THE ADVOCATE

Page Five

) So that no one will accuse us of
lisrepresenting Prime Minister
‘ing, let us repeat his words of
spt, 8, 1939, when he declared
| the House of Commons:

7 «J note that Sir Harry Gul-
|} stt, Australian minister of ex-
‘ermal affairs, told the Austral-
an house of representatives on
'¥Yednesday that his govern-
jaent had not yet seriously con-
idered despatching an expedi-
jionary force overseas.

|. “He declared that when the
commonwealth had discharged
‘ts first duty to the empire,
which was to ensure its own
safety, and when it was better
able to assess the strength of
its enemies and the nature of
‘the conflict, it would evolve
proposals for further partici-
pation in the war for submis-
sion to the people.

| “That statement indicates the
Australian government are
making the same general ap-

‘

Ganadians who remember and
.onor the struggles for demo-
ratic liberties of those ‘others,’
Nilliam Lyon Mackenzie, Louis
foseph Papineau and Louis Riel,
will also remember those words
Prime Minister Mackenzie
cing on the day that Britain de-
lared war on Germany. Today
hey have a very hollow sound.
Evidently Prime Minister Mac-
cenzie King was not thinking of
is well beloved ancestor when
te referred to ‘others.’

Fer long before he uttered
hose high sounding words, long
efore war broke out, Mackenzie
inge’s cabinet was preparing in

) eadiness for war regulations
‘ vhich would abrogate every dem-
scratic right won by the Cana-
jan people in those early strug-
les,

San a2 e@

WN March 14, 1939—not last

year, but the year before—
‘ighteen months before the Can-
idian government declared that
. state of war existed between
tself and the Hitler regime, a
sommittee to draft the Defense
£ Canada Regulations was ap-
>ointed by Ottawa.

The previous day Hitler had
marched triumphantly into Aus-
ria. :

Seventeen days later, Prime
Zinister Mackenzie King declar-
d in parliament:
| “The idea that every twenty

years this country, which has
done all it can to run itself,
should feel called upon to save

2 continent that cannot run it-
self seems a nightmare and
sheer madness.”

Six months later Chamberlain,
with the blessing of the Domin-
ions, including Canada, signed
fhe Munich agreement, and de-
clared it was to be ‘peace for
pur time.’

Right on into the summer of
1939 Mackenzie King and his fol-
lowers were continuing their talk
about war in Europe as ‘sheer
madness’.
| And all this time the Commit-
‘tee for Emergency Legislation
was working on the Defense of
\Canada Regulations in prepara-
tion for war.
| Wet we are told that this war
was forced upon us, we weren't
ready for it, but there was noth-
ing we could do about it but get
into it as quick as possible

@

EPORTING these facts in

the Globe and Mail, of all
papers, Columnist Judith Robin-
son, who reprinted information
given by Stanley Thompson in
the New York Post, remarked
that “in the place where war
could enable a government to en-
croach more swiftly and com-
pletely upon the freedom of the
citizens, the Liberal government
at Ottawa began to prepare its
Wartime encroachments eighteen
months ahead of time.”

“Away back in March, 1938,”
She declared, “eighteen months
ahead of time, the prime minis-
ter of Canada felt war coming on
and started getting his wartime
regulations ready to put ordinary
eitizens in jail for echoing in
September prime ministerial re-
marks of July.”

Im the same article, she quoted
remarks of New York Post re-
porter Stanley Thompson on the
Regulations:

“You learn that many of the
rights, privileges, and protec-
tions of democracy have been
abolished because the govern-
ment believes that is the best
way to handle things at home
while the nation is helping to
defend democracy. in Hjurope.

“I do not mean to say that
Canada is Hitlerized. The of-
ficial regulations certainly are

proach to the consideration of
this problem as the govern-
ment of Canada.”

e

HIS declaration implied that

there would be no Canadian
expeditionary force sent overseas
until proposals were submitted to
the Ganadian people, to parlia-
ment. For the last session of
parliament gave the government
no mandate to send thousands of
Ganadians overseas. No money
was voted for such a purposs.

This is the road that leads to
conscription, to an enormous in-
crease in the national debt, to
new and heavier taxes on the
people. That is the unchallenge-
able conclusion to King’s war pol-
icies. It is what Canada can look
forward to.

