THE ADVOCATE

December 15, 1939

THE ADVOCATE

Published Weekly by the Advocate Publishing Association, Room 20

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EDITOR - HAT, GRIFFIN

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Vancouver, B.C., Friday, December 15, 1939

Spain And Finland

HERE is indeed a remarkable analogy between events in

Finland and the Spanish war for those sufficiently discern-
ing and intelligent to dismiss the frenzied imperialist propa-
Banda of recent weeks.

In April, 1918, the constitutionally elected socialist govern=
ment of Finland found itself confronted with a rebellion led
by General Mannerheim, who called in German troops to aid
him slaughter the Finnish people and establish himself as the
dictatorial regent of the country. The British and French gov-
ernments, although then at war with Germany, welcomed the
contribution of their imperialist rivals to the suppression of a
socialist government in Finland and hastened to recognize the
government of Mannerheim the butcher as the ‘constitutional’
government of Finland.

Tens of thousands of Finnish workers and peasants were
slaughtered in cold blood after being taken prisoner. Many
more fled into Karelia, which became an autonomous republic
within the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. The Red Army
was then only in the process of formation, already occupied in
fighting imperialist armies of intervention on a score of fronts.
No direct aid could be given at that time to the Finnish people.
Reaction ruled the roost in Finland. For twenty-one years, al-
_ though allowing a limited degree of ‘controlled democracy,’ it

“has retained effective control, preparing Finland to become
the starting point for an imperialist attack against the Soviet
Union. For did not the London Times in April, 1919, when
British and Canadian troops were still at Murmansk declare:

“So far as stamping out the Bolsheviks is concerned, we might
as well send an expedition to Honolulu as to the White Sea. If we
jook at the map we Shall find that the best approach to Petrograd.
is from the Baltic and that the shortest and easiest route is through

Finland. ... Finland is the key to Petrograd and Petrograd is the
key to Moscow!”

In June, 1936, General Franco rebelled against the consti-
futionally elected people’s front government of Spain which
was supported by the Communist and Socialist parties. With
the aid of German and [Italian troops and munitions after three
years of bloody conflict he succeeded in establishing his rule.
The decisive element in his success was the policy of “‘non-
intervention’ pursued by the British and French governments,
who hastened to recognize his government even before it con-
trolled the country.

~ Reaction is mow completely in the saddle in Spain. Hun-
dreds of thousands of Spaniards have been forced to flee their
homes as the Finns fled before Mannerheim in 1918. But Gen-
eral Franco must be sleeping badly these days. His eyes are
fixed on the fate of his historical prototype—Mannerheim.
And even though Spain is on the Mediterranean and not
the Baltic he can hardly hope to have a 21-year lease on power
before historic retribution catches up with him and the refugee
Spaniards return to set up a people’s government in Spain.
Things move quickly these days.

The Federationist And Lenin

|e FEDERATIONIST, BC organ of the CCF, is free, if it
so desires, to swallow and pass out again for circulation
all the malodorous pro-imperialist propaganda of the Canadian
big business press. It can indeed be certain that the censorship
board and such advertising clients as the BC Electric will ap-
prove and bless such endeavors. But it should not imagine that
attachment of the label “socialist” to its editorial efforts makes
them less despicable than the venom distilled from the columns
of its capitalist contemporaries. On the contrary, they can
only serve to recreate for the designation “socialist” the con-
tempt that caused Lenin in 1917 to insist that the Russian Social
Democratic party should change its name to the Communist
party because “it is time to put on a clean shirt” and provide
for the party of'the working class a name that has not been dis-
sraced by official party support for the imperialist war of 1914.

Common decency would suggest that in attacking the
Soviet Union the Federationist would at least refrain from
using Ienin’s name as the justification for its unrighteous
wrath. When ina recent editorial it writes that “Soviet Russia
is not the Russia of Lenin’s hopes and labors, but bears a
greater resemblance to the Russia of Peter the Great,” the
ealeulation might be that Lenin is now safely dead and unable
to repl ersonally. : :

Suk stter all, even in Germany or Finland, in both of which
countries all printing and circulation of Lenin’s works was
prohibited by law, his books and pamphlets are still read and
studied in spite of the most terrifying penalties. Wor is there
any.reason to believe that even if all of Lenin’s works were
banned in Canada for the duration of this war or series of wars
as all of Karl Marx’s works were prohibited during the last
imperialist war, the Federationist’s appeal to “Iuenin’s hopes
and labors” could be made any more convincing to those who
prefer honesty and truth to hypocrisy and fiction.

