Page Six THE ADVOCATE January 19, 1940 THE ADVOCATE Published Weekly by the Advocate Publishing Association, Room 20 163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C. Phone TRinity 2019 EDITOR - HAL GRIFFIN Qne Year $2.00 Three Months —__.___-_$ .60 Half Year $1.00 Single Copy —~———__- $ .05 Make All Cheques Payable to: The People’s Advocate Vancouver, B.C., Friday, January 19, 1940 Labor Must Act Now To Detend Its Rights HERE were some honest but confused people who greeted with skepticism our editorial declaration last October that this was not a war of democracy against fascism, but on the contrary, a conflict differing only from the imperialist war of 1914 in that its course would be decisively affected by the in- dependent action of the Soviet Union. Perhaps since that time many of those who temporarily lost their footing in the spate of propaganda loosed upon them are now less skeptical of our analysis. : Events, moving with a rapidity unknown to the first two years of the last war, have gone far to prove that the belliger- ent democracies, in the name of war on fascism, are resorting increasingly to fascist measures to still the rising protests of their own working classes. Indeed, the democracies, accord- ing to the statement of Chamberlain, Daladier, King and Men- zies engaged in a war to destroy German fascism, are nonethe- less prepared to cooperate with Italian fascism against the Soviet Union. As an American daily recently put it, the cap- italist newspaper editors who coined the word ‘Communazi’ after the Soviet-German non-aggression pact was signed could with justification apply the term ‘demofascist’ to some of those ardent proponents of ‘democracy’ in high government places. The new federal order-in-council gazetted last week places in the hands of the King cabinet authority as sweeping as any arrogated to itself by any fascist clique. If the Canadian people permit it, the heritage of centuries of struggle will be swept away. A complete blackout of our liberties is threatened—in the name of war for democracy. Fascism ruthlessly strives to crush all oppsition, to silence the voice of criticism and deny it means of expression. Already under the War Measures Act two Canadian labor papers have been suppressed, while more than a score of persons have been jailed for exercising their democratic right to freedom of ex- pression. Now, by order-in-council, the government is empowered to declare illegal any organization upon conviction of any one of its members under the War Measures Act. The reactionary press openly hails the new order-in-council as a measure against the communists. But who is so naive as to think it will be used only against communists? This meas- ure can and undoubtedly will be used against communists, CGF’ers, irade unionists and left-wing liberals to stifle criticism and protest. It permits the outlawing of any trade union or labor organization. Pacifist churches and student bodies, any organization indeed, are included within its menacing scope. As the Toronto Globe and Mail incautiously admits, it is Section 98, repéal of which was a major plank in Mackenzie King’s 1935 election platform, in new wartime guise, threaten- ing the civil liberities of the Canadian people and proposing to make of our remaining Canadian democracy a hollow sham. The Canadian people decisivelly repudiated the ‘Iron Heel’ policies of former Prime Minister R. B. Bennett. They did not elect Prime Minister King to perpetrate new assaults on de- mocracy in the name of war for democracy. Every trade union, every labor organization should lose no time in conveying these sentiments to Prime Minister King. White Guards Would ‘Suppress Liberty Here, ‘Too AC A meeting held in Hastings Auditorium last Sunday a few score sympathizers with the Ryti-Mannerhein regime in Finland gathered to denounce the Finnish Organization of Can- ada, Vapaus, Finnish language daily published at Sudbury, Ont., and the Advocate. A resolution was passed calling for suppression of the Ad- vocate on the ground that it is publishing ‘wilfully misleading propaganda. The Vancouver Daily Province, seeking to divert attention from its ‘wilfully misleading propaganda,’ seized upon this meeting, devoting a streamer headline and nearly a col- umn of space to it. And two local White Guard Finns anony- mously contributed clippings of the Province item to make sure we saw it. : The ironical fact is that the Province account of the meeting was itself ‘wilfully misleading!’ The Province stated it was a “meeting of about 150 Finnish people.” According to our in- formation, 102 people, by actual count attended, and of these only some 50 were Finns. The rest were Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons. So a bare 50 of British Columbia’s more than 5000 Finnish-Canadians, a small minority presuming to speak for the majority, denounce the Advocate for its statement that the majority of Finnish people in Canada—a large number of whom fled to this country to escape the White Terror in 1918—support the democratic people’s government headed by _ Otto Kuusinen. The very fact that only 50 Finns could be induced to at- tend this meeting is substantiation of the Advocate’s statement. According to the Province report, the meeting expressed loyalty to Canada, ‘our adopted homeland!’ The action of the meeting, however, in calling for the undemocratic suppression of the Advocate and Vapaus, showed no great regard for the democratic rights and liberties of the Canadian people. While speakers at the meeting indulged freely in abuse of communistic propaganda, meaning, apparently, everything but the misleading reports in the capitalist press—they failed to refute a single article published by the Advocate. Unable to refute the truth they could only resort to the last devise of all reactionaries—demand its suppression. ok * > |e information contained in a Stockholm despatch to the New York Times last week that “Soviet spy rings, com- posed of Russians, Finns and Swedes, have been discovered in the Far North and were credited with Russia’s initial suc- cess on the Petsamo front,” is an indication, however distorted, of where the sympathies of Finland’s workers and peasants lie. The news in the same item that a Finnish captain committed ‘syicide’ while a lieutenant and an undisclosed number of soldiers and civilians have been executed, is a further indica- tion of the real situation inside Finland. WHAT WOULD LERIN SAY? C IS sixteen years since the great brain that was Lenin ceased to function and his heart to beat no more. With what poorly con- cealed relish newspapers that had found no invention too fantastic or too filthy to traduce the living man rushed to print his obituary, condescending to admit an element of greatness, to confess even the possibility of a touch of genius in his vivid person- the rulers of empire who had with the utmost difficulty in the By WILLIAM RIGBY ality. It is as if those who breathed a sigh of relief at the news, v previous years retained their control of millions of slaves, congratulated themselves on their good fortune and turning to the millions of oppressed and exploited, immersed in deep sorrow, declared: “We sympathize with your feel- ings. He was undoubtedly a great man in a way. Not everything we said about him turned out to be true, but, on our word of honor, we never knew it was false at the time we said it. After all, though he’s dead now, forget him. Let’s be friends again, let’s reconstitute again the happy family of slaves and slave-owners we had before the war, before you heard of him. For now that he is gone even the slaves of the old RuSsian empire are going to call back their masters and re- place idealistic but impractical projects by civilization as we have known it for thousands of years past.’ B= Lenin is not forgotten. Nor can the humpty-dumpty of capitalism ever be put together again. In the history of the 20th century his name will stand out as the greatest and most signifi- eant, Though his voice was never earried to» millions of homes by radio, his words still echo round the earth simply because he spoke the truth fearlessly and unfalteringly. His life is an in- spiration to all who are them- selves burdened and oppressed and to all who seek to end human ~ exploitation in our present world because it was entirely devoted to the service of humanity in a manner that history has proven to be the most effective. There is a triple guarantee of his assured immortality. First, he left his written works, now collected into about 40 volumes, the most important of which have been circulating for many years now in all languages. No more than inquisition could pre- vent the scientific truth Galileo discovered from being discussed and accepted can persecution or book-burnings, whether in Ger- many or France, in Europe or America, stop the continued circ- ulation and increasing influence of his ideas. It is too late for capitalism to seek safety in such councils of despair advocated by its ardent defenders on the city council of Cambridge, Mass., who proposed to ban any publication earrying the name Lenin from the boundaries of US jurisdiction. Secondly, Lenin left the politic- al party of the working class, the Communist party, as the instru- ment of mankind’s liberation from the miseries created by a social and economic system that is now decadent and destructive, as long as it is allowed to re ‘In The Name Of Democracy’ To the Editor: I am not usually given’ to writing letters to the papers but would like to draw your attention to the following item which appeared in the Lon- don New Statesman and Nation last month: “We all know that we must impose upon ourselves, in time of war, restrictions which would be intolerable in time of peace; we know that there must be special regulations; we are willing to put up with inconvenience and en- eroachments on our civil rights, but we cherish vivid memories of the battles which had to be fought in the last war against people who regarded the neces- sity of the times as an opportun- ity for moving towards that very totalitarian doctrine which we are pledged to resist—the doc- trine that an individual is noth- ing and the state is everything. If our democratic cause has meaning, we stand for posite thesis—that the state 1s the servant of the public will, that in criticizing its purposes and its efficiency we are not only within our rights, but performing one of the most important and useful functions.” In view of this item, with which I agree, I would like to point out the following attacks on democracy under the guise of ‘maintaining democracy in Can- ada. First, we hear Premier Pattul- lo in the British Columbia legs- lature threaten certain MULA’s with interference if they persist in expressing their views, whicn incidentally, do not coincide with the Premier’s views. Wow, in Ontario, which is over- taking Quebec as a fascist-inclin- ed province, Premier Hepburn’s police arrest a CIO organizer, who is