Some innocents might reply:
“But King has promised that his
government will not introduce
conscription, so all is well on that
score.’ To those we can say: Re-

| THE DUPLICITY OF
\PRIME MINISTER KING

By Kay Gregory

, All APPEAL to my fellow Canadians to unite in a national
| effort to save from destruction all that makes life worth
fine and to preserve for future generations those liberties
ad institutions which others have bequeathed us.”

theoretically as oppressive as
-any that could be thought up
by any dictator—are, in fact,
considerably more oppressive
and take away considerably
more of the citizens’ rights
than those in England. But
enforcement is erratic — some-
times mild, sometimes stern
and sometimes, it seems to me,
just plain crazy.”

When a hundred copies of the
Wew York Post were ‘detained’
early this month by the Customs
authorities, the same Judith Rob-
at the time these papers were
being held up, British Ambassa-
dor to the United States, Lord
inson ironically pointed out that
Lothian, was saying in Chicago
that “every true democracy wants
to hear all sides of every great
-question, whether it is domestic
or whether it is international

. . the free peoples are entitled
to speak to one another.”

Released later from customs,
the detained papers contained,
not, as alleged, an article which
‘ibelled Canadian troops in a
scurrilous way, but according to
Miss Robinson, “a frank and un-
flattering survey of Canada’s war
activities, governmental and oth-
erwise, to date.’

Remarking that she for one
‘cannot sufficiently deplore, sec-
tions 21, 39 and 39a of the Regu-
Jations, Miss Robinson declared
that this incident would ‘‘stand
as another evidence of the evil of
Mr. King’s defense of regula-
tions.”

Thus, under the Defense of
Canada Regulations, the govern-
ment has shown its willingness
and eagerness to prevent the peo-
ple’s right to criticise govern-
ment conduct, that right which
has always been the cornerstone
of democracy.

C)

{* CANADA, 3,000 miles away

from the western front, war-
time regulations are far harsher
than those in Britain, within easy
reach of German bombers. This
clamping down of liberties and
civil rights under cover of war-
time necessity was made even
more severe and arbitrary by the
amendments of January 11.

Wide public criticism and dis-
cussion in Britain has forced
many amendments to stringent
war-time measures.

Professor A. Barriedale, not-
ed British constitutional au-
thority, criticising some of the
British government’s measures,
declared that “there is no ex-
cuse for depriving us of criti-
cism of its action in other fields
(than defense issues) and how-
ever wrong we may consider
pacifism, freedom to express
such views should not he de-
nied.””

Protest is just as widespread
in Canada against imprisonment
and persecution of Canadian citi-
zens for daring to criticise gov-
ernment policy of entry into a
war, for which Mackenzie King,
as well as Chamberlain and Dal-
adier, had patently been prepar-
ing years before.

It will be well in the coming
election for the people of
Canada to interpret the Prime
Minister’s words for themselves
and take it upon their own re-
sponsibility “to preserve for fu-
ture generations those liberties
and institutions which others
have bequeathed us,’ to go fur-
ther and bequeath even greater
liberty for our children and their
children’s children in a socialist
Canada.

Gms

read his Sept. 8 pledge to consult
the people before he sent an
army overseas, and remember
that the prime minister’s politic-
al career is plentifully studded
with broken promises. And re-
member: In 1914-15-16 the Borden
government repeatedly declared
against conscription and plotted
the infamous 1917 elections to put
‘over conscription and Union gov-
ernment.

Premier King spoke as he did
on Sept. 8 because he knew that
the Ganadian people were not in
favor of an expeditionary force.
He knew that he had to face the
Quebec provincial elections and
jt would guarantee defeat for his
forces if he came out in favor
of sending Canadians overseas.

He could not risk having Que-
bee repudiate his government
and therefore the demagogic

promise to submit further pro--

posals to the people, the using of
Sir Henry Gullett’s declaration,
and the hollow promise of no
conscription by his administra-
tion. That was bait for the Que-
bee voters, eyewash to flim-flam
the Canadian people.

What would have happened to
the King-Lapointe forces in Que-
bec if the people had been told
that Canadian troops would be in
Aldershot by Christmas can be
judged by. the fact that 48 percent
of the Quebee voters cast their
ballots against the Liberal candi-
dates,

Se

S USUAL the capitalist politi-
cians share out the roles and
it is not surprising that billion-
aire R. B. Bennett made a special
trip back to Canada from his
Juniper Castle to make speeches
in favor of conscription. The ‘iron
heel’ political has-been can at
least do the pob of trying to
make it a public issue. Senator
Griesbach and other superannu-
ated brass-hats take up the chor-
us,
Prime Minister King and the
big money men of St. James and
Bay streets know full well that it
will not be an easy job to push
forward their imperialist war pol-
icies. 1940 is not 1914, nor even
i9i7 — and they remember the
stormy struggle against conscrip-
tion not only in Quebec but
throughout the country.
They are keenly aware that the

ADPROACH TO CONSCRIPTION

. 4 7ITHOUT consulting the Canadian people the King government has despatched the first two contingents overseas. Just a
ll few days ago Premier King was asked: “When will the third contingent sail?” and he intimated that the current session
“parliament, will probably consider the matter.

