Page Four

THE PEOPLE

THE PEOPLE

Published every Wednesday by The People Publishing Co., Room 104, Shelly Building,
119 Wrest Pender Street, Vancouver, B.C. Telephone: MArine 6929.

EpirorR Har GRIFFIN

Mawnacine Epiror Kay GREGORY
BusmNness MANAGER Epna SHEARD

Printed at Broadway Printers Limited, 151 East Sth Avenue, Vancouver, B.C.

African Offensive
W elcome Prelude
To Second Front

Wy CRD of the allied offensive in North Africa has come like
a clean invigorating wind to the people, sweeping away
the doubts and misgivings bred of inaction and suddenly re-
vealing the perspective of things to come.

What that perspective is has been outlined in statements
made during the past few days. It was outlined by Premier
Josef Stalin in his forthright declaration to the Soviet people
that the second front will come “sooner or later because it is
no less essential for our allies than for us. Our allies must
understand that after the fall of France, the absence of a second
front can mean catastrophe for them.” And it was underlined
by Stalingrad’s heroic defenders, without whose great sacrifices
the perspective would be dark and remete indeed, in their letter
to Stalin. “. . . The voice of our allies is reaching us from all
corners of the globe, expressing admiration for our resistance,”
they wrote. “Accepting this moral aid, we are sure that the
time is not far off when we shall hear of the opening of the
second front.”

In Canada, the perpective was outlined by Defense Min-
ister Ralston in a speech at Brockville, Ont., when he said:
“Canadians in that tough and heroic fighting at Dieppe marked
the first turn of the tide towards the offensive in Europe. Some
of the greatest battles of the war are still to be fought and
Canada will be in them.”

This is the severe perspective of sacrifice and struggle but
bright in the promise of victory, suddenly brought nearer by
the allied victory in Egypt and the invasion of North Africa.
This is the perspective of the second front, the prelude to open-
ing of the second front, but it is not itself the second front.
C IS unfortunate because of the effect on public morale that

a section of the press should have rushed eagerly into print
with the assertion that the second front has been established.

The Vancouver Sun, for instance, proclaims “Our Second
Front is Here,” and states that “the war has moved from Stalin-
grad,” while the Vancouver Province adds as its editorial
comment, “The United States and Great Britain were under
promise to Russia to establish a second front at the earliest
possible moment, and the promise has been redeemed.”

Such statements, seeking to represent the allied offensive in
North Africa as establishing rather than preceding the second
front, tend to weaken the enthusiasm generated among the
people by that offensive because the people know that the
second front must be opened in Europe. And they strengthen
the position of those obstructionists who exert their influence
against launching of an offensive on the Continent.

Sober reflection will show that the allied offensive in North
Africa, as a prelude to invasion of the Continent and as a con-
vincing demonstration of ability to plan and carry out large
offensive operations, accomplishes important tasks. It re-
moves the Axis threat of invasion and makes strategic bases
available to the allies. It frustrates Laval’s rumored intention
of moving his government to North Africa to escape his in-
creasing difficulties with the people he has betrayed and there
maintaining the fiction of neutrality. Finally, as Prime Minister
Winston Churchill himself pointed out in his speech this week,
it is designed “for one purpose and one purpose only, to gain
vantage ground from which to open a new front against Hitler
and Hitlerism.”

But sober reflection will also show that the main theater
of war is still the eastern front where Germany thas 240 di-
visions. Invasion of North Africa will not draw half those di-
visions from the Soviet battlefront. It will not provide the “real
aid” for which the defenders of Stalingrad are asking. Only an
invasion of Europe can accomplish that, and the necessity of
Jaunching this invasion is likely to become even more urgent by
reason of the political repercussions in France of the African
offensive.

|_aval Haunted By

Snell

By ILYA EHRENBURG
OSE: in the company of a newspaperman, I was dining ina

Paris restaurant, when in

sporting a snow-white tie and with the shifty eyes of a calloused
crook. “There is a smell of the kitchen here,” he blurted irrit-
ably and passed on into the next room.

