SHEILA LYND INTERVIEWS MONICA FELTON Women of Indonesia will cast first votes in national election LONDON i Indonesia holds a general election this monih, the wo- men will be voting for the first time. The Indonesian women’s move- ment has been working for the past year and a half to make sure that all women use their votes. Monica Felton, the British novelist, who attended their wo- men’s congress as an honored, guest, told me on her return to London recently how much dis- cussion centred round the gen- eral election there, and the eager- ness with which the delegates looked forward to their first vote. One woman got up and asked at the congress: “What would happen if I had a baby the day before the election?” The plat- form told her: “Your friends would have to try and get you to the polling booth.” One can hardly imagine such a dialogue at any women’s meeting in Britain, but the same feeling was probably there in 1918 when . women over 30 first got the vote. Describing the women’s con- gress, Monica Felton said: “It was held in a sort of Nissen hut with seating for about 1,200 people, and it was crammed with women from all parts of the country, in their brilliant, lovely costumes— orange, lime, green, yellow, pink, blue and white.” Against walls banked with gladioli and chrysanthemums, with gilded arum lilies and silver palm leaves, they looked like a scene from some magnificently mounted ballet. Beside the conference hall, the movement had organized a creche for delegates to leave their babies in. Here babies lay chuckling on big mattresses on the ground, and at intervals their mothers were summoned from the plat- form to give them a drink, or be- eause “Mrs. So-and-So’s baby is crying.” At brief intervals the proceed- ings were stopped for a few min- utes while iced drinks, coffee, tea, and strange, exquisite little snacks made of rice and wrapped in banana leaves were passed along the rows. ce * * * The women of Indonesia have always been most terribly op- pressed; sometimes married off as young as eight years old, and beginning an endless round of work and childbearing in their early’ teens. Monica Felton stayed in a house where the young woman who looked after her told her she was married at 16 but had “only sev- en children.’ Laughing, she told ‘Monica: “My husband says to me ‘Ne, you are not beautiful, but I love you just the same’.” - But others find husbands ruth- less tyrants ,and the marriage jaws, and the demands of women for the establishment of mono- gamy by law came in for a lot of discussion at the congress. “Poverty is pretty grim in Djarkarta,” said Monica Felton. “Tt is rather horrifying to see the women washing their clothes and their rice in the muddy water of the river that runs through the town and fetching in the same water to drink. “And many of the women spoke about the misery of life in the countryside, where parents are forced to sell their daughters and where unemployment and prosti- tution go hand in hand on the big estates — still in the hands of Duich and other foreign com- panies. Ree tar ae Yet, in spite of everything, the- women’s movement in Indonesia is growing fast—from 6,000 mem- bers in 1952 to nearly 75,000 members in 1954, and among its leaders Monica ‘Felton met wo- men of every kind. Among them were heroines of the resistance to the Japanese, leaders of the Christian and the Moslem communities, ministers, and teachers from the villages. One of these, who led resist- ance to the Dutch and to the Jap- anese, told her how she was dis- ‘missed from her job as a village teacher in the thirties because she told the children: “The books show elephants like elephants, the Dutch like ladies and gentle- men, and the Indonesians like servants. But we can also be ladies and gentlemen...” When the Dutch organised a massacre of nationalists in Cele- bes in 1947, people were lined up outside her garden wall, told to dance, and then machine-gunned. Their bodies were “left lying about for dogs to eat.” The little teacher went off to the commander of an Australian unit there, and asked him to pro- tect them, and “be their elder -brothe:.” The Australian was finally per- suaded to have photographs of the massacre taken, and to send them abroad. Such protests pre- vented further massacres. Women like this, filled. with a burning determination not to be slaves any more, to win equal rights, and to use them, will be using their votes this September to help create a People’s Indo- nesia. ? wives of | Awarded prize Former Toronto professor, Dr. Leopold Infeld, now of the Uni- versity of Warsaw, has been awarded a4 state prize by Poland for his outstanding contributions ta theoretical physics. | Nen-Parcisan