Page Four

THE ADVOCATE

THE ADVOCATE

(®oermerly The People’s Advecate)
Published Weekly by the Advocate Publishing Association, Room 20

163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C. Phone TRinity 2019.
EDITOR - HAT, GRIFFIN

One Year = $2.00 Three) Months ———— 3 -60

Half Year 2s $1.00 Single Copy. $ .05

Make All Cheques Payable to: The People’s Advocate

Vancouver, B.C., Friday, October 20, 1939

CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE

Prosecute The Mine-Owners

The exhortation had been more appropriately addressed to

the directors of Pioneer Gold Mines of BC, Ltd., who have

closed their mines rather than give their workers a wage in-

crease, who are attempting to starve their workers into sub-

mission.

When we talk of patriotism—the false patriotism of the pro-
fiteers as distinguished from the true patriotism of the people—
it is well to remember that certain mining magnates in this
provinee have helped to extend fascist aggression, that British
Columbian metals have found their way to fascist countries
and are still being shipped to Japan.

Yet now, in the name of defense against fascist aggression,

the “mining magnates demand that the workers suffer while
they pocket the profits. :
' The strike at Pioneer mine is one affecting not only the
future of the labor movement but the people of British Co-
lumbia generally whose every meal table will reflect its
outeeme.

Tt must be won.

Questions Canadians

Are Entitled To Ask

LE I 1HE BEGINNING of the seventh week of the war finds it

as strangely a mystery and as vast a confusion as ever.
_.. We have the feeling that we do not know what is really
going on... -’ This is what the Proyince writes in a recent
editorial.

Tt is true that the vast majority of people feel that they do
not Know what is really going on, but the picture is becoming
ever clearer with the development of events. The questions
¢#hat one hears constantly asked on all sides are what are we
really fighting for, what are the necessary conditions for peace?

Vast numbers of Canadians see in the war a means to pre-
went fascism being established in Canada. It is because they
want no fascism at home that they feel Hitlerism must be de-
feated abroad. All the more insistently therefore do they ask
that Canada’s war aims be defined explicitly, concretely and
in detail. It is the absence of this information that necessarily
eauses the sentiments which the Province editorial registers
only in order to deplore.

The healthy scepticism of the people cannot but be con-
firmed when they read the exposition of allied war aims by
the American columnist Walter Lipmann which the Sun feat-
ures with obvious editorial approval.

at the conclusion that “the creation of a
strong, conservative Germany is the only real war aim, that
“direct private approaches to the German army and to all that
is Senuinely conservative inside of Germany are required, that
it would be dangerous to Europe if Hitler now withdrew from
Poland and Czechoslovakia since the peoples of these countries
might turn to Communism, that therefore Poland and Czecho-
slovakia ‘“‘cannot be reconstituted except under German pro-
tection.”

Lipmann arrives

No matter what kind of Europe reactionary big business and
its spokesmen in Canada would like to see, there can be no
doubt that these war aims are contrary to the interests and
desires of all peoples.

The people of Poland and Czechoslovakia do not want to
see their states reconstituted “under German protection. They
want to establish their independence, freedom to determine
their own internal, political and social structure in accordance
with the will of the majority of their own people.

ground down under the heel of

32

The people of Germany, < ds
fascism, do not want to establish a “conservative Germany,
for that is what they have now. They have no desire merely
to replace the dictatorship of Hitler and his Nazi gang sup-
ported by German big business for a dictatorship of German
generals supported by big business at home and abroad. The
German people want government of the people by the people
and for the people, and that implies the right to establish a
Socialist Germany without outside interference when they
succeed in overthrowing the Nazi dictatorship.

Finally, the British and French peoples and the peoples of
the Dominions are not prepared to sacrifice millions of lives
and untold wealth in order to achieve the aim of a “conserva-
five Germany’ and a reconstituted Poland and Czechoslovakia
‘Sander German protection.’ The Canadian people want to
see a peaceful world in which every people is secure against
ageression and free to determine its own fate according to its
own desires.

Tt is such a diatribe of the commercial daily press as the
Sun prints that lead tae Toronto Clarion in a recent editorial
to point out that the Canadian people are, by all that is their
birthright, entitled ot ask:

What are we being asked to fight for?

