THE PEOPLE

Published every Wednesday by The People Publishing Co., Room 104, Shelly Building,

119 West Pender Street, Vancouver, B.C. Telephone: MArine 6929.

EpITor
MANAGING EDITOR .....----..-2---2---.--
BusINEss MANAGER -- Epna SHEARD

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Al Chought for
Christmas

to believe it is Christmas in the fourth year

of the war. On the surface things seem to have

changed so little, and yet they have changed
so much. The people throng the streets as they have
in other years, only now many are in uniform. The
stores perhaps are not so brightly lit and the neon
signs are dark, a reminder that our shores are not
beyond the reach of the enemy. But the stores still
have goods to sell, even if some things are no longer
obtainable. There is a fuel shortage. Butter and
sugar, tea and coffee are rationed, but there will be
no real lack of food this Christmas—not for us.

The war has touched us, reordering our lives,
drawing us closer together in bonds of common
struggle even while separating thousands of fam-
ilies from their menfolk with our armies overseas,
but for the fact that it has not burst in its full fury
upon us we can express our gratitude to the Soviet
people.

Lew out of our office window, it is hard

*

ILLIONS of Russian soldiers will spend this

Christmas at the battlefront, amid the glorious
ruins of Stalingrad that last Christmas were the
homes of its citizens. They will spend it in the moun-
tains and the forests, on the winterswept steppes,
fighting and dying, while behind the lines other
millions of Soviet workers maintain the tempo of
production. And in North Africa, in China and
Burma ,in New Guinea and the Solomons, British
and Fighting French, American and Chinese soldiers
will find no truce in the fighting because it is Christ-
mas and Christmas is traditionally a day of peace.
They know, and we know, that there can be no peace
with the enemy except the peace that will come only
through the utter destruction of fascism.

For millions in the occupied countries of Europe,
Christmas will be only a hollow mockery, but it will
also be a day of hope that the hour of liberation is
not far off. And for the German fascists, feasting
at tables set with the plundered foods of Europe’s
oppressed peoples, not all the boasts of victory will
serve to conceal from the brutal masters of the
“master race” the grim specter of defeat which this
Christmas will haunt their debaucheries.

; *

if IS customary at this time for the editors to
wish their readers a merry Christmas, and we
sincerely hope that for our readers it will be. But
this is no ordinary Christmas. Our gratitude that
we are enabled to spend it in the traditional way
only because millions are dying in the struggle to
preserve their liberties and ours must be tempered
by our determination that production shall not suf-
fer while we celebrate. The only way in which we
ean ensure continuation of our rights and tradi-
tions that the ruthless hand of the enemy will other-
wise destroy is to be back on the job right after the
holiday, determined that old production records
shall be broken and new records set, determined
that we shall spare no effort to make the coming
year our year of victory.

‘abandoned by Rommel

Winter Brings Dismay

To Axis A\rmies

By ILYA EHRENBURG

MOSCOW.

HE Frankfurtr Zeitung’s war correspondent reports, “The
men of our Edelweiss division saw action in France and

the Balkans, but never have they encountered such diffi-
culties as in the Caucasus.” The Russian winter has now been

added to “diabolical Bolshevik cunning.”

A winter in the

mountains is much worse than a winter on the steppe. But
the Germans on the Don think that there is nothing worse

than the steppe.

The remnants of Rommel’s “in-
vincible’ army are running as
fast as they can across the Libyan

desert. The Italian divisions
a stragegle
along the desert asking “Where
can we surrender?”

Hitler has lost his bases at Al-
giers and Morocco; he is losing
Tunis, and the French “elder,”
Darlan, has proved himself an
old and experienced rat. As soon
as he saw the Vichy ship going
down he was the first to abandon

it and declare himself a war
prisoner.
The Germans were compelled

to invade unoccupied France,
for they cannot trust Petain’s
lackeys. The German communi-

ques are like a comic-strip, with
Hitler preferring to be silent on
Stalingrad and proudly announc-
ing that his cutthroats have occu-
pied Vichy. He will require no
small number of divisions to hold
southern France, but his army has
already been thinned out at Stal-
ingrad.

‘The Man Fits The Hour

po 1891 in Moscow of a Jewish family, Ilya Ehrenburg
himself says, “I grew up in a Russian city, Russian is
my native language and I am a Russian writer. Like every
Russian, I am now defending my native land, but the Nazis
haye brought to my mind another thing: my mother’s name
was Hannah; I am a Jew and I am proud of the fact.” At 50
years he is the Soviet Union’s foremost war correspondent
and a most prolific and varied author, whose writings form
a link between Russia and the west, between the days before
the revolution and the new Soviet life, between the last war

and this war.

As a young twenty-year-old he
began his literary career as an
“advanced” poet, publishing be-
tween 1911 and i922 several vol-
umes of poetry, all modernistic
and showing the influence of dif-
ferent schools. He also began
early those mordant sketches of
things seen and experienced in
travel, a sort of political interpre-
tative journalism, nowadays called

“reportage.”
The war of i914 found him a
sophisticated resident in Paris.

During that war he seryed as a
reporter in Macedonia, on the
Salonika front, and on the Wesi-
ern front in France. Some of the
most vivid sketches he later
gathered together in a volume
(published in 1921) “The Face of
War.”

