Distortion

jat page news story carried by the CCF News last
Bes me of misrepresentation in a report carried by
/Press on the debate at Nanaimo two weeks ago.

Cameron, CCF MLA, who took the losing end of
‘with Harvey Murphy, LPP National Committee
|; running true to the accepted CCF formula, of
jatements and spending the following two or
is, either @ explaining that they did not mean to
jhey did say © that a wrong construction was put
j ey cannot deny saying © denying that they said
at all @ dissociating themselves from statements
; of their national leaders, and so on.

sneral public are familiar with these tactics, they.
jamous Calgary speech of Harold Winch, which
ynut months explaining; more recently, the abor-
pt of Arthur Turner, MLA, to deny statements
portunately for him, were recorded, for broadcast:
Sameron denies statements made in the heat of
| period following a debate.

=» will be little doubt in the minds of his audience,
fed through his tirade of pro-strike, anti-unity
fa, that it is not the editor of the P.A. who is
j the truth in the report of the debate. :

fwheless, if at this late date, Colin Cameron will
§ lic statement urging all workers to resist provo-
itike action, to put war production first, and to
the “no-strike” pledge, I will be glad to offer
jology. Otherwise, I must assume that the state-
<in the heat of debate are the considered policy
F leadership and that Cameron’s denials are
Fittempt to confuse the issue by quibbling.

C. A. SAUNDERS, Editor.

SSs =

Repeat Job

Dear Sir:
I read in the Vancouver Sun
of February 6 the statement of

Mr. Coldwell re the defeat of

their candidate in the Grey
North riding where he said in
part (the program of the CCF
has been brought to thousands
of Canadians.” Could that be
the reason their candidate was
so soundly defeated in Grey
North. However, the cold hard
facts are they did a repeat job
in Grey North of what they ac-
complished -in Quebec when
they were instrumental in put-
ting Duplessis back in power.

In the now soon to come Do-
minion election it is to be hoped
they will find a lot more direc-
tors -of steel companies to run
as candidates for their party.
Directors of large steel com-
panies always have the inter-
ests of the workers at heart.

With the large advertisement
in the CGE News placed by the
BCER during the recent strike
of the street railway men in
Vancouver, Victoria and New
Westminster and steel \direc-
tors such as Vice-Marshal Har]
Godfrey, as a candidate that
in all probability insured the
defeat of Gen. McNaughton, I

agree with Mr. Coldwell that .

“the program of the CCE has
been brought to thousands of
Canadians.”

And Mr. Editor could the fol-
lowing apply to the CCF lead-
ership. It seems a taxi driver
shortly after the last Presi-
dential election mentioned the
fact that he and four members
of his family had voted for
Roosevelt. “That is good news,”
his passenger said, “I am a
Democrat myself.” “But” said
the taxi driver “I am not a
Democrat but 1 think a man
ought to do the right thine once
in a while, even if it goes
against his principle.”

: D. M. BARBOUR.

Forebodings

Dear Sin:

To a serviceman, the exhibi-
tion of narrow partisan politics
and the campaign of mudsling-
ing just concluded in the Grey
North by-election is greeted
with forebodings. At a time
when the forces of progress are
locked in the final phase of the
struggle against fascism, the

-all-or-nothing attitude of the

CCF, and the mudslinging re-
action of the tories leads to the
fear that while the war against
reaction is being won on the
fighting fronts, the struggle at
home is in jeopardy.
Servicemen, by the example
of the United Nations, recog-
nize the need for unity and co-
alition:. against reaction. Op-
portunism cannot defeat re-
action. The CCF is’ the Judas,
betraying the cause for which

* thousands of our comrades-in-

arms have already died. The
men of the armed services hope
that they come to their senses
and support the principles of

"unity against reaction before

they betray us completely and
deliver us into the hands of

tory reaction.
A SERVICEMAN.

Saturday, February 10, 1945 —- Page 5

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A Premature Obituary

Sons American papers have a great flare for the truth. They love

it So much they even manufacture it. Among them are papers like
the Hearst press, the papers published by the unspeakable MacCormick
and his anti-American buddies in New York and Washington. And
there are others.

A journal of that type on one occasion, reported in detail an ac-
count of the death of Mark Twain. That genial humorist and humanist
was engaged in a lecture tour of Europe at the time. A few days after
the notice of his dispatch appeared in print, he was speaking at Oxford
University. When the obituary was brought to his attention, he remarked
as grimly as the circumstances demanded, “This account of my death
iS grossly exaggerated.”