In 1915, in an article condemning the slogan of a United
States of Europe brought forward at that time by Trotsky
in much the same way as the hope of a Federated Europe is
now offered by so-called labor and socialist leaders today to
serve as soothing syrup to encourage support for concealed
i ialist aims enin wrote:
ener eee and political development is an absolute law of
capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible, first ina few or
even in one single capitalist country. The victorious proletariat of that
country, having expropriated the capitalists and organized its own
socialist production, ~woulad confront the rest of the capitalist world,
attract to itself the oppressed classes of other countries, raise revolts
among them against the capitalists, and in the event of necessity, come
out even with armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.

“The political form of society in which the proletariat is victorious,
in which it has overthrown the bourgeoisie, will be a democratic re
public, which will more and more centralize the forces of the proletariat
of the given nation, or nations, in the struggle against the states that
have not yet gone over to socialism. The abolition of classes is impos-
sible without the dictatorship of the oppressed class, the proletariat.
The free federation of nations in socialism is impossible without a
more or less prolonged and stubborn struggie of the socialist republics
against the backward states.” (The United States of Europe Slogan,’
English Edition, Lenin’s Selected Works, Vol. 5, PD. 142.) oo

Ts it not shameful that precisely at a moment when Lenin’s
prophetic words are being realised in fact the Federationist
should join the imperialist wolf-pack and attack the Soviet
Union because its actions are supposedly contrary to “ILenin’s
hopes and labors’’? es a

We refuse to believe that the Federationist editorial on
Russia and Labor expresses the views of the majority of the
CCE membership. There are too many honest and sincere men
and women in the CCF for that to be possible.

. ering

REVOLUTION IN GCERMARY

By R. PALME DUTT

| Fleece of the victory of the working-class revolution in Germany, and of the failure of Hitler as a brake against it, comes

more and more into the open in British ruling class expression.

The German--Soviet pact is seen as the prelude to

such a transformation and to the eventual union of a socialist Germany with the socialist Soviet Union. The London Times
discusses the prospect if ““Germany Goes Bolshevist”:

“Werein would seem to lie
the greatest danger of the
western powers, and indeed toe
the whole of Eurepe. The biocc
between -Soviet Russia and 2
Wazi Germany, which is likely
to represent a very uncertain
alliance, seems less to be fear-
ed than a bloc between a Soviet
Russia and a2 Soviet Germany,
which would follow a Bolshe-

vist revolution in the latter
country.
“Nazi Germany is in many

respects ripe for Bolshevism,
and the conditions of the war,
coupled with the close associa-
tion with the Soviet Union,
which is now imminent, will
make it more so. Recent infor-
mation from well-informed cir-
eles in Berlin show that the
possibility of such a revolution
is seriously entertained.’’

—London Times, Sept. 30, 1939.

Thus the picture is seen of a
fortress of socialism, extending
from the Rhine to Viadivostok,
against which western imper-
jalism would batter in vain. The
old nightmare, which was close
and familiar during the days of
Versailles, haunts the British and
French reactionaries once again.

The question of the German re-
volution has indeed been the piv—
otal question and the recurrent
thread through all these 20 years
of European politics. The vic-
tory of the socialist revolution in
Germany is decisive for the vic-
tory of socialism in Hurope; Ger-
many means all central Europe,
and France would not be likely
to stay long behind (suppression
of the French Communist party
has shown the keen conscious-
mess of this).

All the vindictiveness of Ver-
sailles was above all actuated,
not only by imperialist rivalry,
but by the aim to hold in shack-
les the German people, where the
Soldiers’ and Workers’ councils
had power in their hands and
only Social Democracy had de-
feated socialism. ?

To Stem Socialism

Li, the crazy pattern of new

states was devised, not out of
consideration for the principles
of nationality, but in order, as
was freely stated at the time, to
establish a system of bastions
against the socialist revolution.

The same considerations turn-
ed Versailles upside down; the
alternative method of f.ocarno
was attempted with Streseman,
the statesman who declared his
government the Vast govern-
ment” of a capitalist Germany.

The method of emergency dic-
tatorship was tried. The only out—
come was that Communism grew
six Million strong, while the
Wazis were beginning to go down
By this time nine out of 10 of
the German people were voting
for parties which nominally pro-
claimed the aim of socialism. No
open capitalist party could get
any support.

