive-
ly by New Masses this week.
@

TS REALLY an oid wrinkle,

and Hitler has, in recent times,
been most adept in its use. The
general idea is to tell a lie so
big it’s hard to get at it for refu-
tation. .People have been doing
it for quite a while: the Proto-
cols of Zion, the Sisson “docu-
ments,’ the Rosenberg theory of
Wordic supremacy, just to men-
tion a few. Der Fuhrer didn’t
patent the formula and a lot of
imaginative souls are chiseling
in on his territory these days.
“General EKrivitsky’ to mention
one. He did a nice job in the
Saturday Evening Post articles.
T#’s useless to conjecture whether
the Satevepost was taken in by
the spurious general—or whether
they were scouting for some such
series and obliging entrepreneurs
jntroduced the daring soldier to
them.

e
a GET down to brass tacks.
We received irrefutable in-
formation week, as
we went to press, that Gen-
eral Krivitsky was not quite
what he seemed. We tore a page
apart to get that declaration in.
We said last week that the gen-
eral is a Mr. Shmelka (Samuel)
Ginsberg, who is not and never
was a general. We reiterate that
today. We pointed this disere-
pancy out as the forerunner of

quite a few more.

Last week we said Mr, Ginsberg
is no military man. Check. Last
week we indicated Mr. Ginsberg’s
fiercest battles were waged about
a roulette wheel in Paris. Check.
We said, too, that the general
was precisely the type of petty-—
jarceny crook the infamous Ya-
goda would have selected for his
anti-Soviet dirty work. We re
peat that this week.

We said last week that Isaac

last just

Don Levine obligingly ghosted
the articles for General Krivit-
sky. Check again. Mr. Levine
bas done a few such stints in his
time and to date has built for
himself quite a reputation as an
authority you can’t afford to miss
if you want first-class anti-Soviet
falsification. Levine’s White
Guard connections are not sparse.

We said last week that the
Trotsizyists are involyed in this
mess. We repeat. Suzanne La

Follette is helping Mr. Levine in
bis chores. Right, Miss La Fol-
lette ? The cries of anguish
sounding from the Trotskist jour—
nal, the Socialist Appeal, this
past week attest to the possibility
that the New Masses shaft struck
somewhat deep somewhere.

We didn’t mention the fact
last week, because it was not at
hand then, that H. L. Mencken
—the Baltimore Diogenes in 2
bock beer barrel, had taken to
the general with a vim. Mencken
gets articles by the great miili-
tary man prominently printed
in the (Baltimore) Sun—oh, you
know the type of articles—that
Stalin is flirting with Hitler—
that there isn’t really much dif-
ference between the two, and all
the rest of it. Mr. Mencken even
wrote an essay about it in the
sun.

@

ET’s LOOK about a bit and
notice where we are. A Gen-
eral Krivitsky, who was neither
a general nor a Krivitsky, put
bis name over some articles
Tsaac Don Levine ghosted for
him. lLiberty League's Saturday
Evening Post printed them. The
White Guard papers like Russ-
koye Slovo reprinted the articles.
The Trotskyists mouthpiece says,
“Bine. First class stuff.’ HH. Lk.
Mencken tosses off a bock beer
or two and takes a flaming pen

in hand.

Let us consider the Saturday
Evening Post folk for a moment.
They did print the article, and
we might say a few words about
what happened to them.

We sent our Philadelphia cor-
respondent, Ernest Pendrell, to
interview Wesley Stout, the edi-
tor. Mr. Stout was out of town,
wouldn’t be back for a few days.

Mr. Pendrell does get to see a
William Jones, a somewhat belli-
gerent associate of the Curtis-
Bok aggregation. Outside of
stuotly maintaining that the New
Masses story is “inaccurate and
false,” he won’t give any state-
ment for the Post. iIsn’t he in-
terested in what the readers of
the Post will think? He isn’t at
all intera@sted in what the read-—
ers of the Post will think. ff
they don’t believe the stories,
that’s their fault, not his.

i)
Tr New Masses men are rather
dogged, sometimes unpleasant
fellows. Mr. Pendrell kept after
Mr. Stout and finally, three days
later, Mr. Stout told his recep-
tionist, Miss Goodspeed, that the

presence of the New Masses re-
presentative in the Independence
Square building is not wanted. it
seems there is not room enough
in Philadelphia for New Masses
and Mr. Wesley Stout.