. I find myself constrained to make a somewhat similar statement
in this column today. A good friend of mine called to see me a few
days ago. I could see he had something on his mind. He had a ques-
tion to ask me but was diffident about putting it. He said it was very
personal and hoped I might not be offended.

i asked him point blank what his question was. Since it was so.
personal that he seemed afraid to come right out with it, I got the idea
he imagined I had got married or committed some other foolishness of
that kind. When it did come I was more amused than offended.

A friend of his had just told him that one of the CGF members who
passes for an intellectual or a poet or something of that sort had in-
formed him that I had resigned from the LPP because 1 did not agree
with or accept the present policy of that party. That Story is on a par
with the story of Mark Twain’s death. It is cut from the whole cloth.
In Mark’s case the story of his physical death was grossly exaggerated.
In my case, the story of my political death is grossly exaggerated. In
fact it is an absolute lie; and we meed not engage in any philosophical
quibbling about the meanings of the adjective, “absolute?. Short of
resorting to the unprintable but expressive language of some hook-
tenders and bosun’s mates I have known, that is the most fitting deserip-
tion of that particular lie.

For this’ is what quitting the LPP would mean to me, political death.
A few have quit our party, quit the Communist movement, and at-
tempted to justify that renegacy on the grounds that they disagreed
with the party line. I can \think of a couple off-hand. One suffered
from injured ego or wounded dignity. The other lacked the moral
stamina to handle other people’s money and stood between the alterna.
tives of being exposed as an embezzeler or doing the bidding of re-
action. He chose the latter course. Both are now politically, dead ones.

I do not ever expect to announce my political death any more than
‘Mark Twain could forestall the undertaker. But if that time should
ever come, the movement in British Columbia of which I am proud to
have been a part, although a small one, for more years than f like to
thing about, will not hear of it from some poetic dreamer out of his
element in the world of practical politics and the struggle against re-
action. I will not hire any CCF’er to make the funeral oration. I
will do it myself. I myself will admit the suicide.

However, there need be no fear on the part of any one whose
respect I value today, that such an untoward event is ever likely to occur,
unless it is made from the shelter of a cubicle in Hssondale.

The line or policy of the Communists, of the LPP in Canada today,
in the most portentous period in the history of the human race, is not
a hypothetical one. It is not built on suppositions, nor on conjecture,
either. It is not formulated by dream-inspired and poetic souls. It
is one based on the hard, materialistic experience of the inveterate strug-
gle between reaction and progress; between elements in society who
see their privilege of exploiting and robbing the vast majority of the
people slipping out of their grasp and that majority fighting to retain
the small measure of political rights that will ensure them the possibility
of future progressive development. It is based on a recognition of the
struggle for existence between classes and the ideas that grow out of
that struggle.

The tactics necessary for success in that struggle are incompre-
hensible to phrase-mongers who take the name of Marx in vain. To
them everyone not in their own miserly ranks is an enemy to be
destroyed, not a possible ally to be drawn into the struggle against
a common foe. Outside of their own corporals guard of a party, all
others belong to one reactionary mass.

They mouth phrases about Marx and Lenin, both of whom at times
adopted the same line aS the LPP lays down as necessary in Canada today.

During the war im the Crimea, a war against Russian Tsarist
absolutism and reaction, Marx accepted the whole British capitalist
class as allies and in 1918, Lenin was ‘not afraid he would soil his
revolutionary purity by making agreements with French imperial-
ism for the purpose of defeating German imperialism.

Nor is the policy of the LPP, a brilliant or a cockeyed theoretical
pipe-dream, a thesis for interminable and profitless discussion. Under
other names, in other countries, it has been successful in defeating
fascism, and it was the only policy that could be successful in accomp-
lishing: that purpose. =

Because the policy of Liberal-Labor coalition was pursued by the
French people, they are today ruling their own country, and are en-
gaged in rooting out their own native fascists. By another name but
the same policy, Tito succeeded in welding the Yugoslav people into
a force that drove the German invaders out of their land.

The same medicine that cured the fascist infection in these two
countries will be good medicine for Canada, for we are threatened with
Tory reaction which is just a short step from fascist reaction.

No, I have not quit the LPP, and since it is the only party in Canada —

that follows Marx and Lenin, I can see no reason even to consider such
a move.

But I am just lazy enough, I'd like to quit writing this column
but the editor (and the LPP) won’t let me.