“Wine-O-

My companion winked.
tasters never drink coffee,” he
said, “for fear of losing their sense
of smell. And Laval can’t stand
the odor of friend onions, for he
has to sniff all the time for the
smell of money.”

Great indeed is France’s tragedy,
The blood is streaming in Paris
and Lyons. The Germans are dese-
erating the relics of the conquered
nation. The children are starving
for lack of milk and bread, and a
crook with oily eyes, a crook with
a snow-white tie, sniffs the air —
he smells German marks.

Laval, ex-attorney for big cor-
porations, is a sworn broker in
shady deals. Now Laval is cover-
ing up the scores of these deals,
France is being sold out, the bal-
ance sheets are drawn up, the
dividends have been paid.

The Parisier Zeitung revealed the
very essence of Franco-German col-
laboration. The French concerns
“Air Liquid,” the “Rhone Jaulhan,”
the “Kuhlman” merged with the
German Farben industry. Their
production plan is, explosives for
Germany, a gravestone for France
and dividends paid in occupation
marks to the shareholders of the
above-mentioned concerns.

Everything can become a source
of profits, even the grief of a peo-
ple.

A year prior to the conquest of
France, the Kuhlman concern de-
rived profits of 47,000,000 francs,
but after the German occupation
its profits reached 66 millions. In
a similar way the German and
French chemical and aluminum in-
dustries also were “merged.” In
this manner the four biggest Paris
banks were converted into branches
of German banks.

Money

walked Pierre Laval, as usual,

HiE broker Laval is vigorously

sniffing, for day and night he
is haunted by the smell of thirty
pieces of silver.

The German Farbenindustrie is
demanding 6000 French workers.
But the workers stubbornly refuse
to go. And Pierre Laval turns peo-
ple’s tribune. He is exerting him-
self, pounding his bullet-pierced
breast with his fist, pointing to
the place where human beings have
a heart. He even sacrilegiously
shouts about France. He has tried
everything, but the French refuse
to go into slavery.

Frenchmen reply to Laval’s
sugary speeches by preventing the
trains from reaching the German
border, by bringing machines sud-
denly to a standstill. They reply
with bullets fired at night, with
grim silence.

Laval and his living signboard —
the half-dead Marshal — have se-
lected a modest name for France —
a “state.”’ There once existed the
French Kingdom, the French Em-
pire, the French Republic. Today
France is a corporation — “Society
Anonyme,’ with the bankrupt
Laval at its head.

The French people cherish free-
dom and independence. Two years
ago the French looked in the direc-
tion of the sea, awaiting favorable
weather. Today their faces are
stern. They look around to see
the unsightly Huns still trampling
French soil.

And they are urged on by the
desire to use anything, a knife, an

axe, their bare hands, their teeth,

to kill the accursed Boches! Soon
nothing will any longer be able to
restrain the flames which will burst
forth from human hearts to sweep
the whole of France.

Chinas Fighting Miners

By ISRAEL EPSTEIN

HE recent bombing by American planes of the Kailan coal
mines in eastern Hopei, which supply 65 per cent of the
coke used by Japan’s steel industry,
powerhouse and paralyzed production,
battle-tried miners, reports from North

of sabotage among the
China indicate.

—CHUNGKING

not only destroyed the
but started a new wave

The Hopei coal miners have &
long anti-Japanese tradition. In
1938, when the Japanese first oc-
cupied the area, the British owners
of the mines immediately signed
contracts turning over to the Jap-
anese army their entire coal out-
put, but 60,000 Chinese miners
walked out in a month-long patri-
otic strike.

When the enemy attempted vio-
lent suppression, the strike turned
into an armed revolt. Five thous-
and of the younger and stronger
workers, under union leaders, went
to the hills and formed six armed
detachments.

They quickly made contact with
the rising peasant guerrilla move-
ment in eastern Hopei, as well
as wit hadvance columns of the
famous Bighth Route Army, just
beginning to filter into the region
from the west.