But we continued to cheek in
Philadelphia. We learned the
following—that William Jonas
and Stuart Rose, an associate
editor, did admit that Isaac Don
Levine ghosted the articles. More,

Kathleen Laylor, secretary to
Wesley Stout, editor-in-chief of
the Post, admits that MTevine

wrote the stories. A. R. Jackson,
associate editor, admits it too. It
is generally known upstairs that
“General Krivitsky”’ did enter the
country bearing a passport under
the name of Ginsberg.

To date only three of the stories
have appeared. At the end of the
third, in the April 29 issue, the
following note was published:
“The next article will appear in
an early issue.” Yet nothing has
appeared since. The general is
hard put to dig up more— stuff.
The Post people, we learn, did not
like the fourth installment. It
was too full of mysticism. Atl
about the Russian soul and they
don’t think the readers will care
for that. Mr. Rose wouildn’t say
whether or not they would print
any more stories. He just doesn’t
know.

@

Ji SATD last week that Curtis

Brown itd. figures in the
picture by trying to arrange for
book publication of the series. Wwe
don’t want to be too hard with
Curtis Brow#i Ltd. After all,
they are merely commercial lit-
erary agents who are in business
to sell any sort of publishable
manuscript for a fee. But in pass-
ing we might warn them that it’s
not the best of business to try to
sell hoaxes of this kind even for
the 10 pergent. It is usually bad
business.

It is interesting to note too, in
passing, that the long hand of
the Saturday Evening Post has
been fighting the expose of the
general. Last week when Walter
Winchell, whose syndicated col-
umn appears in the Philadelphia
Evening Ledger, controlled by
the same interests that operate
the Post, mentioned that the
Krivitsky articles were ghosted
by Isaac Don Levine, the Post
Ledger outfit deleted the item
from the column.

Se

© GLOSE the discussion for
this week we want to say
just one final word: Krivitsky’s
friends indicate the character of
EKrivitsky’s activities. Meet the
boys: Mr. Ginsberg, Mr. Levine,
the gentlemen of the reaction-—
ary Republican Saturday Eve-
ning Post, the White Guard
Russkoye Slovo, the tory me Te:
Mencken and his anti-New Deal
Baltimore Sun, the foul Trotsky-
ist circle, finally, the Dies Com-
mittee and their ace investigator,

Mr. J. B. Matthews.

Holly wood’s Greatest Film

Warner Brothers prove how
great the screen can be in
“Confessions of a Nazi Spy”
which opens in Vancouver this
week. Hailed as a magnificent
defense of true democracy and
a deadly blow at Hitler, the
film is a “must see” for all
theatergoers.

By JAMES DUGAN
pe THE same week, from the
same company, Warner Broth-
ers, the two grandest of Ameri-
can movies have come thunder-
ing out of Hollywood.

In Canadian theaters this week
will open “Juarez” witb Paul
Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne
and John Garfield; and “Confes-

sions of a Nazi Spy” with Ed-
ward G. Robinson, Francis Led-
erer, George Saunders and Paul
Lukas.

They will come as the floodtide
of a Hollywood current I have
touched upon from time to time—
the realization that the movies
must serve democracy. That
these do is a sign for nationwide
huzzahs and a matter of concern
for reaction.

Strictly speaking, there was
some pretext for “Juarez” in the
Warner Srothers biographical
tradition. For “Confessions of
a Nazi Spy” there was 0 Holly-
wood reason at all, as this shat
tering <«xtack on Bitler stems
from the documentary method,
heretofore scorned by “practical”
movie makers.

6¢ AZT SPY”
fictional

in semi-
reenactments, the
story of the spy trials in New
York last year, involving Dr.
Griebl, Gustay Rumrich, Johanna

Hoffman, et al the small-fry
spies from Nazi Germany.

The technique is a considerable
improvement on straight docu-
mentary style. Im an hour and
45 minutes, and given the im-
mense resources of a Hollywood
studio, it is possible to augment
~the maps, commentator, newsreel
clips, Montage and reenactments
of the March of Time style, with
¢he dramas of individual partici-
pants.

You are almost startled out of
your pants to see the Warner
Brothers signet fade off the
sereen, a commentator appear in
silhouette, sketching in the back—
ground, and then see a Hollywood
film wade right into pictures of
the Bund, the swastika, the Ges-
tapo, spy rendezvous in a beer
hall suspiciously like Maxl’s on
86th Street, Nazi meetings and
camps, scenes on a German liner
named the Bismarck, but really
the Bremen, scenes in Goebbel’s
rat nest in Berlin, Hitler barking,
Blite Guards rolling into Austria
and Czechoslovakia — to see it
laid out on the screen and know
it comes from Hollywood is a
blow I am still wabbling under.

