Page Four Tim Pb OP Es THE PEOPLE Published every Wednesday by The People Publishing Go., Room 104, Shelly Building, 119 West Pender Strect, Vancouver, B.C. Telephone: MArine 6929. Hart GRIFFIN . Kay Grecory EpNA SIEARD Enrror MaNacinc EDITOR - Business MANAGER 151 Greet Our Soviet Ally With A\ction On Second Front WENTY-FIVE years ago a new world was born. Qut of the strife and turmoil which cleft the corrupt ezarist regime to its rotten foundations a dream began to take shape, slowly and with infinite toil, a dream that men have cherished down the centuries, the dream of a world free of exploitation and want. Twenty-five years have given that dream an indestructible reality. On this November 7, the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding. the Soviet Union stands in all its strength — the strength of a free people united under a great leader, Stalin, resolutely defending their socialist achievements against the hordes spewed forth by German fascism in its death struggle. Today the Soviet Union commands the admiration and support | of the United Nations and free peoples everywhere who recog-| nize that its glorious fight for freedom and the destruction of Hitlerism is their struggle for their freedom and their future. | Who is there today, except despicable quislings and vene- mous traitors to the people, who will deny that were the Soviet people, as yet almost unaided, not holding back the black swarms of Hitlerism, the devastated areas of Russia would to- day be the devastated areas of Britain and tomorrow of North America? What Canadian, in a land still untouched by the horrors of war and the tyranny of Hitlerism, does not recognize that this is so because men are dying at Stalingrad and all along the blood-soaked Soviet front? Printed at Brondway Printers Limited, East Sth Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. UT admiration will not repay the debt we owe to a valiant ally and to ourselves. We are sendimg supplies to the Soviet | Union and we must increase the flow of those supplies, but when | we have done this we still have not done enough. This world | struggle for freedom, in which our own liberties are at stake no less than the liberties of the Soviet people, in which our | fate is inseparable from that of the Soviet Union, now demands joint military action in Europe against the common enemy. The strategic opportunity, the military necessity’ today is} immediate establishment of the second front. The peoples of the | United Nations are impatient for it. The peoples of Europe op-} pressed by Hitler live only for it. Victory waits upon it. | To delay is to leave the initiative in the hands of the enemy, to enable Hitler to carry through his strategy of fighting on one| major front at a time. It is to acquire military strength for the second front only at the expense of weakening the military strength of our allies, at the expense of our potential allies among the enslaved peoples of Europe. It is perhaps to lose the opportunity that presents itself to smash Hitlerism now. oO DELAY is to strengthen the hands of Hitler's friends with- in the United Nations by permitting them to exploit the dissatisfaction and distrust arising from that delay. But to act will be to mobilize a tide of popular enthusiasm that will sweep aside all obstacles to victory. In greeting our Soviet ally on this, its twenty-fifth anniver- sary, our words must be backed with deeds on the production lines that will be felt in tomorrow’s battles. And our deeds on the production lines must be accompanied with the insistent demand for that action which will bring victory — creation of the second front now. he splendid response to our appeal for a $3500 sustaining fund, oversubscribed by at least a thousand dollar after al- lowing for heavy initial expenses and payment of outstanding debts, will enable us to publish a bigger paper and obtain better services. Technical difficulties prevent us from publishing a 12-page paper regularly, but next week and every alternate week we plan to issue twelve pages. We have also subscribed to the Allied Labor News through which our readers will be kept informed of developments in the labor movement through- out the world. Reasons \W/hy opi Replaced |ogo ‘HE recent resignation of Foreign Minister Togo and his re- placement by Masayuki Tani was generally interpreted in the press as indicating that Japan was clearing the decks for a major shift in policy probably involving an attack on Siberia. Tani is one of the “Manchuria gang,’ a Japanese official who | has been closely associated with the played a prominent part in the early development of the puppet Newsprint ie NEWSPRINT is to be ratione in Ganada and the US. as hea been suggested by 2 parliamental 7) sub-committee, who, individual - Kowantung Army and who state of Manchoukuo, Counselor of the Japanese Embassy at Hsingking from 1933 to 1936. It is well known that the Kwantung Army and its civilian supporters have long had their attention focussed on Siberia, and Tani’s appointment was therefore taken as proof that henceforth Japan’s plans would be shaped according to the aims of the ‘Manchuria gang.’ This interpretation was further supported by the report of Lieut. General Stilwell that the Japanese were taking a ‘defensive attitude’ in China and Indo-China. The retiring foreign Minister, Shigenori Togo, was formerly Am- bassador to Moscow from October 1938 to September 1940, and is thought to have been opposed to an attack on Siberia. There is, however, another pos- sible explanation of Togo’s resig- nation which has been largely overlooked in most of the press comment. Shortly after the cabinet change was announced, “Premier Tojo revealed in an interview that he proposed to create a “Greater East Asin Ministry’ designed to “Speed the reconstruction of that area.” Subsequently it was reported that Kazuo Aoki, former financial adviser to Japan’s puppet regime in Nanking, would become head of this projected ministry which is to direct the administration of Jap- an’s conquests in Asia and the Wetherlands Indies. According to the government spékesman, foreign relations in | these territories are to be directed | by the ministry of foreign affairs; but the functions of its agencies , will be divided and the whole dip- lomatic personnel will be serving as©— under | ing what she has already acquired. and collectively, are to be the ba shots in apportioning the quantiti — Such an arrangement certainly | of paper? We do not know ju - seems to involve a curtailment of | what they will consider the lea Ie power and loss of prestige for the’) jecessary uses to which newspril jy ministry of foreign affairs, and it j-< put, which in the minds of prat =H may.well be that this was at least tical people would be the guidir > a contributory factor in bringing: standard in limiting the supply. 