Then the final bloody Nazi dic-
tatorship was attempted for the
complete suppression of every
trace of the working-class movye-
ment. With joy the British bank-
ers concluded that the job had at
last been done, and that Com-
munism was finished. Hitler be-
Came their idol and their god.

But the dialectical progress has
had its revenge on them. The de-
caying Nazzi regime in despera-
tion has to turn to the Soviet
Union. Through the cracks of the
weakening Wazi regime appear
already the outlines of the gath-
working-class revolution.
Once again the British and
French bankers have had to or-
der their troops on the march, to
re-etsablish the old Versailles
system.

The same puppet governments
are maintained regdy in London
and Paris to set up the same
puppet states as bulwarks
against socialism. The monarch-
ical rag-bag is sorted out to find
some suitable reactionary ruler
or rulers for Germany or for the
projected new divisions of Cen-
tral Europe.

FORUM OF

To the Editor:—From time to
time since this war started we
have been given vague, general
and altogether unsatisfactory
statements of our war aims in
response to our demand to know
what we are fighting to achieve.

Prime Minister Chamberlain
and various of his ministers have
denied that Britain and France
Plan to dismember Germany and,
in view of this denial, the follow-
ing newspaper quotations, placed
in conjunction, are all the more
disturbing. I leave your readers
to estimate them for themselves:

“Tt is possible that after a
revolution Catholic Bayaria
and Catholic Austria might be-
come one state, and Protestant
Worth Germany another, he (Al-
fred Duff Cooper) added. Tt was

Aims In The War

A® THESE issues come into the
open, so the real war aims of
Chamberlain inevitably begin to
show through. On every side the
question is asked with growing
insistence: What are the war
aims of the government? The
spread of this question is the
first Sign of incipient disillusion-
ment with the war.

The more the government re-
fuses to answer it, the more the
doubt grows. And of course the
government refuses to answer
save with the usual vague rhe-
torical f@urishes which can
mean anything or nothing and
drive the naive serious enquirer
crazy.

In a democratic people’s war
there is no difficulty in stating
the war aims. The Spanish dem-
ocratic government under Negrin
had no difficulty in defining its
aims in a series of precise, con-
erete points, because that was
what the people were fighting
for, and everybody knew it. But
in an imperialist war, which is
based on the deception of the
people, the war aims cannot be
stated “save in the conventional
obscurity of poetical, metaphor-
ical idealist balderdash-

In the dreary and unreal ‘war
aims’ controversy of the experts
the experience of the first im-
perialist war is being repeated
with monotonous fidelity; and
anyone with a moderate sense of
smell should be able to recosnizze
the familiar sniff of an imperial-
ist war from this sign alone, even
if there were no other. As H. G.
Wells, who was a victim last
time, recalls:

“In many respects it recalls
the war aims controversy of
1917-18, when the Crewe House
organization did its unsuccess-
ful best to extract from the
foreign office a precise state-
ment of what the country was
fighting for. Wo such sitate—
ment was ever produced, and
the Great War came to a rag-
ged end in mutual accusations
of broken promises and double-
dealing.”—(H. G. Wells, in the
London Times, Sept 26, 1939.).

Wells, at any rate (let us give
eredit where credit is due, even
though he has exhausted a life-
time in learning the first lesson,
to see through the imperialist
humbug, and has not yet suc-
ceeded to begin the second les-
son, how to fight it, as his ran-
dom remarks on Communism
show) has had enough and does
not want any more.

“Once bit, twice shy. I am not
going to be a stalking horse
for the SGritish foreign office
any more.’—Wells, in the New
Statesman and Nation, Oct. 28,
1939.

Capitalist Allies

UT THERE are plenty more.

There are platoons and pla-
toons of professors and philoso-
phers and left intellectuals and
Labor lum*naries who love to
flatter their self-importance dur-
ing a war, and to console them-
selves for the sordid realities of
an imperialist war, by construct-
ing the most elaborate charts and
structures of imaginary idealist
‘war aims, and then in the name
of these supporting the imperial-
ist war which is in fact being
fought for entirely different reas-
ons. When the war is over, they
will complete the comedy in the
time-honored fashion by com-
Plaining how ‘the noble ideals
With which we entered the war
have been betrayed.’