To “put the boots to” the German peoples?

To join with Germany in a war against Socialism?

To make another and more brutal Versailles?

To lay the foundations for future wars?

For the imperialist aims of a handful of British and Cana-
dian capitalists?

Gr for the defeat of fascism and all that it stands for
wherever it shows its repulsive head?

And if that is true, how is it possible fer such a war to be
led by men who hold the despotic, anti-working class, fascist
epimions which find their place in the front pages ef the big
business press — at a time when real anti-fascist papers like
Clarte are suppressed?

These questions demand an answer!

A& PAGE FROM HISTORY

Negotiations Between Finland and USSR Recall Events of 1918

We. believe that the following article on Finland, taleen from Red Europe, a book writ-
ten 20 years ago by Frank Anstey, Australian Labor MP, and published by the In-
dustrial History Club of Vancouver, in 1920, will prove of exceptional interest at this time.
The historical background furnished by the article affords an excellent guide to an under-
standing of present treaty negotiations between the Soviet Union and Finland.

INLAND was for centuries a vassal to the Swedes, and the lands of the conquered were
given to the powerful and faithful of the conquering baronage.
In 1809 the Russians seized Finland, and by possession of the gulf, made safe the channels

of St. Petersburg.

Apart from this purpose Russian governments left the economic and poli-

tical dominance of Finland to the Swedish barons, or came in only to buttress their oppres-

sions.

The Swedish overlords had
nothing but contempt for the
conquered race. Its language

was ostracised, its literature sup-
pressed. Official positions were
the perquisites of the Swedo-

Finnish upper-class. The hold-
ers were unimpeachable. The
language, even of the courts of

law, was Swedish, and into those
courts the Finnish people had to
take their interpreters or learn
the language of the master class.

The government was parlia-
mentary. Parliament consisted

* of four houses, it was a delusive

democracy.

First the House of Nobility,
in which sat the Swedo-Finnish
feudality, hereditary, selfLap-
pointed, non-elective.

Second, the House of Glergy,
elected by the clergy.

Third, the House of Burghers,
electeG by property-holders with-
in the cities.

Fourth, the House of Peasants,
elected by property-holders out-
side the cities.

The nobility and clergy were,
as usual, the two arms of tyr-
anny. They exercised the veto
against even the few upon whom
the pretence of government had
been conferred .The laboring,
wage-earning mass had no vote.

es

WN 1906 the Finnish workers re-

yvolted. The four-house par-
liament was swept out of exist-
ence, and the first reformed par-
liament of Finland contained 80
socialists out of a total member-
ship of 200.

At the 1916 elections the so-
cialists won a majority of seats
(103 te 97) and from their mem-
bership formed the first social-
ist government of Finland.

In July, 1917, the Finnish par-
liament carried an independence
bill The Russian government
(the second provisional) vetoed
the bill and dissolved the parlia-
ment.

Noe sconer .did- the--November
revolution take place in Russia
than the reactionaries in Fin-
land jumped to arms, overthrew
the Finnish government elected
by the votes of the people, set
up an arbitrary government, in
which there was not one social-
ist, and this government under-
took to suppress Soviet princi-
ples in Finland.

But, in a few weeks, the Fin-
nish militia and labor organi-
zations consolidated their forces,
rose up, smashed the reaction-
aries, and restored to power the
men elected in 1916.

Parliament reassembled. Tt
declared for a Finnish Republic
as part of the Federated Repub-
lics of Russia. Karl Manner, the
speaker of the 1916 parliament,
was made first president and
Oskar Tokoi, first prime minis-
ter. This government the Allied
governments would not recog—
nise, but they recognised and
subsidised every conspiracy for
its overthrow. :

e

HE Baltic Sea being controlled

by Germany, and the Arctic
ports icebound, the Allies could
not send troops. The Swedish
government would have put in
troops, but the Swedish labor
organizations threatened a gen-
eral strike. The reactionary fac-
tions of Finland appealed to Ger-

many.

In March,1918, German war-
ships and transports appeared
off Welsingfors, and German

troops were landed.