14 about the resignation of Togo. It may be that they will work ¢ the principle of 2 general slash cige a pro rata basis, of fhe paper su] |) plied to all newspapers, irrespe |§ five of their size or the soci 4 ‘ groups or circles in whose intere j they are published and circulate. — If this is the method of rationix” paper, it will work an unnecessat | hardship on a large number { people in both countries, publishe and readers alike. if There are 18,000 newspapers pu § lished in the U.S. and 1500 in Car & ada. Many of these are sme country sheets. Others publishe by labor or trade union bodies a) today devoted to the all-importaz task of increasing production. St” others are devoted to technic: § scientific and religious purpose And then there are ‘the pulp § which are just plain trash. To make a pro rata cut on H§& supply to all these papers would 1} neither just mor calcuiated to cr tribute in the fullest measure i* winning the war. Trees the control of the new Ministry. ) WERE is evidence that Japan’s exploitation of her conquests) has not yet achieved satisfactory results. One obstacle has been the difficulty of supplying engineers, technicians, and scientific experts to replace the Europeans* driven out of colonial areas in southeast Asia. Continued guerrilla warfare in many areas, coupled with passive resistance or active sabotage on the part of the native populations, is also proving a handicap to Japan- ese efforts to restore these areas to their pre-war productivity. The fact that Tani himself was one of the original advocates of the “Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere” policy further supports the theory that his appointment, plus the creation of this new ministry under Aoki, indicates that Japan plans an intensive effort to con- solidate her political control over the conquered areas, expand their economic production and attempt to win over the native population to an acceptance of Japanese IGURES published by the ae domination: i federal forestry departme™ While there is every reason tO show that all the trees off te expect further offensive action by Japan on any one of several fronts in the event that Hitler achieves a substantial success in Europe, it may be assumed that she also feels it necessary to prepare for the possibility that she may be forced to relinquish all ideas of further conquest for the time being and concentrate on holding and defend- acres of timberland are used up” make the paper for one Sundi edition of one New York new paper. That much paper wot enable The People to publish © larged editions every week for t next 40 years. Anniversary! [Ese week Italian fascism WwW | ‘celebrating’ the 20th annive Fighting Soviet Railwaymen sary of the ‘march on Reme- My solini’s part in that alleged mar from Milan to Rome was pe formed in a Wagon-Lit, the Ce tral European equivalent of a Pr OVIET railwaymen on the Kuibyshev-Astrakhan line, haul- man sleeper. His dupes hoofed ing supplies to be used by the defenders of Stalingrad, have | adopted new tactics for dealing fascist planes appear, the railwaymen immediately uncouple the cars, and the German bombers have to score a direct hit on each car to disable the entire lines near the trained by the Railwaymen's Union to clear wreckage off the track quickly and make repairs to damaged locomotives. The union is organizing special parachute repair erews, to be rushed by air to spots where traffic has been blocked by enemy bombing. The thousands of organized rail- way workers on lines behind the front are as much a part of the Red Army as riflemen or tank drivers. Although- working under direct military orders, they re- ceive a 30 percent bonus over their base pay in summer and a 40 per cent bonus in winter. Volunteer members of the Railwaymen’s Union also operate the famous ar- mored trains which have played such an important part in Soviet resistance. A few weeks ago an armored train constructed by workers on the Tomsk railway, working with- out pay after hours and on Sundays, finished its first six months of action at the front. This train is named Luninets, after Wikolai Lunin, champion Soviet engine driver, who is famous for develop- ing a system by which train crews make simple running repairs them- selves, cutting down the time loco- front have been® Ten years after that stage-ma aged invasion of the Italian eapit I was in Venice. There are th: . different kinds of policemen tht —ordinary city cops, Carbinieri a Mussolini’s Greenshirts, who ht down the political enemies of th: Duce. There were stickers on the ws_ of the buildings telling about ce. brations that had just taken ple to commemorate 10th anniverss” of this same march. The firewor: were all over when I got there, I saw none of it However, I met up with one Mussolini's own Greenshirt co who spotted me for a foreigner. told him I w8s from America a” his eyes brightened up. He want to know how it was in America he was hoping to go there soon told him the bitter truth about cc ditions under Hoover—that the were no jobs. That made him w and he whispered to me, “Italy ve bad too!” That was ten years ago. Tod: Italy that was “very bad too,” worse. The Italian people are reé ing the fruit of what the Arc bishop of Canterbury calls, ~ eruption of evil such as the wo: has not seen for centuries.” Br is bombs have destroyed what w pointed out to me ten years ago “the show place” of the fascis the Milan railway station—in 1 center of the place from wh Mussolini’s “triumphal march” |] gan. * with enemy air attacks. When | train. All railway workers on motives are idle in repair shops. Under enemy fire almost con- stantly for six months, the Luninets never had to return to the rear for repairs. In addition to tools and spare parts, the crew of the Lun- inets carried a reserve supply of ties and rails for repairing bombed sections of track. The engine driver developed great skill at very- ing his speed to baffle enemy bombers, and the train has never suffered a direct hit, Tomsk railwaymen follow closely the exploits of the Luninets, which are reported thoroughly in their union paper. On one occasion, to save the train, the engineer drove it over a bridge which had been badly damaged by bombs, reaching the other side as the bridge col- lapsed. One morning, just before dawn, the Luninets drove into a German-hela railway station, Gpened fire with all its guns and withdrew after destroying every enemy fire-point in one minute’s concentrated shelling: The firemen had fed the boilers with wet coal to prevent sparks from revealing the train’s approach. Railway stations near bridges which have been blown up at the approach of the enemy are called “end stations” by railwaymen.