The real aims of Chamberlain
and his colleagues are sufficient-
ly clear from their whole policy,
record and outlook, no less than
from the character of the war.
These aims have nothing to do
with democracy or anti-fascism;
anyone who after the Spanish ex-
perience can have any illusions
on this score is only fit for an
asylum. The whole outlook of the
Chamberlains, Hoares, Halifaxes
and Churchills is actuated by
fear and hatred of democracy,
socialism and the working-class.

THE PEOPLE

entirely possible, he believed, that
2 monarchical regime might
place Otto von’ Habsburg on the
throne. He .described the de-
scendant of the Habsburg emper-
ors as ‘a very nice young man’.”
—Alfred Duff Cooper, interview-
ed by the New York Times, Oct.
23, 1939.

“Bavarian Catholics are report-
ed strongly in favor of the parti-
tion of the Reich into a northern
Protestant Germany and an inde-
pendent southern Catholic Ger-
man, embracing Austria and Ba-
yaria.”’—Canadian Press dispatch
from Zurich, Switzerland, in the
Vancouver Sun, Dec. 8, 1939.

Is this part of our war aims?

A. MACDONALD.
Vancouver, BC.

“thing

The Real Purpose

HEY WANT to make Burope

safe for plutocracy. They
want to weaken Germany, not
merely as an imperialist rival,
but above all as a potential cen-
ter of socialism. For this pur-
pose they seek to establish a
suitable reactionary regZime,
which will be obedient to them,
in Germany. Whether they carve.
up Germany for the purpose,
seek to establish a new Holy Ro-
man Empire in Central Europe,
or prefer a centralized vassal re-
actionary Germany, is still a
matter of controversy and de-
pendent on circumstances.

They seek, if circumstances are
favorable, to establish puppet
governments of their tools in

Austria, Czechoslovakia and Pol-
and, who will act as brakes
against secialism.

They seek to build up a com-
bination of states in Central and
Western Europe (for this pur-
pose the ideology of ‘Federal
Union’ is very useful to them and
fiven high patronage) under the
domination of. British-Prench
finance to act against the Soviet
Union.

The final aim is war on the
Soviet Union and the destruction
of Socialism.

ANTI-SOVIET
‘CRUSADERS’ FIND
‘MENACE’ TO ALASKA

By HAL GRIFFIN

ANADA’S anti-Soviet ‘crusaders, seeking new discords
for their eternal hymn of hate, have found in Alaska just

that variation which, they hope, will enable them te swing
public opinion in Western Canada behind their campaign for

war against the Soviet Union.

“Red imperialism’ is on the
march. Alaska was formerly
Russian territory. The United
States and Canada must combine
to edmbat the ‘Red menace.”
This is their theme.

Few know much about the his-
tory. of Alaska or the reasons un—
derlying its sale to the United
States in 1867. But all British
Golumbians recognize that any-
: affecting the future of
Alaska must have a direct influ-
ence. on this province and the
Pacific coast states, as indeed,
past events in Alaska have play-
ed no small part in determining
the present Ganadian - United
States boundaries,

Those who, like Mrs. George
Black, Gonservative MP for the
Wukon, talk so glibly of the “Red
imperialist menace’ to Alaskg.,
conveniently forget the intrigues
of British, American and Tsarist
Russian imperialism in the North
Pacific during the last century
which led to acquisition of Alas-
ka by the United States govern-
ment.

The vast profits of the fur-seal
trade drew traders to the Pacific
coast, just as earlier the wealth
to be derived from the fur trade
had drawn the rival English and
Erench traders to the Atlantic
coast. In the far north the Rus-
sian traders of the Russian-
American company, with a mon-
opoly over Alaska, waged a los-
ing struggle with the traders of
the Htudson’s Bay company, with
its tremendous monopoly over
the Canadian West.

The Alaska Panhandle—a nar-
row ceast strip retained by the
Russian-American company to
prevent the HBC from establish-
ing mainland fur posts in compe-
tition with its own island posts
—is a legacy of this struggle.

The imperialism of Tsarist
Russia, based on a rotting social
fabric and engaged in furthering
urgent designs on Muropean and
Asiatic territories, could not
withstand the pressure of British
imperialism in North America.

