Page Six

THE ADVOCATE

February 16, 194

THE ADVOCATE

Published Weekly by the Advocate Publishing Association, Room 20
163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C. Phone TRinity 2019

EDITOR - HAL GRIFFIN

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Vancouver, B.C., Friday, February 16, 1940

The Unholy Crusade

RITAIN and France will be at war with the Soviet Union
“very soon.”

This is what Alfred Duff-Cooper, former first lord of the
British admiralty now carrying the torch of war for the
Chamberlain government in the United States, told newspaper-
men at Portland, Ore., the other day.

Duff-Cooper’s statement made news only in that it was the

first ‘blunt admission of the British government’s anti-Soviet
aims.
On every side preparations for imperialism’s unholy crusade
against the land of socialism are being intensified, with Finland
already the battleground between the forces of living socialism
and dying capitalism, between the new world that stands for
peace, for progress and the prosperity of the people, and the
old that represents only privilege and profit.

The Chamberlain government, which invoked the Foreign
Enlistment Act against British volunteers seeking to enlist in
the Spanish republic’s international brigades in pursuing its
cynical non-intervention policy, has now adopted the tactics
employed by Nazi Germany in Spain and is openly sending
troops to Finland. In doing so it admits the truth of the Soviet
government’s charges that the Finnish White Guard regime
is only the tool of Anglo-French imperialism.

But it is from the Near East that the most ominous news
comes. More than half a million British and French troops are
now concentrated in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq and Syria. For
what? Troops from Australia and New Zealand have been sent,
not to France but to Egypt. For what? The Turkish army is
fully mobilized. For what?

This formidable force is far greater than needed for pos-
sible defensive purposes. The Soviet Union, which has treaties
of amity with all bordering states in the Near East and has
maintained consistently friendly relations with Turkey, has of-
fered no threat. Yet all capitalist press despatches speak of
possible Russian or Russo-German aggression in-the Near East.

It is inconceivable, of course, that the ‘holy crusade’ against
the Soviet Union will be launched with imperialism con-
ceding the moral advantage. The Soviet Union must be pre-
sented as the ‘aggressor.’ Will we then, be hearing of ‘border

‘incidents’ around “the end of March or the beginning of

April?” Are we to be treated to a repetition of the Finnish pro-
vocations on a more extensive scale?

No less a person than David Lloyd George, who unlike other
imperialists realizes “the incalculable consequences” of a war
against the Soviet Union, thinks so.

“There is a suspicion that there is a considerable movement
in France for an attack on Germany through Russia,“ he
writes this week, and adds, “There is a suspicion that promin-
ent and forceful members of the British government would
not regard such a project with disfavor.”

Lloyd George too, reveals the fundamental reason for im-
perialism’s desire to redirect the war against the Soviet Union.

“There can be no doubt that there are powerful classes
both in France and Britain who would be much more in-
terested in a war against Bolshevist Russia than in a war
against Nazi Germany ... there is deep down in the ruling

classes of every country a hatred and dread of the Commu- ~

nist regime in Russia. It is regarded as a constant menace to
the existing social order.”

Lloyd George believes that “a war against Russia would be
a catastrophe.” And again he is thinking not of the peoples
upon whom the burden of such a war, even as the burden of this
war, would be placed, but of Anglo-French imperialist interests,
for he adds:

“Tt would extend hostilities to Asia, where Britain and
France have vast interests, and the end would be incalculable.”

Britain’s prime minister during the last war remembers
“there was an attempt made in 1919 to destroy Bolshevism by
force of arms. It was a dismal failure, despite the fact that
the Bolsheviks at that time possessed only an ill-organized
and very badly equipped army.”

He knows, although he does not say so, that the action of the
international working class was a powerful factor in defeating
that first attempt to crush the infant Soviet state. And he
recognizes, when he writes that “British opinion would be hope-
lessly divided,” that the international working class would not
stand idly by in any second desperate attempt to destroy the
land of socialism, now grown to giant strength.

Canada’s Prime Minister Mackenzie King appears to have
timed his federal elections perfectly to mesh with the gears of
international anti-Soviet intrigue. He speaks of a possible
‘spring offensive,’ but not against the Westwall, it seems.

The salient fact emerges that a vote cast for any of the

four major parties—Liberal, Conservative, Social Credit and
CCF—contesting this election on the false issue of how the
war shall be conducted will be a vote not only for continua-
tion of the present war but for the looming unholy crusade
against the Soviet Union.

