}

ee ee eS Pe

The folly
of NATO

ie Labor - Progressive party’s
letter to the government, MPs
and leaders of opposition parties
is a timely and grave warning to
Canadians.

Since 1949, when the North At-
lantic Treaty Organization became
the basis of Canadian foreign poli-
‘cy it has been increasingly appar-
ent that NATO provides not
National safety for Canadians, but
National danger. The treaty robs
Canada of her right to independent
action in a war crisis, automatically

‘Ommits this country to war on the

demand of any other NATO coun-

‘tty (which under modern condi-

tions actually means the U.S.) and
Makes anti-Soviet war the basis of
Canadian foreign policy.

_ the situation is again illustrated
in Turkey. The reactionary regime
of that country is being used as a
atspaw by the U.S. to block the
Movements of national independ-
€nce in countries of the Middle
ast, notably now in Syria, and to
disrupt the friendship of these
Countries with the USSR, China
and other socialist states.

Turkey is a member of NATO.
Canada is committed, by treaty,
to supporting the Turkish reac-
tonaries. This country could be
Plunged into war, automatically, if
the Menederes government of

urkey or its boss, the U.S., in-
voked the treaty.

All of this is at a time when
Ong-distance nuclear war has sup-
€rseded conventional methods.

In 1922, the-British government
Sent a telegram to Canada asking
°r troops to fight Turkey in the
hanak area of the Dardanelles.

ackenzie King ( rejected Lloyd
€orge’s appeal. This was one of
the episodes which established the
~anadian independence of Britain
'n foreign policy.

The wheel has made a complete
turn. From dependence on Britain
We have come to dependence on
the reckless, adventurist, hopeless
US bankrupt NATO policy of the

It is time for another Canadian
€claration of independence.

“SSeeeecces

Pacific ko ne

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‘een

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1 a man mull i

im nara Ji

Review * EDITORIAL PAGE * Comment

EET EEE RNR

was

Res SS é

Combatting
the flu

i Bass is scarcely a country in
the world, our own included,
which hasn’t been affected by the
current flu epidemic in greater or
lesser degree. But measures taken
to combat it differ widely.

In the Soviet Union the flu epi-
demic has also hit hard in some
areas. As in our own country,
many schools have been closed;
but with this important difference:
parents are given the choice of
leaving their children in school
where they can receive expert medi-
cal and hospital care or of having
the. children at home under the
same medical supervision.

Priority for receiving anti-flu
vaccine is given to all adults whose
work brings them into contact with
large numbers of people. Large
quantities of anti-flu serum are
being produced and _ special gov-
ernment measures have been taken
to direct the work of all Soviet
laboratories in the study of the
flu virus. Moreover the entire
medical staff of the USSR is now
mobilized to fight the flu epidemic
as a top priority job. By contrast,
our efforts leave much to be de-

sired.

SNGReNe Ss famed town of Eton

in Buckinhamshire, as most
everyone knows, is where “higher
education” receives a very ex-
clusive polish, as befits the breed-
ing of a highly refined “gentle-
man.” Finesse, diplomacy, savor
faire, chivalry, cricket old boy,
and all that sort of bally rot you
know. To put it in a nutshell
Eton has a. “distinctive atmos-
phere” all its own, untarnished
through the centuries by plebian
odors or associations.

Now horror of horrors, Eton
is faced with a crisis, one in
which both town and county
council with lances poised at the
ready are battling like knights
of old.

It seems that an enterprising
young Etonian, steeped in the
spirit of Runnymede and Magna
Charta has applied for a license
to open a “Ye Olde Fyshe and
Chip Shoppe” in town. Well
girded for the fray, Eton’s coun-
terpart of Vancouver’s Snob Hill
have ‘mounted a pressure cam-
paign upon town and county
councils, encouraging these cus-
todians of Etonian “atmosphere”

to give out with a loud and em-
phatic “No.” Dash it all, they
say over a spot of tea, this ple-
bian delicasy of fish and chips
“would lower the tone of the
town ... and create undesirable
odors.”

Hence what has almost become
England’s national dish for the
“lower orders” over the auster-
ity years of high profits and low
wages will remain strictly taboo
in the select environs of Eton.
At the moment it appears dis-
aster has been averted and the
odorless “tone” of Eton kept
inviolate. God save the Queen!

Bos % es

Viewing Queen Elizabeth’s re-
cent ceremonial visit to Ottawa
on CBC-TV, it appeared to me,
and I am sure to thousands of
others, that most of the time the
Queen was a very bored and very
tired woman. Hedged in by
hordes of police, military and
publicity-seeking civilian brass,
all suffering from that dignified
disease known as “protocol”. and
trying to get as much political
and social “prestige” for them-
selves meantime, it is small won-
der that even to keep smiling
must be something of a chore
for a Queen.

Last week a reader left me a
page out of Weekend Magazine
featuring: Queen Elizabeth’s ear-
lier visit to Nigeria. A big bill-
board along the route of the royal
parade in Tonga carried this mes-
sage: “Over 4,000,000 cattle are

very happy about the Queen’s
visit.” On one corner of this
sign, surmounted by a steer’s
horns, is the slogan “Milk and
Meat” and on the other under a

similar horned crest, the slogan
“Hides and’! Manure.”

To some of us the whole mes-
sage might appear a bit humor-
ous. Doubtless our stuffed-shirt
profit hunters would think it an
atrocious greeting to a Queen.
To the common people of Nigeria
it expresses the basic things of
life; the hope that the visit of
a gracious Queen will preserve
the herds as a source of food,
an abundance of hides for Niger-
ian shelter and industry, and
plenty of manure to give life to
barren lands from which a peo-
ple in turn derive their living.
To the Nigerian peasant an abun-
dance of manure is much more
important than stuffed - shirt
“protocol” and he wants his
Queen to know it.

Were Queen Elizabeth permit-
ted to meet the real Canadians—
loggers, building workers, hard-
rock miners, fishermen, ship-
builders—to meet and chat with
their wives and families, the peo-
ple out of whose sweat and toil
the vast wealth of this great
land was and is created, bore-
dom would be banished, and with
it the need to force a smile to
satisfy the vanity and ambitions
of a class of bourgeois leeches
and Tory politicians.

October 25, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5