also a prominent CCFer, raid offices of the Finnish news- paper Vapaus, which was yprint- ing the truth about Finland, and also raid many private homes and intimidate Finnish workers at the International Nickel com- the op pany town of Sudbury. Inain, of any further serious pro- gress. Thirdly, Lenin left the Soviet Union as the living proof that socialism works, that it is the only practical alternative to the system of class and national op- pression that it replaced. .) WN THE history of the develop- ment of socialist thought and action there are two great part- nerships of men whose names will always be inextricably linked together—Marx and Engels, Len- in and Stalin. If Marx and Engels converted socialism from a utopian concep- tion to a service, Lenin and Stalin developed that science further to the new. conditions of the imper- ialist stage of capitalist develop- ment and inconvertably proved the scientific correctness of their views in living practice. How pitifully futile are the present attempts to use Lenin's mame as a screen for traducing the Communist party and the Soviet Union, and how revealing they are of the admitted influ- ence of his life on the minds of our generation, @ HAT would Lenin say about the present war if he were alive? He foresaw it before he died and warned against it time and time again. For example, in 1921 he wrote: “The question of imperialist wars, of the international pol- icy of finance capital which dominates the whole world, a policy that inevitably results in new imperialist wars, that inevitably results in an extreme intensification of national op- pression, pillage brigandry and the throttling of weak, back- ward and small nationalities by a handful of ‘advanced’ powers — this question has become since 1914 the keystone of the entire policy of all countries of the globe. It is a question of life and death for millions of people. It is a question of whe- ther 20,000,000 people (as com- pared with the 10,000,000 who were killed in the war of 1914- 1918 and in the supplementary ‘petty wars’ that are still going on) are to be slaughtered in the next imperialist war, which the bourgeoisie is preparing, which is growing out of capitalism be- fore our very eyes; it is a ques- tion of whether in that future war, which is inevitable (if cap- italism remains), 60,000,000 peo- ple are to be maimed (as com- pared with the 30,000,000 maim- ed in the years of 1914-18). And in connection with this ques- tion too, our Qctober Hevolu- tion opened a new era in world history.” (Selected Works, Vol. 6, p- 504). What policy would Lenin ad- vocate in the present situation. In 1921 he wrote: “Our entire policy and prop- aganda is by no means directed towards drawing the peoples into war, but to put an end to war. Experience also has suf- ficiently demonstrated that on- ly the socialist revolution is a way out of perpetual wars.” HAT would be Lenin’s atttiude to the foreign policy of the Soviet Union in recent years? In May, 1918, when a proposal for a military alliance was made to the Soviet government by the Anglo- French coalition, the central committee of the Russian Com- munist party rejected the pro- posal not on the grounds of prin- ciple but of simple political ex- pediency and Lenin wrote at the time: ‘Without renouncing in gen- eral military agreements with one of the imperialist coalitions against the other im cases where such an agreement, with- out violating the basis of Soviet power could reinforce the posi- tion of the latter and paralyze the attack of any imperialist power against it, we at the present moment cannot accept a military agreement with the Anglo-French coalftion.” For Lenin always insisted that the socialist state should “take advantage of the dissensions amongst the imperialist powers in order to make their combin- ing against us more difficult.” What would Lenin say about the present situation in Finland. As early as 1916 (before even the Russian revolution had taken place) he visualized what would be the situation of a single social- ist state surrounded by a sea of capitalist states and wrote: “The development of capital- ism proceeds very unevenly in the various countries. This cannot be otherwise under com- modity production. It inevit- ably follows from this that so- cialism cannot be victorious simultaneously in all countries. It will be victorious first in one, or several countries, while the others will remain for some time bourgeois or pre-bour- geois. This must not only cre FORUM OF THE PEOPLE RES Because of space limitations only a few of the many letters re- ceived each week can be published. Letters therefore, will be selected for their general interest, the editor reserving the right to edit all letters published with the understanding that the views expressed will be preserved. Letters must bear the names and addresses of the senders. Where desired, however, a non-de-plume and only the name of the city or town will be published, Anonymous communications will be ignored. Views expressed in this department are not necessarily those of the Advocate. SS=SS4 pe4Sedibsdb=a psd be dpsa b= bea b= Ubxa bed Ops ded beg bea bed feah=d bad be gibg bd bad bad bed based ed Ped bab bd bg bad ag Eade hed Bas bad Possibly Hepburn hoped, by arresting the CIO organizer, to drive workers away from the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers’ union. I seem to remember Hep- burn fought very viciously against the CIO during the Osh- awa strike in 1937. Then again, in Nova