about the right things in the Appeal from Guiana JANET JAGAN, general sec- retary, People’s Progressive Party, 7% Wellington Streei:, Georgetown, British Guiana: We would be grateful if you could publish a letter in your paper appealing to reader; to send us any ‘spare books, papers or pamphlets which they may no longer have any use fox. a library of progressive literature, as such books are few in this colony. Reap There is.only one public lib- rary in Georgetown and one in New Amsterdam in the whole of British Guiana, and they have but a small number of books: of. the conven:ional type. There are many keen young people here anxious to read and learn. We do the best we can, but one of our handicaps is liter- . ature. (Another handicap is money to buy the books.) Where's he to put it? CITIZEN, Vancouver, 8.C.: You can always depend on our aldermen to go wrong way. -~ Their solution for the parking BILL KASHTAN’S LABOR COMMENT Trade unions should in lifting cold war ] WAS very pleased to read that Gordon Cushing, secretary- treasurer of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, has expressed himself in favor of an exchange of labor delegations ‘be- tween our country and the Soviet Union. He said: “I think a trade union delegation to the Soviet Union would do a lot of good. They could send one here too. ling would be good for both of us. Instead of us getting a lot of propaganda about the Soviet Union we would see for our- selves.” 3 This is a sound position which The buffalo have come back Interming- . I am sure will be widely welcom- _ ed. Is it too much to hope that Cushing expressed not only his own personal views but the con- sidered opinion of the entire TLC leadership? In that case nothing should now stand in the way of the TLC undertaking an immedi- ate exchange of delegations. This holds true for the CCL as well. Such an exchange on the broad- est possible basis would have an eleccrifying effect. It would do much towards breaking down the artificial barriers brought into being by the cold war, replace mistrust and suspicion by peace Within the sanctuary of Wood Buffalo Park, those 17,000 square miles embraces huge ranges of natural grazing land, the vanishing buffalo has made an impressive come- back. Sixty years ago senseless slaughter had reduned the wood buffalo to a mere 300 survivors. 1 Now the herd ,actuall buffalo, has grown to 20,000. y a cross betweeen the plains buffalo and the wood PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 9 1959 — We are trying io build. - be overlooked _ solution sent in a : problem is to increase parking meter fees from five to ten cents as if that provides any , more space. a Now they’re out to solve a litter problem, and how do — go about it? By providing t ceptacles for litter at every © corner? Oh no, nothing 5°" ple as that. Se ; ; _ They’ve appointed a litter ce soller who is going to edu 4 us not to throw litter © streets. What’s : “educate” us to do ys. bs ter? ..Carry it atounds ee pockets or purse? He’s per ing a pretty hopeless task ¥ ~ expects to do that. — ae Let’s have the street ceptacles first, as they do 127 cities. Then the antilicter ©” paign will have some polit Thanks for donations — C.Z., Vancouver, $10; F.D. ue oe rentc, $7; Friend, vo ‘ W.S. Vancouver, $8; J-Ru ~ per Mountain, $2; Jel one Mission, $4; L., Vancouver’ x R.T., Calgary, Alta., $17 P.Ew aft couver, $2; R.M.M., Mission" ; $.C.J., Ladner, 40c; aoe and friendship 1 oe lead in one dizection— a wo establishment of trade UY" iy ty on a world scale, 4 eee ole is so sorely needed by the © ers. everywhere. move” In this. way the labor ment can play an aE é in helping to realize ‘* promise of Geneva and 0¢ ours those reactionary warlik eir PE who have not given UP ety s spective of inevitable W4 = Of course, there is Ene press pe bility that Cushing on id 20! : ed his own views. J > iden! ; that. preside Claude Jodoin took 4”. position at the TLC W: uel vention, expressing ft as being strongly oppo ing-a Canadian trad gation to the May Day nt 0 ase The CCL leadershi f similar attivde. In fa¢ ed 3 “Millard vehemently oPPO*" gw. local to last yeaz’s tion which called for of-a trade union delee* 4 tive council to un ‘change of such ae r uickly as possidic- | : ater why shouldn't Sth make direct oon ee i their respective : e Soviet Union and ae exchanges on an indus nod Let Canadian trac? the ficers and workers 89 7 nc viet.Union and see for > how the workers baat ing role they play 12 bul socialist society, union officials and W** here and see how ana ers live, study thelt F socle relation to a capitalis Above all, len cold war curtain 4 ds hand of peace and fle? each othex.