Selt-Convicted Liars

Fo weeks special correspondents ‘with the Finnish armies
at the front’ have been informing the millions who read
the capitalist press that the invincibility of the Red army is a
myth, that Soviet soldiers are ill-trained and ill-equipped, that
Red planes are obsolete, Red mechanical equipment faulty,
Red artillery poor.

But now that the Red army has penetrated not only the
Mannerheim line but also the capitalist censorship, a different
story is heard.

United Press’ Webb Miller is now forced to concede that
Finnish White Guard “officers and men in the line admit Rus-
sian artillery is excellent, that the tanks are good and that me-
chanically, Russian airplanes are first class.’ Why? Because
the Finnish White Guards now recognize that “reports abroad
that the Russian army is poor are untrue and... it is undesir-
able that such an impression should be entertained.”

And Walter Kerr cables to the New York Herald-Tribune
that “old time newspaper correspondents say the war in Fin-
land is the first war in many years without war correspon-
dents. It probably is ...no correspondent, so far as I know,
has ever seen the troops in action.”

When the capitalist press collectively reveals its mass lies,
it is almost superfluous for us to ask if anything it prints can be
believed.

WAR SCANDALS OF 1939

The Cerrupt Record of the King Government

VER 200 Canadian busi-

nessmen became million-
aires in the war of 1914-18,
while members of parliament
and senators, protected by
Prime Minister Borden, grew
rich. And in 1917 the Liber-
als, including Dr. Manion,
joined the Borden Tories to
set up a union government,
force conscription on the
country and share the profit
of war contracts.

Canadian big business expects
to do far better in the present
war. The few months of war
have produced a new crop of
corrupting war contract scandals.
The evidence shows that Prime
Minister King, his cabinet and
the Liberal machine are difectly
involved in these robberies of the
Canadian people.

King’s sugar-coated propagan-
da speeches against profiteering
serve to pull the wool over the
eyes of the people. But, never-
theless, he is deeply involved in
the sordid game, as a few ex-
amples made public in the press
go to show.

e

UGH PLAXTON, MFP for
Trinity, Toronto—a Liberal
politician—Major J. E. Hahn, and
stockbrokers Cameron, Pointon
and Merritt of Toronto are mak-
ing millions of dollars out of the
Bren gun contract,

The King government gave the
Plaxton-Hahn clique the govern-
ment-owned machinery for manu-
facturing these guns. While pre-
tending to favor the idea of es-
tablishing \a government-owned
machine-gun and rifle plant at
Valcartier where the machinery,
worth hundreds of thousands of
dollars, was located, Ian Macken-
zie, then minister of national de-
fense, was making plans to give
this public property to the Plax-
ton-Hahn gang.

The King government in pre-
war days paid deceitful lip-ser-
vice to the principle of public
ownership of the armaments in-
dustry, but in action collaborat-
ed with Hahn and other big in-
dustrialists to set up capitalist
monopolies of the arms industry
in Canada. Hahn and company
have a 10-year monopoly on the

manufacture of Bren machine
guns!

Consider: The King govern-
ment owned a plant equipped

with machinery at Valcartier,
Quebec, where the Bren guns
could have been made. But it
gave the machinery to Hahn,
shipped it free to Toronto, instal-
led it in the old bankrupt Inglis
boiler plant and paid thousands
of dollars additional to: modern-
ize the Inglis plant and equip it
with more brand new machinery!

A government serving the peo-
ple and genuinely concerned with
national defense would have es-
tablished a plant at Valcartier—
in the country, not in the centre
of a populous city like Toronto.
This is betraying national inter-
ests to profiteering big capital-
ists. If German planes ever at-
tempt to bomb the John Inglis
plant out of existence and in the
attempt kill thousands of Toron-
tonians, it will be because of war
graft stemming from King’s cab-
inet.

Major Hahn, Hugh Plaxton,
MP, and Ian Mackenzie organiz-
ed the Bren gun deal. Hahn
bought the bankrupt John Inglis
plant on Strachan avenue, Toron-
to, for a song. The King govern-
ment gave him the contract to
make 7,000 Bren machine guns,
and helped him to get an order
for.5,000 of the same guns from

the Chamberlain government.
Hahn gets $8,000,000 for these
12,000 guns.