In as choice words as possible
“Confessions of a Nazi Spy” is
terrific.

relates,

e
epee tie G. ROBINSON, who
would have given away his
Cezannes for a chance to play

Professor Mamlock, is the G-Man
who watches the Nazi
flattery,

spies by
eajolery, and a shrewd
understanding of them.

Francis Lederer plays the ego-
tistical spy, Schneider, 2 stupid
fellow who aspires to great in-
trigsues; George Sanders is the
head operator, Schlager, direct
from the Fatherland; and Paul
Lukas is Dr. Kassel.

Milton Krims and John Wes
ley, the authors, haye given these
real people motivations when
lesser men would have contrived
two-dimensional villains. Lederer,
particularly, makes a complete
characterization under the power-
ful direction of Anatole Litvak.

@
HE FIM reveals that one
characteristic of German in-

trisue which will always lose im-
perialist Germanys wars — the
contempt for the enemy. Although
the loose vigilance of democracy
allows impunity to much of
Wazi arrogance, such as the Ges-
tapo’s commuting back and forth
on German liners, this film sug-

gests that the Nazi imbeccilities _

are no match for democracy when
it gets rolling.

“Confessions of a Nazi Spy” is
a clinical study of Nazi espionage
and the grandiose plams for de-
struction of civilization hatched
in the Brown House. it belongs
with “Professor Mamlock” as the
heaviest blow the film has dealt
Hitler.

T have no hesitation in naming
“Confessions of a Nazi Spy” and

“Juarez” as Hollywood’s twa
greatest films.

‘Fourteen Months In Heil’

By J. D. WiLLsSOoN

Wri April 5, the date of

their liberation, the previous
14 months had been a life of heil
in fascist prisons in Spain for
L. Ww. “Curley” Wilson and his
comrades who returned to Van-
couver Sunday night, with daily
beatings to wounded and well
alike.

Captured on the Gandesa front
along with a number of others,
Wilson was imprisoned at Sara-
gosa then transferred to the main

eoncentration prison at San
Pedro de Cardenas.
Here the prisoners were

aroused at 6 a.m. for flag raising
ceermonies and clubbed as they

paraded out in the yard; fed
chicory and water for breakfast
and a menu of beans and eight
ounces of bread for the rest of
the day.

Tt was in this prison that all
captured International Brigade
men were finger-printed, photo-
graphed and foreed to sign dec-
Jarations. Wilson had to make
nine, four of them in German.
Two psychological tests—a quiz
regarding private sexual and re-
ligious life, while the other deal-
ine with whether the fascist sys-

tem was ‘good’? were also forced
on them.

In this prison Isaac Mattson
of Vancouver, and Frank Papp
of Windsor, died of starvation
and lack of medical attention.
George Thomas of Saskatoon was
taken out and shot to appease
the Moors.

“Son Sebastian was the worst
three months of the lot,” stated
Wilson. “We were locked up in
the dungeons of the jail and
only allowed out of our cells to
line up in the corridor for a
ladle of bread and water mixed
with a little synthetic oil.”

SHORT JABS

A
Weekly

Commentary

By Ol’ Bill

At the finish of the last war
the radio was still an experi-
ment: it was in swaddling
clothes. Today, to be without
a radio, like myself for instance, is to be an object
of pity or wonderment.

As a war weapon, the radio now oceupies a place
never at any time possible to the newspapers, which
in the past were used for whipping up the war fever
when the necessity arose. The field of the news-
papers was limited by language and they functioned
mainly among the nationals of each particular group
of warmongers.

The radio has no such limits, Tits message reaches
the nationals of the opposing groups in their own
tongue in just as positive a manner as it appeals to
the people of the country doing the broadcasting.

Italian broadeasts in Arabic stir up and encourage
discontent among Arab peoples against their French
and British imperialist masters. Nazi broadcasts
from Germany, in English, French, Polish and other
Janguages are aimed at furthering the policies of
agpression of the fascist rulers of Germany.

Seemingly friendly broadcasts in Enelish, from 2
high-powered short-wave station near Berlin, are
heard all over the scattered parts of the British
Empire. Listeners are asked to write and tell what
the reception is like and at the same time TO DE-
SCRIBE IN DETAILL THE DISTRICTS IN WHICH
pHaEY Live AND IF POSSTBLE TO SEND
PHOTOS. This is a cheap espionage system which
is a definite part of the Nazi methods. Their trade
journals like ““The Export Market,” published at
Poessneck use the same technique.

