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Night Is Ended

A Poet Sings Of The People

NIGHT IS ENDED—By J. S. (Joe) Wallace—Contemporary Publishers—$1.50.

F THE internment of a number of Canadian anti-fascists in Hull Jail, Quebec, served no
other good purpose than to give to Canadian working men and women the lyrical poems

of Joe Wallace, it was time well spen
That is not the all-important thing. T

t. Joe has been writing poems for over twenty years.
he main thing is that Joe has been writing poems

about the lives, the struggles, the sacrifices, the deathless hopes and aspirations of the com-

mon people.

Joe’s poems are living, pulsating creations,

tomize live.

Wight Is Ended is a truly great
Contribution to Canadian litera-
ture, and J. S. Wallace a great
proletarian poet, taking his right-
ful place with Ralph Chaplin,
Joe Hill and other proletarian
poets, who give to their day and
generation the songs of victory.

e

DON’T know if every. working

man and woman knows J. 5S.
Wallace, but I do know that
their understanding and cultural
heritage would be greatly en-
riched if they did. I mentioned
at the beginning that Joe had
been writing poems for over
twenty years.

Today the greatest battle for
freedom against Nazi slavery is
being fought out on a dozen
battiefronts and upon every
ocean and sea for progressive en-
lightment against dark barbarity
and reaction; for civilization
against fascist savagery. Today
we salute our great Soviet allies
in the heroic and stupendous
battles and sacrifice they have
sustained against German fascism.

In his “Five-Point Star,” Joe
Wallace saluted this great ally of
the world’s common people in

1922
“Russia, salute: Not to your
lands,
But to your deathless working
class
Who broke the spears of all
the Tsars
Upon their breasts, that we
might pass.”

Im the mighty drama of a peo-
ple’s war Russia again breaks
the spears of Hitler's murderous
savage hordes, that we, the com-
mon people of the United Wa-
tions, may pass to victory and
freedom.

The “Five Point Star’ received
meritorious recognition in a num-
ber of countries — but very little
in our own country, bearing out
the old adage, that a poet, like a
prophet, is often without honor
in his own country. _

When you read Night Is Ended
it will be readily agreed that the
fault certainly does not lie with
the author. This proletarian poet
saw the October Revolution of
1917, not as an incident in social
experiment, but as a turning point
in human destiny, writing the
word freedom in letters of fire
from the flaming torches of Len-
jngrad, Moscow, Sevastopol, Stal-
ingrad, and hundreds of other
points, twenty-five years later.

e
De YOU remember Sacco and
Vanzetti? Joe Wallace did
because
“J prought them forth with my
deepest pains,

I nourished them from my

dearest veins.

I cradled them with my sweet-

est breath,

And I walked with them as

they went to death.”
and,
“J mastered sorrow,
despair,

When they died for a dream

they would never share.”

as they

There have been other working-
class poets who have paid a tri-
bute to the names of Sacco and
Vanzetti in their lyrics, but none
more poignantly beautiful than
J. S. Wallace. But this rebel poet
does mot conclude there. Ever
beyond the sacrifice he sees the
objective:

“Then, O, my stricken,
Splendid ones,

Your shall rise to the music of
a million suns,

For 2 million suns shall your

story praise,

In the golden glory

coming days.”

my

of the

We could not liberate Sacco and
Vanzetti, but we can and will
liberate the millions of Saccos
and WVanzettis stricken under the
bloody jackboot of Italian fascism,
and poets like J. S. Wallace will
strengthen our resolve to finish
the job.

Aes is a devout Catholic. He is

also a Communist. This might
puzzle many who choose to argue
that these divergent philosophies
cannot be reconciled, I shall not

debate the point. I can only reply _

that Night Is Ended is perhaps
the best answer to the above con-
tention.

While sitting in solitary con-
finement (a frequent occurance
with Joe, as with all rebels against
stupidity clothed “in authority),
Joe estimated the scope of
heaven — not the heaven of text-
books but the heaven of conscious-
ness.