The Canadian government

agrees to pay Hahn all produc-
tion costs plus 10 percent profit
—to pay two-thirds of the cost of
installing the machinery, the
British government paying the
other third—to pay all other ex-
penses, executive salaries, travel-
ling expenses, legal fees, cost of
heat, light and power, telephone,
telegraph—plus 10 percent! Hahn
figures on cleaning up at least
a million dollars clear profit on
this end. But that is not all by
any means.
@

HE Plaxton-Hahn profiteers,

having secured a monopoly
of the manufacture of the Bren
gun and greedily anticipating big-
ger war contracts, are pyramid-
ing the stock of the John Inglis
company, unloading it on the
public at a fancy price.

Hahn holds shares worth round
a million dollars in the John In-
glis company. The Plaxton firm
holds Inglis shares, 83,698 of them
worth around $750,000. Two other
subsidiaries have been rigged —
Investment Reserves Ltd. and the
Anglo-Engineering Ltd. — under
the thumbs of Hahn and Plaxton
—to slide part of the stock on the
public. From stock market oper-
ations the Hahn-Plaxton gang
can clean up millions! On this
deal aldne a half-dozen new mil-
lionaires wil be created.

Colonel J. F. Lash, director of
many big monopolies; Lieut-Col.
W. G. Mackendrick, director of
Canadian Canners, Columbia Pa-
ving, (Vancouver, BC) and other
companies; R. H. Massie, vice-
president of Dominion Fire In-
surance company, and director
of other companies; and T. L.
Waldon, corporation president

HILE taxes are being piled sky-high on the backs of the

y people, wages and salaries depresse

and farm incomes

lowered—particularly sharply in Western Canada—an orgy of
corruption and profiteering has been unleashed by the capitalist
class and politicians in ‘the business of war.’ Opponents of war
and militant workers are being imprisoned while the grafters
and profiteers wax rich. The challenge is thrown to the Ca-
nadian people to unite against the King government and Tory
politicians and against the top leaders of the CCF, Social Credit
and other groups who aid and abet the imperialist war and the
corrupt policies of Canadian big business.

and director of US and Canadian
companies, joined. Hahn’s John
Inglis company directorate on
Jan, 18, 1940. Everything is set
to rake in millions from Bren
guns and the Dominion treasury
and the stock market.

AGE scales paid at the Inglis
plant are far below trade
union rates. The government re-
fused to include a clause in the
war contracts to provide for
trade union wages. The Clause
L ‘prevailing rates of wages in
the area” enables Hahn and other
war  profiteers to drive wages
down to the lowest level and to
wreck trade union standing.

Prime Minister King has white-
washed the Hahn-Plaxton gang.
Judge Davis brought in a report
which evaded the real issues in
order to screen the government.
Public indignation was high, so
what did King do? Norman Rog-
ers was switched from the de
partment of labor to take over
Ian Mackenzie’s job. Mackenzie
was transferred from the depart-
Ment of national defense to the
cabinet post of minister of pen-
sions and national health.

The political chimneys of Otta-

wa send forth a stench of cor-
ruption, permeating the Liberal
cabinet and polluting the nation-
al life,

@

LIBERAL in Vancouver
owned a house assessed at
$49,150. It was registered in his
wife’s name. She was very
friendly with Ian Mackenzie. The
department of national defense
bought this house for $94,440.
Honest working people are taxed

to pay for this robbery.

In Vancouver, due to influence
with the Liberal machine at Ot-
tawa, a group of war profiteers
headed by Brigadier W. W. Fos-
ter, president of the Canadian
Legion, chief of Vancouver’s po-
lice ((now on leave, filling the
post of head of the Auxiliary Ser-
vices of the department of na-
tional defense!) obtained  con-
tracts totalling $3,000,000' for
coastal defenses. %

Once again, these contracts
were given on the basis of pro-
duction costs plus 10 percent. An
over-all 10 percent is paid on ex-
ecutive salaries, auditors’ fees,
depreciation, municipal taxes, le-
gal fees, insurance, travelling ex-
penses. The government will
pay the cost of plant improve-

IS YOUR NAME ON
THE VOTERS’ LIST?

TE there is considerable interest in the forthcoming fed-
eral elections is evidenced by the number of enquiries
made daily at the Advocate office and at union offices in the
city as to what steps eligible persons should take to ensure that
their names are on the voters’ list.