In April, the republic was over-
thrown and a capitalist dictator-
ship set up under the protection
of German bayonets.

Thus once more Was
onstrated that the capitalist
and landed classes, the master
class in every form prefer the
oceupation of their country by a
foreign foe to the government
of their country by a working
Class that in any way threatens
their predatory POWwers.

In this same month
1918) US Consul to
Haines made a report to the
American government He re-
ported that the landowners and
monied classes of Finland had
asked the Swedish government
for assistance, but that the Swed-

it dem-

(April,
Finland

ened a general strike if Swedish
troops were sent to Finland. He
stated that the help of the Allies
had been bought but for various
reasons was not available, and
then he added: :

“Therefore there was no al-
ternative but to fall back upon
Germany.” 2 :

©O sooner was the German-

sustained capitalist govern-
ment established in Finland than
the British government intimated
its readiness to recognize it and
tions with it.

On June 1 and 2, 1918, the
newspapers of Great Britain ex-
pressed indignation that the
overtures of the British govern-
ment had been treated in a most
cavalierly manner, amounting, so
they averred, to a deliberate
snub.

The united action of the reac-
tionary White Guards and of the
German army of occupation in
Finland was secured by a unified
command similar to that of the
west front. The supreme com-
mand was held by the German
General Von der Goltz, and com-
mand of the Finnish reactionary
regiments by the Swedo-Finnish
General Mannerheim. This Man-
nerheim was in the same military
relationship to Von der Goltz as
General Haig to the Generalis—
stmo Foch.

,-Mannerheim used the German
trained Jaegers and men of the
land-owning class, with such of
their servitors as they certified
as safe. They made a force of
about 50,000 and these, supported
by the Germans under Yon der
Goltz, put the rebellious popula-
tion to the sword.

David Soskice told the Man-
chester Guardian that there was
“terrible slaughter,” and the Lon-
don Times, referring to the
splendid work of Mannerheim,
Said that he broke the back of
the rebellion and that “the Ger-
mans quickly finished the job.”
The -Times actually mentioned
that out of about 80,000 prison-
ers, 30,000 were dead.

“Dead” is a sweet and luscious
word for wholesale slaughter of
rounded-up human sheep. Out of
a population of 3,000,000 over
one hundred thousand perished.

e
HE glory of this noble task
was not the exclusive proper-
ty of Von der Goltz and Manner-
heim. They were ably support-
ed by Allied forces.

in November, 1917, the British

Rear-Admiral

Kemp was at
Archangel As soon as the Bol-
sheviki triumph was announced

he cleared to the open port of
Aljexandrosk, leaving the British
Consul Douglas Young in sole
charge and unprotected at Arch-
angel,

In February, 1918, Kemp, re-
inforced by the arrival of a
French and American cruiser,
made a naval landing He said
his object was to defend Russian
territory against the Germans
and he has himself put it on rec-
ord that Lenin instructed the
provincial council, in all actions
against the Germans, to cooper-
ate with him.

On June 3, 1918, the Allied War
Council at Versailles appointed
Major-General Poole to take
charge of Allied operations in
Worthern Russia. Now was tne
Sweet summer time, when they
could do things.

On July 6, Admiral Kemp re-
visited Archangel. He had been
away seven months, and during
that period of Bolshevik rule
English men, women and chil-
dren had lived unharmed. Sucn
was the British Consul’s testi-
mony Kemp walked into the
Archangel Soviet and told its
members he came in friendship
and that the presence of the Al-
leid forces was not aimed against
the Soviet government but to
prevent the White Sea being used
by the Germans.

A few days later the Allied
forces landed at Kem, on the
western side of the White Sea,
seized members of the local
Soviet and shot them. The ter-
rorized inhabitants either fled
into the interior or took to the
sea in open boats and perished.
©thers were picked up by a pass-
ing steamer, taken to Archangel.

OW why did the British go

into Kem? There were two
lines of railways running north
into Hinland—one to Kajana, the
other to Wurmes. From 150 to
200 miles to the east is the White
Sea, upon which Kem is situated.