Ain’t Science

Grand

Chea In a recent copy of that pub-
Pp lication which has just come into
Spying my hands, a business question= —

paire for Hnelish-speaking read—
ers, ends with this appeal: “Could you possibly send
the editor of The Mxport Market, interesting articles
or accounts of the business and general life of your
country? it would add greatly to their value if ac-
companied by photographs.” This is from a country
where most of it is verboten to the candid-camera
man.

Nor are the stupid Britishers, who traditionally
“muddle through,” one whit behind. Their latest
move to shatter the morale of the Nazi-ruled Ger
man people is a regular broadcast in German from
a station in Luxemburg which reaches every corner
of Germany. It is the cleverest of all the political
broadcasts in this battle of the air waves.

Tt is a BBC activity but is supposed to emanate
from a tourist agency, the Hendon Travel Bureau,
advertising its service for holidaymakers and sight
seers. In flawless German is the intervals of a
musical program, listeners are asked to spend their
vacations in. the beautiful Lake District or the
heather clad hills of the West Highlands. German
listeners get a chance to compare their Own Ccon-
ditions with those in Britain.

“Spend your holiday in Britain,” they are told.
“You can get excellent six-course meals in our
restaurants for two marks and you Can see our
famous football teams for one mark.” The meals
are described, the plentifulness of meat and butter

and white bread and other things that the Germans
cannot have.

Clever

W ork

Their sporting instincts are ap-
pealed to. They hear that
‘“Hverybody here goes to see the
football matehes on Saturday,
because, you See, none of our workpeople work on
Saturday afternoons; in fact very few people work
on Saturday at all.”

Tow the mouths of the German listeners must
water when they hear of the fine meals the good
Britisher can buy for four bits when they cannot
buy anything like them no matter how much money
they have; little meat, no butter; bread made from
adulterated flour, and no time off to look at foot
ball matches, only a 60-hour week and cannons in-
stead of butter.

The phoney character of this tourist broadcast
and the real purpose of it is apparent to us when
we remember that no German is allowed to take
more than four dollars (sixteen marks) out of the
Fatherland. it is meant to undermine Hitler’s influ-
ence with the German people who want to live com-
fortably and not to build an empire, fascist or any
other kind.

Undoubtedly, the radio is a great weapon. Let
us use it more!
A Real The stories told by the Mac-Pap
Hell boys who were prisoners of

Butcher Franco, leave only one
impression on the mind of those
who listen to them—that any others who are still
in Franco’s hands or in French concentration
camps, must be got back to Canada right away, in
spite of Franco, Daladier and the Ganadian passport
office.

One of the boys spent a year in the line and the
second year in the hell-hole dungeons of San Pedro,
one of Franco’s military prisons. Dante’s Inferno
and Devil’s Isle combined could show no greater
misery and suffering. Starvation and disease deci-
mated the ranks of the prisoners. Only in the hos-
pital was there kept alive a flickering spark of hu-
manity. This was because the doctors and surgeons
were also prisoners, Spaniards who stood by their
fovernment, and the nurses were nuns who were
taken prisoners from the religious institutions de-
stroyed by Franco, Mussolini and Hitler at Guernica.
Their sympathies were with the other prisoners and
they did, in a covert way, what they could to make
things easy.

There are still some Canadians in this hell-on-
earth. It will take money to get them out of it.
Only our money, the money of those who want to
stop the spread of fascism, will do it. Let us adopt
the slogan of the Americans in the last war, “Give
till it hurts.”

Is This
A System?

The crazy character of the cap-
jitalist method of dealing with
problems that do not produce
profit for the capitalist is again
demonstrated in England The low physical stan-—
dards of recruits offering to join the armed forces
in that country have been the subject of “Royal
Commissions at different times, so that practical
methods have had to be devised to, in some measure,
eorrect them.

Two British army training
opened where undernourished, unfit applicants are

fed and exercised until their health and physique |

comes up to the enlistment standard. Tt is 2e—
ported that 1400 out of 1900 handled have been
passed into the army as fit.

The deteriorating physical condition of the mil-
lions of unemployed in Britain has been considered
an unsolvable problem. It was talked of, and talked
of, and talked of, and that was all.

But now that cannon fodder is needed, a solu-
tion has been found, but only for those of the vic-
tims of capitalist exploitation who may be made
into targets in a coming war — like hogs being
fattened for the buteher. This is eapitalist “system.”

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