¢ ° °
i fy 1917 he returned to the new
Russia, where he remained

throughout the worst days of the
civil war. He was not immediately
a supporter of the Bolsheviks, but
by 1921 he had found his way
fully to support the revolution
and the Soviet power, and it was
as a supporter that he resumed
his residence abroad.

Thereafter he lived mostly in

Paris again, returning to the
Soviet Union for writers’ confer-
ences, and likewise taking a lead-
ing part at the International Con-
ference of Writers which, in Lon-
don and elsewhere, sought to
unite the leading literary figures
of western Europe against fas-

cism, in face of the growing
threat of a new war.
e ° e

ETURNING to USSR in 1941,

with the attack by Hitler he

has sprung to public attention

all over the world as the sharpest

and most able interpreter of his
country’s stand.

The irony, the satiric force, the
acid intelligence which, as a4
young man, dissipated itself to
some extent in cynicism, has at
this historic time proved a per-
fectly fitting weapon, -cutting
through the monstrous pret2=nces
of fascism as well as the hypocri-
cies which linger in circles among
the Allies.

Few in this country can read
without a blush his references to
the second front. Ehrenburg’s
forthrightness is a Soviet forth-
rightness. He has grown in
stature with his country. And
today the man fits the hour.

OR over 500 days the Red

Army has been repelling Hit-
ler’s combined forces. Russia
made it possible for America and
Britain to increase their output
and to accumulate their reserves.
Worth Africa is but a starting
point and the hour is nearing
when great battles will be fought.
Hitler’s army will never with-
stand the combined blows of the
coalitions and Hitler knows this
as does every German soldier,
even the most stupid of them.

Lance Corporal Johann Krauss
from Germany to Lance Corporal
Rudolph Nagel: “The winter does
not smack of victory here. In-
deed nothing smacks of victory
in Germany; Germany smacks of
carrion.”

Winter! What a terrible word
for the first German prisoners
taken by our scouts this winter.
Last fall the Germans dreamt of
being transferred to Africa. I

do not think the southern sun at-

tracts them that way now.
e

HE English Channel and the

Mediterranean still seperate
Hitler from our Allies. But
things have changed in Europe.
Hope fills the hearts of the peo-
ple tormented and thrice be-
trayed in France. Hrance has no
weapons, but France has mem-
ories of bygone days. And France
has courage.

Fighting France is preparing to
enter the Allied ranks, not as 42
lieutenant, but as an equal among
equals.

Despondency reigns in Rome.
The fascist officials are buying
up American currency and Mus-
solini thinks with horror of his
Bersagliers now pillaging the
Don villages. Who will defend
Sicily and Sardinia? he asks.

In Russia, from Murmansk to
Nalchik, the Germans repeat one
dreadful word—winter.

SHORT
JABS

by OV Bill

Rationing Agam

a rationing of newsprint is

still a matter of discussion.
Wo definite steps have yet been
taken at the time this is beimg
written, but the suddeness with
which butter has been rationed
after so many authoritative
statements that there would be no ~
rationing of butter for at least a |

year, makes it necessary to move |

fast to make sure that paper ra-

ob pans es At

tioning will not be discriminatory mak

against labor ana independent |
papers, both in Ganada and the
United States.

Already, the American News- -
paper Guild, through its president,
has warned its members and the
public that all the rationing pro-
posals so far made have 2 strong
flavor of self-interest. They, ail
of them, mean the elimination of
the smaller newspapers to the
advantage of the lords of the
press. That would be the ultimate
and certain effect of the proposed
flat percentage cut in newsprint
and as unjust as a flat percentage
levy on incomes.

It would also be the result Of
limiting the supply to the quan-
tity needed to fill the subseription
list of a year ago plus 20 percent
of that amount. Further, this
scheme would limit all possibility
of newspapers serving special
fields such as, labor, farmer,
technical, religious and other
groups from expanding to meet
the demands arising from chang-
ing opinions growing out of the
developments of the war itself,
changes which even the intellectu-
ally blind are forced to see.

Proot

HOS is proven in Britain where
paper rationing has been in
force for some time. The Daily
Worker, which had a daily cireu-
lation of 80,000 before the war is
limited to a supply of paper suf-
ficient for 75,000 copies and is
not allowed to print any more al-
though interest in fhe policies of
the paper have grown until the
publishers have orders for 500-
000. This is the result of being
rationed according to circulation.
On the other hand, papers like
the Daily Mail, which was openly
fascist when fascism was more
fashionable in Britain than it is
today, are still able to print by
the million. Although the paper is
smaller in size the political con-
tent is not reduced one iota. Such
papers are therefore able to
spread their politics as hereto-
fore.

The American Newspaper Guild
points out in its statement that
in all the proposals for rationing
paper, labor has not yet been con-
sulted. The labor press on this
continent comprises hundreds of
newspapers and magazines, every
one of which stands to suffer if
any of the present proposals are
adopted as a basis of rationing.
And some, or all, of them will,
if labor does not get busy.

Winning the war is not a job
for one section of the people of
the United Nations. The expres-
sion on how it is to be accom-
plished must not be leit to the
press which is: in the hands of
newspaper barons who see in
newsprint rationing an opportun-
ity for monopolizing advertising,
reducing their staffs and boosting
prices to their readers, as their
first objective, and the winning
of the war in the case of papers
like the Toronto Telegram and
the Chicago Tribune, as a second-
ary consideration.

Labor must raise its voice now?

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