-When the Finnish Red Guards
(who were as much the rightful
fZovernment of Finland as the
Belgians of Belgium) retired
from the railway lines before the
combined forces of Von der Goltz
and Mannerheim, they retired to-
wards the White Sea towns.
from which they drew fresh sup-
Plies. The British caught them
in the rear, and between the
fires of British and German im-
perialism, they were slaughtered.

For months the armies of
Germany and Britain occupied
the territory between the White
Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia.
They occupied as if: by secret
agreement specified areas, and
those areas were their respective
“spheres of influence.”

Within those areas they stamp-
ed out Soviet organizations,
spread misery and death among
the inhabitants, but at no time
did they march out to meet,
fight, hurt or kill each other.

Within their “spheres of influ-
ence’ the occupying forces of
Germany and Engiand pursued
Similar methods. They seized
the properties and institutions of
workings clas organizations, trade
unions and cooperative societies
and took control of municipal
properties where councillors
were Bolsheviki. Every Soviet
supporter was regarded as a po-
tential criminal and military
courts decided the penalty.

Even these methods were not
quick enough. The Germans
smoke-sereened behind a so-cail-
ed “Finnish government’ round-
ed up -and wiped out in cold-
blooded “Jaw and order” slaugh-,
ter thousands of men, women
and children. They arrested and

-“inipriscéned-"80 members of~ the

1916 Finnish parliament. Only
one got out alive. Some were ex-
ecuted and others were reported
“dead.”

The British, working on 2
smaller population, achieved sim-
ilar results. They shot, amongst
others, the Soviet deputies, Mas-
orin, Kamenoff and Evoff. The
only excuse for their killing was
that these Russians, in Russia,
refused to accept orders from the
foreigner. e
Ae Allied troops in this region

were under the supreme com-
mand of the British General
Poole. During the night of Sep-
tember 3, 1918, members of the
local government of Archangel
were seized and conveyed to an
island in the White Sea. The
workers of Archangel went on
strike as a protest. The newly-
landed American troops were At
once set to work smashing the
strikers and the strike in the
well-known capitalist fashion.

Douglas Young, an attache for
many years to the British for-
eign office and British consul
stated:

“TF have seen in Archangel a
British general acting towards
the Russian population in their
own country as despotically as
any tsar and conducting him-

self as scandalously as any of
the Russian generals of the
old regime.”

That was the way of British
liberty in the Russian WNorth-
land, and in this way did the
American carry out the dictum 5f
Wilson—“No nation shall tread
with impunity the soil of an-
other.’

The forces of the Allied tsar-
istS occupied the coastal terri-
tory from Archangel] to Alexan-
drosk. From their headquarters
was issued a paper currency dec-
orated with signs and symbols
of Russian tsardom and guaran-
teed good by the British govern-
ment,

By the end of August, 1918, in
all the regions between the Fin-
nish Gulf and the Arctic Sea the
populations staggered beneath
the blows of imperial Germany
or imperial Britain, and if any
dared to speak of “self-determ-
ination” or the “rights of small
nations” they got the bullet, the
bayonet, and the death rattle.

Paraphrasing Dickens

ish labor organizations ‘threat-
To the Editor:—It distresses
me to hear folks complaining

that the government of today is
no good and that it doesn’t know
how to run a war.

Such nonsense! Didn’t the gov-
ernment of the last war make
out very successfully? In fact
all wars of the past happened
successfully for those concerned!
So why should we common
people eriticize anything created
or produced for the benefit of

our betters.
jobs? Lacking jobs,
give us relief? :

A short time ago Brigadier-
General Ross told us that there
were too many arm-chair minis-
ters, foreign ministers and de-
fense ministers. Are we using
the spirit of humility, self-denial
and patience? Haven't we been
taught repeatedly by our super-
iors that unless we are humble,

Don’t they give us
don’t they

we shan’t inherit the earth? :
Take a look at all the promin-
ent men of past and present,
men brought up in a humble en-
vironment. I’m sure they were
models of humility, patience and
generosity! Suck men, for in-
stance, as Cecil Rhodes, J. J. Hill,
A. Carnezie, MeKenzie and
Mann, Lord Kitchener, Ww. R.
Hearst and Adolf Hitler!
—URIAH HEEP.
Exstew, BC.