The Hudson’s Bay company
had already established a post at
Fort Mukon in Alaskan territory
from which the Russians had
been unable to expel the British
traders. It appeared to be only
a question of time before Tsarist
Russia must relinguish Alaska,
too distant te be successfully de-
fended, to Britain. In this pre
dicament Russia turned to the
United States, wih which coun-
try it had traditionally friendly
relations. American expansion-
ists, eyeing the profits of the
Alaskan fur-seal trade (the great
mineral wealth was then unsus-
pected) and unwilling to see
them pass into British hands,
struck a hard bargain. In i867,
Alaska was sold to the United
States for $7,200,000.

e
A ae is the historic background
which the selfstyled anti-Soviet
crusaders are today distorting in
their efforts to conjure up a ‘Red
menace’ to Alaska (and Canada)-

The Vancouver Sun, comment-
ing editorially on a letter arp
pearing in the New York Times,
remarks that Pravda, Communist
party organ, last summer carried
historical articles on Alaska.
Pravda, according to the YVancou-
ver Sun, which gives not a sin-
gle direct quotation or date to
permit of verification, declared
that sale of Alaska by Tsarist
Russia was not legitimate imas-
much as it was done without the
Consent of the Russian people-

Upon this it bases its chimer-
ical claim of a ‘Red menace’ to
Alaska, demanding armed pre-
parations to meet it.

“As a nation,’ it writes, “we
have been far too slow to recog-
nize this responsibility and we
are still far from meeting it’

Mrs. George Black, recognizing
that British Columbians have al-
ways feared Japanese aeeression,

is more skilful in advancing the
Same idea. :

In a recent interview with the
Canadian Press, Mrs. Black pic-
tures an agreement between the
Soviet Union, Japan and Ger-
many for attack on Alaska
“which the United States and
Canada would have to combine
to resist.”

Even in Britain the idea of a
Soviet attack on Alaska is being
sedulously fostered. Picture Post,
British national weekly, in its
Wovember 18 issue, endeayvorin=
toe convince American readers of
a direct Soviet menace, remarks:

“Alaska makes the United
States a neighbor of Russia;
and Alaska, like Finland, was
formerly part of the Russian
Empire. Ef modern Russian
ambitions are imperialistic and
aim to recover alli former ter-
ritories, Americans may well
speculate as to their political
responsibilities.§ One Ameri-
can who might be expected to
be aware of this and of the new
eomplexion put upon interna-
tional relations by the airplane
is Lindbergh. Im i931 he flew
the Alaska route to the Orient,
heading overland sxnerthwest
from Ottawa, skirting Hudson

Bay, the Arctic Ocean, and
swingins southward along the

coast of Siberia towards Japan.
“A couple of years back the
Russian flyers came over the
polar roof of the world to Can-
ada and the United States by
way of Alaska, which clearly
holds a position of first-class
importance on the map of the
future airways of the world.”

Seekine to give substance to its
anti-Soviet propaganda, Picture
Post even endeavors to attribute
a sinister motive to the Soviet
Union’s historic trans-polar flights
made in the interest of Soviet
aeronautical science and to dem-
onstrate to the world the tre
Mmendous progress possible only
in a socialist society.

HERE IS no “Red menace”

to Alaska. Imperialism is the
strugele of monopoly capital,
producing for profit, fer markets,
for exploitation of resources and
labor to the end that still greater
profits may be obtained. The
Soviet Union as a socialist coun-
try, producing not for profit but
to meet its people’s needs, has
ended capitalist exploitation.
Why should it seize new terri-
tories? When, as in the case of
Finland, it feels its security
threatened it can effect a friend-
ly exchange of territories, as it
has now done with the Finnish
people’s government and would
have been able to do with the
former Cajander government
but for the hostile desire of that
government to maintain Lenin-
grad under threat.

What then, is the immediate
purpose behind this insidious
Propaganda? Obviously it is an
attempt to swing public opinion
behind an anti-Soviet campaign
on the basis of a non-existent
‘Red menace’. But has the in-
trigue now taking shape an even
more sinister aim?

British Columbians have Fe-
garded the proposed Alaska
Highway 2S -a progressive meas-
ure which would strengthen the
links of friendship between the
Canadian and American peoples,
open up northern BC and provide

needed work for thousands of —
- our unemployed.

The question now to be asked,
in view of the propaganda anent
a ‘Red menace’ to Alaska is:
Does the Alaska Highway figure
in the plans for the ‘crusade’
against the Soviet Union now
openly being preached by ultra-—
imperialist circles? Are our ports
to be used as bases in this crus—
ade? The people of this province
have a right to know.

TW) Gee A