{
It is certain that many MP’s will be compelled to oppose the government's policies at the session. In particular Premier King

a expect trouble from the Quebec members—for his expediti onary force policy spells conscription.

overwhelming ‘majority of the
Ganadian people are suspicious
of this war and bitterly opposed
to conscription, the squandering
of $100,000,000 a day on the war,
the back-breaking taxes imposed
and the fascist-like offensive be-
ing conducted against free
speech, press and association
which is deliberately designed to
strangle all criticism of the goy-
ernment’s war policies.

For the Canadian people are
grasping the truths regarding
this war and are gathering their
forces to struggle. On all fronts,
the movement against high
prices and profiteering, the fight
for the retention of civil liberties
and the right to criticism—the
Canadian imperialists and their
apologists face rising storms.

And it may well turn out that
as in 1916-17, the conscription is-
sue will prove to be that issue
around which the mightiest mass
movement of all will develop and
grow strong as the fighting ex-
pression of the Canadian people.

e

STRONG anti-conscription

movement already exists in
Quebec. The social-patriot lead-
ers of the CCF, in spite of their
official support of King’s war
policies, feel compelled to moutn
warnings against the danger of
conscription. Their stupid brom-
ide — ‘conscription of men and
wealth’ is of inestimable help to
the war mongers, not a slogan of
struggle against war.

King himself, and the Liberal
administration are nervous about
the masses of the voters and.the
general public, knowing full well
that ithey oppose conscription,
and that this government, and
perhaps the one that big business
may replace it with. can be
wrecked on the conscription is-
sue. Yes, there is tremendous
political dynamite in the con-
Scription issue.

It is the task of the labor move-
Ment to spread these truths far
and wide, to explain the impli-
cations of the conscription issue
to the widest masses. These are
the preliminary steps to suaran-
tee that the most powerful united
front of the Canadian people
against conscription, and the rest
of the imperialist policies, will be
built from below — in the fac-
tories, the trade unions, the youth
Movement ,in every province.

PAUL BUNYAN WITH
THE FINNISH ARMY

By Harrison George

INS eee Christian charity nor human credulity can stand

up under the barrage of tall tales by correspondents “with
the Finnish army.” These boys “count that day lost whose low
descending sun” sees no “Russian army’ licked, or frozen on

the run.

“Two more Russian divisions,”
we were told recently, “are being
cut off in the same sectors where
the i163rd and 44th Divisions
were destroyed recently.”

We wondered where those new
divisions had com from, said to
be the ‘crack troops’ thrown in to
‘retrieve Stalin’s prestige’ For
had not these correspondents
been telling us for two weeks
that ‘ski troops had cut the Len-
ingrad Murmansk railroad,’ the
only line whereby troops and sup-
plies could reach the northeru
front? That was a mystery:

But then it suddenly dawned
on us what had happened. There
had been a brief period of warm
weather. And, believe it or not,
those ‘frozen Russian armies’ we
had been told about, must have
been thawed out and begun ad-

vaneing! Just like Robert W.
Service’s sour-dough Alaskan,
Sam McGee!

OU can’t beat the correspon-

dents ‘with the Finnish army.’
And the prize guy on frozen Rus-
Sians is James Aldridge of the
Worth American Newspaper Al-
liance. Aldridge has introducea
a new method, like that of ‘Birds-
eye’ brand of ‘instantly frozen
foods,’ for preserving Russians.

A couple of weeks back this in-
genious writer got off a honey.
And one that the idotic ‘liberals’
of the New Republic swallowed
and then regurgitated for its
readers, with duly horrified com-
ment.

“An engagement had just taken
place,” it says, when Aldridge ap-
peared on the scene. The Rus-
Sians, of course, had all been
killed, and it was 30 below zero.
Then the story goes on to say:

“The soldiers froze instantly in
the positions in which they died.
Somewere locked together, their
bayonets within each other’s bod-
jes.” (This is slightly embarrass-
ing, for unless we figure that the
Russians were bayonetting eacn
other, there must have been a
dead Finn among these frozen
statues, and that wouldn’t do.
Also we're told “the Russians
walked into a trap” and bayonet-
ting is not ambush fighting.)