VIEWS |
and

OPINIONS |

PSHE entire world was thrown © 4

into turmoil when the Soviet
elephant sneezed recently: Noy
it Kas lifted a giant foot an
Stamped. At that sound Hitler’
armored columns reverse theip
directton, his diplomats E

and doubtless his executioners
are baulked of work in a hundre
concentration camps in Baster
Poland, Europe’s most Jewish
OR ee ee

Russia’s superiority over Nazi
Germany has been demonstrated —
to all Bastern Europe. She has
coolly continued to broadcast he
nightly Marxist lectures in Ger
man, while the Nazi press has
cautiously refrained from a sin-
gle anti-Russian word. “

The bankruptey of the Cham-

an- jj)
nounce his subservient retreat jj

berlain policy of playing Russia Ee
against Germany through inter ~

minable counterintrisues is no
Plain to the world. The wester
powers find themselves facings
Germany, with the imminent pos
sibilty of the whole strensth of
the triangle and perhaps Bupgary
and Spain thrown against the

Intense suspicion of the gov —

ernment has grown overnight i
Britain. Everyone is asking why
no help was given the Poles be

fore or after the outbreak of

war; why no full-scale air opera-

tions have been launched against —

German military objectives; whe
ther appeasement
carried on under war conditions. —
No one need be surprised if there
is not a drastie political upheaval
here within the next two months.

—A. L. MORTON, noted British

eritic, lecturer, histerian.

_* = =

HE country now requires the

best thought of the best minds
to protect its interests. That
means labor must give its share
of jeadership.

How fortunate we are in this
country. Tomorrow the whole
Nation will be sittings beside the
radio listenins to and discussine=
the results of the baseball game.
What a contrast to Europe!
There you see another sreat con-
trast of .destruction, the slaugh—
ter and sacrifice of human beings
with no hope for the working
people no matter how it ends.
The workins people were not
consulted on the start of the war
They are not to have any say in
how it is to end. Those who ere
ated the war did not provide the
means for the people to speak
through their representatives.

Twenty-five years after the
first world war the whole mess
is being repeated This is the
first crop of youth since the
world war. Those in the front
lines were not yet born when the
last war was on. Those in the
second line were babies then.”

—MAYOR LA GUARDTIA, speak-
ing to AFL conyention at Cin-
cinnati, O.

* = *

TN THE past weeks the press
: has sought toe convey the
impression that the Communist
movement has been shattered,
its members confused and disil-
lusioned, its ranks thinned by
mass defection. The resignation
of Granville Hicks reported in
the press is already being seized
upon 42S an incident to lend
plausibility to this issue of fie-
tion. The Communist movement
has been accustomed to the loss
of a few individuals in critical
limes but despite these isolated
defections, it frows stronger and
more unified on the basis of its
correct position.

“The Harvard ¥CL takes this
occasion to reaffirm its faith in
the ideals and principles for
which it has always stood. The
activities of the Soviet Union and
the policy of the American Com-
munist party are entirely in ac-
cord with these principles.”

—HARVARD CRIMSON, organ
of Harvard University Younes
Communists, commenting on
the resignation of Granville
Elicks, literary critic, from the
Communist party of the U.S.

* = *

5 HAVE been repeatedly har-

assed by reactionaries and
their hirelings with the charge
of being a Communist.

“I have taken more than one
eceasion te deny that I am a
Communist or a member of the
Communist party ._ .

“I refuse, however, to join im
any witch hunt.

“T refuse to become the partner
of the ignominious Martin Dies.
“I believe wholeheartedly in
the democratic process and have
dedicated myself both in the
labor organization which I repre-
sent and in public life to its
preservation and extension ...

“Tt is for this reason that I re—
fuse to participate in a campaign
which starts ostensibly with the
limited purpose of attacking
Communists, but which leads in-
evitably to the suppression of the
labor movement and all liberal

and progressive forces in our a=
tion.” .

—MICHAEL QUIEE, president,
Transport Workers’ Union and
American Labor Party Coun-'*
cilman in New York.

is not being §

|

i

4 Viper Seg Mt cate

Fern] tae pe ee el Py ee my es