And being a living active participant in these struggles, sacrifices and hopes,
destined to live as long as the struggles they epi-

‘My prison window is not large,
Five inches high, six inches
wide,
Perhaps seven.
Yet it is large enough to show
The whole unfettered to and fro
Of heaven. How high, how
wide, is heaven?
Five inches high, six inches
wide,
Perhaps seven.

Here is compressed the phil-
osophy of the hard materialist,
sitting on a hard bed, pondering
a hard question, applying the
hard rule of experience, and ar-
riving at a conclusion very hard
to argue against.

e

J S. WALLACE’S poems on

* Spain are exquisitively beauti-
ful. They portray the unstinted
sacrifice of the men of the Inter-
national Brigades, the men who
came from many lands to stem the
Nazi tide, that, with the aid of
the Munichites and “Non-Inter-
ventionists” finally overwhelmed
democratic Spain. They speak of
the Canadian heroes of the Mac-
kenzie-Papineau Battalion whose
blood watered the olive fields of
Spain, who sleep their last sleep
on the wind-swept slopes of the
Guadalajaras, at Jarama, Teruel,
and on the Ebro.

Of these men this proletarian
poet says:

‘He plunged his hands into his
pockets
And swept them clean;
For a people he had not known,
In a land that he had not seen.

Spending his substance alli—

To the last unstinte? cent.

Then, eager for other ways,

We gathered and gave his

days.”

“Somewhere in Spain he lies
And calls on us with the dumb

lips of sacrifice.”

When Joe Wallace writes of
Spain he tears at the heart-strings
ef those who remember. That is
why Night Is Ended should be
if your book shelf — that you may
not forget, and not forgetting,
take up the torch from those, who:

“With our young lives washed

the vine

Of Liberty. Drink deep, it is

divine.

And while you find the vintage

thus and thus,

Remember us.

That drink, we shall not share,

Remember us.

That day we shail not see,

Remember wus.

98

ARS SIT in jail is not a pleasant

experience, even in the “best”
jails. But to sit in jail for a just
cause has more compensations
than penalties. The justness of
you cause irks so-called consti-
tuted authority., When they turn
the lock they almost apologize
for doing so, and seek refuge in
the old saw of “duty.”

But when you sing — with ani-
mation, feeling, deep determina-
tion, the songs of a new world, a
new human society, well, that
just about drives the brass-hat
brigade into its dugouts.

- “Wake, the Vision splendid
Flames, for Night is ended,
Rise and march
Thro’ Freedom’s arch
To name and fame unended.
March in mighty millions pour-

ing

Forges flaring, cannons roar-

ing, ;

Life and Death in final warring

Call you, Workingmen.

This is Night Is Ended. It is
the song of Hull, Quebec, the song
into which J. S. Wallace poured
all the fire of his rebellious pro-
letarian soul, the song the Cana-
dian anti-fascists sung, a song as
sacred as a hymn — for it is a
hymn of freedom and hope, em-
bodying the vision of a victory
and a new world from which every
vestige of Nazi tyranny and dark-
ness has been swept. It is a song
that will live when we, who sung
it in comradeship and in tribute
to its author, will be less than a
memory.

Perhaps side by side with |
song, Wight Is Ended, si#®
“Plame of the Future.” TE}
a song of youth marching toy @
the future, carrying the  —
traditions of early Can |
struggle for democracy and ~
dom from the Family Con
of 1837. ; i

Ben Swankey and Mitchie @
in Hull jail worked hard t7¥
“Blame of the Future” to rik
as stirring as the lyric. yy

When you sing this song, ”
the stake you have in Can @
victory in mind, you will not <
on its merits. In it is emb:
the spirit of unity and deteri,
ton of the Canadian people tc ge
through to final victory. :

Ss a

HE last poem in Nigh?
Ended is a fitting repl —
those who laboriously infer —
the Communists are “not iff
ested in Canada but only in
sia,’ that their loyalty is t
foreign power,’ and so on. 3

“Q Lovely Land” is a son—
Canada, a song that gives B
expression to the thoughts, F®
and aspirations of every he
decent, and loyal Canadian.
it is written by a Communist
only adds to its lustre, and ;
antees the realization of the
it symbolizes.

“Q Canada, OQ promised I

This is the dream our fati

planned, .