Scotia when fishermen -picketed during a labor dispute, provincial uat- torney-general J. H. McQuarrie ruled that “assemblage of per- sons congregating on public streets and obstructing, inter- ruptinge and interfering with the shipments by rail or truck are wrongful and unlawful.” In addition, there are innum- erable books, pamphlets, and newspapers banned, confiscated or refused admission to the coun- try. OQ Democracy! What sins are committed in thy name! CECIL J. CARR. Victoria, BC. xe BY FRE DEEDS YE SHALL KNOW THEM | HE self-designated ‘end MHitlerism’ government of Premier Daladier has turned to book-burning—long a Aitler method of repression. Recent additions to the government list, to be seized by dolice ‘for purposes of destruction,’ are such subversive works as Jack London’s The Iron Heel; Professor Prenant’s Biology and Marxism; Andre Philippe’s Steel: Maxim Gorki’s Mother, and the magazine La Pensee, edited by Professor Langewin, member of the Institute of France, with the collaboration of such men as Dr. Wallon, professor at the College of France, and numerous doctors, engineers, scholars and professors at Paris University. All books by Lenin and Stalin are on the police list. Taling a tip from the Japanese ‘dangerous thoughts’ law, the Daladier regime recently handed down a sentence of six years for the crime of intending to distribute a leaflet and another of nine years for actual leaflet distribution. ate friction, but a direct striv- ing on the part of the bour- geoisie of other countries to crush the victorious proletar- iat of the socialist state. In this case war on our part would be a legitimate and just war, it. would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other peo- ples from the bourgeoisie. En- gels was quite right when, in his letter to Kautsky, Sept. 21, 1882, he openly admitted the possibility of ‘wars of defense’ on the part of already victori- ous socialism. What he had in mind was the defense of the victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other coun- _ tries.” Tee policy Lenin advocated in a situation such as the present was formulated as early as 1907 in the amendment which he and Rosa Luxemburg formulat- — ed and succeeded in having adopted at the Stuttgart Con- i gress of the pre-war Second So- cialist International: “Tf war should nevertheless break out, it is the duty of the Socialist parties to work to bring it to an end as speedily as possible and to make every effort to use the econemic and political crisis created by the war to waken the political con- sciousness of the masses and to hasten the downfall of capitalist domination.” We know full well now how sharply and with what contempt Lenin reacted to the betrayal of the resolution by the socialist leaders of the belligerent imper- ialist states in 1914. Who can doubt that his feelings against | the similar betrayal of the lead- 7 ers of Social-Democracy today would be even more bitter. But it was not until 1917 after three years Lenin’s name became known to the peoples of the countries other than his own and it was several more years before the workers of other lands were able for the first time to read Lenin’s own writings in their own langsuace What a vista then opened before their eyes! What fogs of confu- Sian and misunderstanding were then instantly cleared! 1940 is not 1914. Lenin, though: dead, today is a greater force than when he was alive in 1914, for millions have now studied his works and even greater millions are influenced by the legacy of -his life-work, Offers Views On Quebee To the Editor: Referring to an article written by Quebec Prem- ier Godbout in the Ottawa Jour- nal requesting federal authorities to suspend any recruiting cam- paign in Quebec, it is rather sur- prising to read such an article from the newly elected premier, especially when we remember the campaign carried on by Lapointe and other Liberal cabinet mem- bers. Duplessis, for calling an election during wartime, was called disloyal and accused of in- terfering with the carryine out of the war. Iapointe’s victory in Quebec was used as supposed ex- pression of Quebec’s suppori of | Canada’s declaration of war. Im August, last year, Hon. Nor- man Rogers, then minister of la- bor, said that there was $56,000,- 000 ready for Quebec, but when War was declared, this was can- celled. Hon. Norman McLarty, new minister of labor, in Oct, 1939, remarked that the number of people on relief in-Quebec had increased 2314 percent in one month. Apparently, Premier Godbout, in his article—not given any pub- licity in our local papers — has decided that Quebec’s young men prefer to stay in their own coun- try. It would be interesting tc hear what Lapointe thinks of his proteze now. Tt is very easily seen that the well-played-up victory for ‘loyal- ty’ in the last Quebec electior Was not all it appeared to be on the surface. In this manner maybe the Liberal government hopes to succeed in the coming federal elections. A GOOD CANADIAN. Vancouver, BC. e@ Enlishhnent Aets Recalled To the Editor,—it is significan that when the issue for capitalisn was one of ‘non-interventior against fascism in Spain a num ber of capitalist countries passe: laws to prevent volunteers from! enlisting in the Spanish goverr, ment’s international brigade Wow the issue for capitalism i ls one of bolstering near-fascism i | Finland and halting the sociali advance, no such laws apply. EX MAG-PAP. Vancouver, BC. of slaughter that © oo aT TR eg PE Pal tak ee } F. u i t | il