Today these former miners are
the backbone of a stabilized
anti-Japanese base which lies on
both sides of the Tientsin-Shang-
hai ralway. Continued activities
of the miner-guerrillas have been
responsible for a sharp decline in
Japanese production in occupled
China. They derail coal trains,
blow up mine shafts and kill Jap-

anese supervisors.

This anti-Japanese militancy of
the former Kailan miners is para-
lleled by the famous anthracite
miners of Chingching, in Shansi
province.

Five years ago the workers in
Chingching, an important enemy
fuel base, fought an epic week-long
battle for possession of the shafts.
After killing the Japanese foremen
and engineers, they destroyed the
shafts and removed most of the
shop machinery to set up their own
arsenals in the neighboring moun-
tains. :

In Aug., 1940, when the Bighth
Route Army recaptured Ching-
ching, the miners helped the sol-
diers do a thorough job of wreck-
ing the mines, which the Japanese
had put back into production.

It is true that the American
planes this week did not drop
weapons and pledges of continued
solidarity with the Kailan miners,
which would have encouraged the
thousands of Chinese workers who
are only waiting for a chance to
rise apainst the Japanese. But it
is hoped here that political dyn-
amite, the most efficient of explo-
sives, will soon be added to the

- November 11, 19.

ie
LY
y
¥

SHORT
JABS |

by OV Bill

Anniversary i
es 25th anniversary of the mi jgrce
momentous event in hur if |

history, the birth of the | So Me |
Union, has just beeh commer jf
ated throughout the world. Tl jace
of us who remember that & joy
event and hailed it with joy also jp ih
member the reception of the n
about it by the world at large |

We have seen denunciation jf
placed by amazement at the acc ] %
plishments of the Soviet pec “|
amazement replaced by admira j=
and admiration by acclaim. And” is
number who admire and accl4 re.
the works of the Soviet Union j >
the Soviet leaders grows daily \ d |
also does the range of society f
which they come. ;

A waiter in a local club who il io
a poker face has many opport /f
ties to hear some of the big “ ‘

i
4

es
telling their troubles to each Ot
A few days ago he overheard
of them discussing the war. “W —_
said one of them, “Stalin will nt —
sit at the peace table.” “Doni
so sure about thet,” answered — F
younger and more intelligent lc
ing of the two, “my guess is tha
will be sitting at the head of

= .
Fish a
REW PEARSON of the P §

son-Allen team, whose coli §.
of Washington political life is sy _
cated to scores of American ni §
papers, is being sued for $250.00 ¥
Hamilton Fish of the House of!
resentatives for allegedly ca
him “a contemptible liar.”

Fish is one of the smelliest
in the long history of smelly {| ~
ticians at Washington. During
last twenty-five year he has
a most consistent opponent Ci —&
Soviet Union, slandering and ~ =
fying, from behind the shelte
Congressional immunity, every ©
fort of the Soviet people to t &
their socialist life.

He distributed tons of Nazi pe
written by Hitler, Goebbels
other scribbling Nazi gorillas
hope the jungle gorillas will pa .
me.) That the tie-up between
and his secretary was not
dental, is proven by the fact
Fish read a lot of this subve.,
pap into the Congressional Jo}
and then had it shipped all
the continent to sap the democ
spirit of the American people.

Fish was an associate of mar
the Nazi agents and Bundists 0
U.S., some of whom are no
prison and others of whom fle
Germany to vomit their poison
behind the protection of E
tanks. I don’t know much é
Pearson but in this case Tam ©
ing for Him. :

One Bottle!

EVERAL Scotsmen who |
spoken fo me are wonderi +
some quisling elements in the
ernment, having failed to exter
ate the Communists, are now
on exterminating the Scotch. C
for this wonderment — the re
rationing order limiting the
chase of Scotch whisky to one t
a day. '
The Scotties who spoke to
about this near-prohibition u
refuse to believe that Mack:
King, being Scotch himself
Presbyterian at that, could be
sponsible for this frontal attac
their long suffering race and
assured me that they firmly be
this rationing order must have
inated with some enemy of
kenzie King — Mitch Hep)
maybe.
Meantime the Scotsmen have
sympathy—limited to only

wy

i

weight of bombs.

bottle per day. :