Canadian citizens are entitled to vote only if their names
appear on the new voters’ list now in preparation. This list
will nullify all previous (1935) federal voters’ lists. Enumer-
ators are going from house to house in city and country reg-
istering all persons entitled to vote. Once registered a receipt
is given by the enumerators.

The fact that your name appears on the provincial voters’
list does not entitle you to vote in this election. Provincial and
federal elections are conducted with entirely different voters’
lists.

If at the end of this month you have not been called upon
by the enumerators you name does not appear on the list, each
section of which is conspicuously posted in a public place,
your last opportunity to register will come when the court of
revision opens on March 11-12-13 in each constituency from
10 a.m. until 10 p.m. each day. Places where these courts will
be held will be made known through posters and public an-

nouncements.

In the case of miners, loggers and fishermen, who may be
unable to attend in person, their union secretary, if informed,
can see that their names are placed on the voters’ list.

Possibility that many persons in working class districts,
unionized logging and mining camps where the vote may be
solidly for anti-war candidates may find they have been omitted

from the voters’ list can be safeguarded against if citizens will .

take the trouble to check the lists and watch for announce-
ments on opening of the courts of revision.

WAR BOARDS

expansion and continuation of
the industrial policy that has
been followed by the govern-
ment for the past eight years,
for in their hands control has
nearly always meant the con-
ferment of legal privileges on
the organized producers al-
ready established in the indus-
try ... Not only is the system
inequitable, it is also likely to
be inefficient . .. It is not too
much to say that the form
which an _ industrial control
take sduring the war will dom-
inate the economic develop-
ment after the war. We are in
danger of slipping, through in-
advertance, into a feudalistic
system of cartel control”

ee.

GLANCE at the names which

make up our own two most
important boards—the War Sup-
ply Board and the Prices and
Trade Board—does little to as-
sure us that the ‘Economist’s’ re-
marks are inapplicable to Cana-
da.

W. R. Campbell, head of the
War Supplies, is president and
treasurer of the Ford Motor Com-
pany of Canada. Ford, of course,
is one of the two large motor
firms of Canada. Motors and
the machinery for making them
are very important in war, and
Ford has already received—as is
inevitable—large contracts from
the War Supply Board. The other
three members of the board have
between them a quite impressive
list of directorships in Canadian
firms and. connections with the
Chamber of Commerce and other
businessmen’s organizations.

Noble, the sugar controller, is
assistant general manager of the

Royal Bank. The Royal Bank, of
all Canadian banks, is the one
with the largest West Indies bus-
iness, particularly in Cuba, which
is a heavy sugar producer.
Noble’s assistant, H. J. Hobbins,
is the vice-president and general
Manager of Czarnikow Lid. a
Montreal firm which is the larg-
est firm of sugar brokers in the
world.

David Dick, the wool control-
ler, is a past president of the
Woollen manufacturers’ organiz-
ation and continues as an active
member of it. He is connected
with three textile firms, J. Mac-
Gregor Stewart, the coal control-
ler, holds sixteen or seventeen
directorships including ones on
the Dominion Steel and Coal Cor-
Poration and Nova Scotia Steel
and Coal company.

As for Hon. Gordon Scott, the
‘dollar-a-year man’, who is acting
as executive director in arrang-
ing contracts, this former mem-
ber of the Taschereau govern-
ment has connections with near-
ly a score of Canadian corpora-
tions. The 1939 issue of ‘Poor’s
Register’ credits him with no
fewer than seventeen director-
ships, including the steel indus-
try (General Steel Wares, Cana-
dian Tube and Steel Products
Ltd. Dominion Wire and Cable),
the power industry, chemicals,
and several ‘financial’ companies,
And now we hear that R. A CG.
Henry of Beauharnois scandal ill-
fame and the present vice-presi-
dent of Beauharnois, has been

appointed as special liaison offi- :

cer between Transport Minister
Howe (under whose jurisdiction
the War Supply Board is found)
and the board itself,

re

cent! ‘ a
In these contracts, mainly fe
the construction of undergrouy
coastal defense nf
King and Mackenzie did not hay
any steam shovels, concrete mi
ers and excavators lying at Vs
cartier or elsewhere to give t
Brigadier Foster and compan
but they did something just |
profitable. The governmer
agreed to pay rentals on the m
chinery used, -

For example, on a three-qua
ter-yard excavating shovel, ¢
ing around $14,000 the gover
ment pays $35 rent an eight-ho
day; $40 an eight-hour day rei]
for a caterpillar crane-shovel ;
costs around $15,000.