And tho the rich have ravir {

you, i

We swear to make this dr &

come true.” me

Perhaps there are a min
of voices in our country v
would grate on its stanzas,
the common people of farm
factory, and in the fighting f
of our country can and will
it with genuine enthusiasnt
it breathes of the Canada of
dreams.

e
JOE WALLACE has not

“discovered.” But with j
cation of Night Is Ended
Wallace has been recognize
a Canadian workingeclass poel
has made a lasting contrib
to Ganadian literature. His
ings in The Worker and
Daily Clarion were well-knoy :
many Canadian readers.
poems are not so well-kr
Wow that they have been coll
in Night Is Ended, they wil
doubtedly win a wide audier

—Tom McE™

{

Moscow Discussing Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Dov

YMPTOMATIC of the tre-
mendous interest of the
Soviet reading public in Am-
erican authors and _ their
works is the discussion that
has developed around the re-
view of Steinbeck’s The Moon
Is Down, published recently
in Pravda.

Steinbeck is one of the most
popular American authors among
Soviet Russians and his Grapes
of Wrath, which like most Rus-
sian translations was published
first in the Russian edition of
International Literature, and then
in book form, is particularly pop-
ular.

The Moon Is Down is reviewed
by N. Sergeyeva who gives ex-
ecerpts from the book and cites
the lively discussion it evoked in
the American papers.

“The character of the critical
remarks made by American writ-
ers with regard to this boolx re-
flects the exacting demands of
American readers on works dedi-
cated to the struggle against
Hitlerism,”’ she writes,

She points out that some critics

reproached Steinbeck for depict-
ing a group of occupation officers
in too indifferent a manner, but
adds that despite their outward
“politeness” the MHitlerites are
still portrayed as the brutes they
are, In this connection too she
emphasizes that Steinbeck does
not write as an eyewitness of the
German occupation, :

“The discussion that has arisen
around Steinbeck's book has re-
flected the political sentiment of
the American intelligentsia and
the healthy .feeling of hatred for
the enemy,” she concludes. “In
a book about the war against
Hitierism the American reader
wants the Hitlerites to be depict-
ed as hateful characters; the
same implacable and undivided
and boundless hatred as one
which so skillfully and with such
dramatic effect has been depicted
by Steinbeck in describing the
struggle of the people against
the invaders.”

.)
HE Soviet people are manag-
ing to keep abreast of all the
major literary events in Britain
and the United States. Today

the Soviet reading public is in-
terested chiefly in books that re-
flect the life of their allies in
wartime and their strugele
against the common enemy.

Enemy Sighted by the Ameri-
can writer, Alec Hudson, at-
tracted considerable attention in
Moscow after being published in
International
scheduled to
form.

Clare Booth’s anti-fascist play,
Margin For Error, has been
adapted for the stage by Leonid
Lench and produced by the Len
Soviet Theatre in Moscow. :

Extremely well received was
Robert Greenwood’s Mr. Bunting
In Peace And War, which ran
serially in International Litera-
ture and is also being published
in book form.

Eyewitness accounts by Ameri-
cans of how the Hitlerites have
turned Germany into a land of
medieval barbarism are of tre-
mendous interest and Through
Embassy Eyes, by Martha Dodd,
and Ambassador Dodd's Diary,
created quite a sensation here.
William Shirer’s Berlin Diary is
now being translated.

appear in book

Literature. It is.

T would be a mistake to

that the war has decrease
terest in the English_and Ai
can classics. On the cont!
the state literary publishing Fr
published a number of then
the _press in new translat
among them Romeo And J
and the Canterbury Tales.

A volume of English songs
ballads translated by the
known Soviet poet, Samuel
shak, is already out and com
even This Is The House
Jack Built which sounds wor
ful in Russian.

Gorneus Chukoysky has
ished a translation of his fr
edition of Walt Whitman
taining prose, poetry and f
lar verse on the death of
coln for the first time in :
sian translation.

Of the collections and ant
gies scheduled for public
mention should be made of
Anthology of the 20th Cer
American Short Stories, a2 ¢
tion of Anglo-American ht
including Mark Twain, O. H
Jerome J. Jerome and oth