“Some,” believe it or not, “were
frozen in half-standing positions;

some crouching with their arms
crooked, holding the hand egre-
nades they were throwing. There
were cavalry horses frozen under
a tree where they had been left.
A machine gun battalion (this
guy freezes people by battalions!)
stopped with the gun parts in
their hands as they assembled
their weapons.

“Their fear was registered on
the frozen faces. Their bodies
like statues of men, but their
faces recorded something be-
tween bewilderment and horror.”

O WONDER! For it would
bewilder anyone but an edi-
tor of the New Republic, who is
chronically afflicted with stupid-
ity enough to believe such a cock-
and-bull story of men and horses
frozen standing up, and ‘frozen
instantly.’

We used to tell one ourselves,
up Montant way, of a mule that
got caught by a cold snap while
licking, and was unable to get
its foot down for four days. But
we never could qualify as an
American correspondent with the
Finnish army. Yet we advise
anyone who is goofy enough to
believe Aldridge, to call any doc-
tor with experience and find out
for himself that freezing instant-
ly, and remaining standing in
positions of action ‘like statues’
is just plain buncombe. It isn’t
done and never happens that
way.

The foreign editor of the Van-
couver Province is very fond of
Aldridge’s hokum. Recently the
Province carried one of his fairy
tales in which he told of meeting
Finnish troops returning from
battle—“their faces black with
gunpowder.” Ask any veteran
who has been in real battle whe-
ther it is possible to get your face
“black with gunpowder” without
getting killed by the other guy
shooting you in the face at gun
muzzle range.

Judges, 15;15, says of Samson:
“And he found a new jawbone
of an ass, and put forth his hand,
and slew a thousand men there-
with.”

Canadian and American news-
(Papers, with a more numerous
supply of asses, are doing still
better,

SHORT
JABS

by OF Bill

i Engels wrote once that at every change in rev-
Leaving The Ane tactics, the movement finds itself
Train. losing a number of people who cannot go any
further, but the movement is well rid of them, Particularly since 1917,
the labor movement has been cursed with the good intentions of bour-
beois intellectual patrons; not men of the calibre of Marx, Engels
and Lenin who became part of the fibre of the working class and took
part in its meanest tasks, but patronizers who made it their business
to show us how to run our business. Lenin well-called them ‘fellow-
travellers.’

Since the signing of the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact and the
move of the Red army to clean out the fascist menace in Finland, sey-
eral of them have gone back to their intellectual stew, to their legitimate
job, so well described by Gorky in his letter ‘To American Intellectuals.’

Gorky writes: “The funetion of the intellectual has always been con-
fined, in the main, to embellishing the bored existence of the bourgeois,
to consoling the rich in the trivial troubles of their lives. The intelli-
gentsia was the nurse of the capitalist class. It was kept busy embroid-
ering white stitches on the philosophical and ecclesiastical vestments
of the bourgeoisie—that old and filthy fabric, besmeared so thickly
with the blood of the toiling masses.”

The latest of the fellow travellers to emulate the dog in the Bible
story is Ralph Bates. Writing where his liberalism warrants him doing
it, in the pages of the New Republic, he makes a scurrilous attack on
the Soviet Union and the Communist party. He has not the faintest
idea of what is behind the situation in Finland any more than any other
liberal and proves that he had never any right to call himself a Com-
munist.

He finishes by saying, “I am getting off the train.” That is a bad
simile for him, because trains have a habit of going on to their destina-
tion, no matter who gets off at way points. This train is certainly going
on without Ralph Bates and his kind, and will reach its destination
sooner and without mishap, more certainly, because of the lessened
Joad since these intellectual ‘giants’ have dropped off, or been thrown
off.

Besides, Bates and the other fellow travellers were never actually
on the train. They were only on the brake rods and the eat es
¢ “ @ne of my WHinnish friends, of whom ave

Greetings, > Quite a number, told me a good story a few
Butcher Boys! days ago. Butcher Mannerheim, the idol of the
Wews-Herald’s editorial writers, is a Swedish aristocrat and does not
speak very much or very good Finnish.

He apparently does not know that, if at the end of a day’s work in
the slaughterhouse, a Finnish farmer or butcher should tell his friends
or helpers, “we've done a good day’s butchering today,” the Finnish
word he uses for ‘butchering’ will be ‘lahti’

When, in 1918, Mannerheim had smothered the Finnish democratic
republic in the blood of the Finnish democrats, he made a tour of a
part of Finland. One place he visited was named ‘Lahti.’ Some of his
hired, White Guard, butcher followers who lived there were paraded
in the village square for their butcher leader to pass them in military
review.