It has been admitted that ¢
profiteers charged for a 24-hq!
day—$105 a day on the showy:
$120 a day on the crane-shoy4
In other words, the Foster car.

=

$38,000 in rent on the caterpilll”
crane-shovel a year compared:
its original cost of $14,000, m
than double. ;
Companies involved in thes)
deals include Northern Constru
tion company, W. J. Stewart Ca.
struction Ltd. British Columb*

Dredging Company and E.
Ryan, contractors, ‘
Men involved include Brigadi.
Foster, B. M. Boyd, D. McLec
Lieut-Col. E. J. Ryan, John j
Keer, D. B. MacDonald J. A. ji
Keay, A R Mann of Vancouyg
T. K. DeBeck of Victoria, ana;
J. O’Brien and R. McF. Millar;
Montreal. : a
Gerry McGeer, MP, for Vaneo,
ver-Burrard and Ian Mackenz 4
played the big roles at Ottawa}.
pushing these contracts to- the.
clique. Practically every one;
the contracts was given ona ng)
competitive basis. Mackenz
King’s statement that all Wi
contracts are given on a co
petitive basis; that the order gq.
to the lowest bidder is eyewai
for the public. a3
A Liberal ward-heeler in Mon
real, M. Shulman, sold the q-
partment of national defense =
building for $18,000. Six mont.
before he sold it he paid $129 -
for it. A clear gift of $6,000 te ;
a |

Liberal machine henchman.
And who recommended |
scandalous deal? ; =
None other than the gshint
knight, Norman Rogers, ne!
minister of national defense! + —

e
A™= MARSHALL BISHO.
member of the Interdepa
mental council of Canadian 4
fense, is a director of the Fle
Aircraft Corporation which h
received several big contrac |
The shares of Fleet Aircraft ha
rocketed from $3.50 a share |
1939 to $9.75 a share at present °

A number of planes alreg
Paid for are obsolete. Hundre’
of planes lie in storage, useli
because contractors on propelli
failed to deliver—although ¢ -
took the money. Complaints ;
becoming rife that the quality...
Planes made by Canadian ¢i |
tractors is not up to standar
unsafe.

A splintering strut, a fau.
engine spell profits for the %
profiteers and death for a Caj 2
dian airman.

Lapointe and Cardin, King c.,
inet ministers from Quebec; :°
looking after their Liberal x. §
chine colleague in Quebec. 1°
Sorel shipyards and the St. Ii
rence dredging fleet, owned :°
paid for by the government, hi {
been handed over to the Sim:
trust. ,

Contracts worth millions ¥
be shortly handed over to Sim:
for mine-sweepers, patrol ba’
and it may even come to p>
that Simard will sell back 50
of the dredging fleet to the =
ernment. |

e ;
(PHESE are only a few samE

of the hundreds of disgra
ful war contract scandals #
mark the corrupt regime of
King government. The To
make weak gestures of oppc
tion to it all becausé they are
furiated that they are on the c¢
side looking in.

Manion recalls the days un
Borden when millionaires wf
made overnight by selling «& "
marines (that were rejected
a foreign government as unse
to the Canadian navy; by sell ix
dud shells and defective sh fi
that exploded inthe gun-breec? f
killing hundreds of Canadian
tillerymen; by selling card-bor fy
soled shoes, outworn horses ;{,
diseased meat to the departm fo,
of national defence. me

The graft and corruption fp
1914-18 in war contracts was.
sponsible for more Canad
being killed, wounded and
eased than all the fire of Gerr |,
guns. Borden, Holt, Flav}
Meighen and their associ}
made millions out of the 191'}.
war. They did not care wh
happened to the boys who wf,
Overseas believing they vi,
fighting for democracy anc *
‘Canada fit for heroes.’ A

Dr. Manion, Colonel Drew, }}
onel McLean and the rest of |
Tory gang will shut up /#
clams on one condition— |

Wi
tt)

That’s a partial picture}}
much as has already been |¥
posed—of the war scandals¥#
1939. Is Canada going to sif
for it? ; Fi