When the ceremony took place, Mannerheim saluted them with the
words, “Greetings, Lahti boys,” which any good Finn will tell you
means, “Greetings, butcher boys.”

—

There is no double meaning, however, to the statement Mannerheim
issued in 1918, a few days after the British government officially recog-
nized his government, which had been placed in power by German
bayonets while Britain was still fighting Germany in Planders and
Erance. That statement reads: “The Germans’ victorious and mighty
army landed in Finland to help against the infamous Bolsheviks, and
to help the friendship the Finnish people have always had for the noble
Kaiser and mighty German people. ..I greet the brave German troops
and hope that every Finn will realize the great sacrifice of the noble
German people who are helping them in an hour when every man is
needed on the Western front.”

Will some patriotic ink-slinger who wants to erect a monument to
‘Mannerheim the Magnificent’ please tell me, just precisely why was
“every man... needed on the Western front?”

In Spite The tales of the press writers and the White

: Finnish war office about the exploits of the
Of War. White Finn Paul Bunyans are proved false by
other news items which have no connection with the war:

In December, we were told that the troops of the Swede-Finn gen-
eral Wallenius had penetrated Soviet territory beyond Kandalaksha in
the Kola Peninsula. (Not knowing any better, the news broadcasters
here called this place Kandalaska). We were also told at the same time
that brave and patriotic ski detachments, suicide clubs, had cut the
Murmansk railroad at various places between Lake Ladoga and the
Kola Peninsula.

Well, here is a news item, which, without dealing with the war at
all, gives the lie to these brazen fabrications. A press release from
Moscow, dated Jan. 3, informs us that a session on mining and chemis-
try of the Kola Academy of Science was opened on the day previous,
Jan. 2, at Kirovsk, on the tenth anniversary of the foundinse of that
young town.

Academicians, professors and scientific Workers from Moscow, Len-
ingrad, and other cities of the Soviet Union, arrived to participate in the
discussions on the most important questions connected with mastering
the natural resources of the Kola Peninsula.

The most interesting discussion at that first day’s session was opened
by a woman geologist, Olga VYorobyeva, on the natural resources of one
part of the Peninsula, the Lovozero Tundra. Vorobyeva was amongst
the first geologists to discover apatite in the Kola Peninsula, a discovery
which has enabled the Soviet Union to produce thousands of times more
phosphate fertilizers than were produced in Tsarist Russia.

During the past four years she has located another mineral sub-
stance in vast quantities, loparite, containing titanium, tantalum, niobate
and other rare earths. These deposits of rare metals are of world signi-
ficance and of extremely great importance to the national economy of
the Soviet Union.

Away in that northern outpost of civilization, many miles closer to
the Pole than any town on the American continent, Kirovysk has a popu-
lation of 32,500; Monchegorsk, 18,500 and Murmansk, 106,000. Kirovsk,
the most southerly of the three is 100 kilometers (60 mlies) beyond the
territories reported to be occupied by the Swede-Finn brigand, Wallenius
and the visiting scientists had to travel over the Murmansk railroad—
reported to be destroyed in several places by the Finn ski jumpers—
or was it by the beer-swilling correspondents in Helsinki?

No “We can’t possibly pay this heavy tax, we've

z ‘ 1 nothing to pay it with.’ No, that is not my old
Plebiscite! side-kicker, Jack, with whom I have chummed
it for about 35 years, and who is now too blind ito pack mud up a ladder
for a plasterer or to punch boiler tubes. No, it is the manager of the
Lion’s Gate Bridge company speaking.

Now that the jerrying, the shouting and the ballyhooing is over, the
Bridge company says it has no money to pay taxes because the revenue
for the year will fall short of the sum needed to pay bond interest and
Maintenance by about $100,000.

So the obsequious Ald. George Miller, friend of Big Finance, rushes
in with a proposal for a plebiscite for a charter amendment to enable it to
escape paying its legitimate taxes and is supported by other aldermen.

Nobody suggested a charter amendment to enable my old tillicum
Jack to get out of paying his taxes when he ‘couldn't possibly pay, so
he lost his home.

Why should the foreign bondholders of the Bridge company receive
any more consideration?

PUBLIC MEETING

Sunday, Jan. 23, at 3 p.m.
ORANGE HALL

Gore at Hastings

“THE FEDERAL ELECTION” — Speaker: MALCOLM BRUCE
Chairman: W. BENNETT Silver Collection