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GUIDE TO GOOD READING—1

Dean is modern Marco Polo
telling China's real wonders

THE DEAN of Canterbury is
a new Marco Polo telling the won-
ders of China, not “fabulous, but
real and modern wonders.

In China‘s New Creative Age
(obtainable in Vancouver at
the People’s Cooperative Book-
store, 337 West Pender Street,
price $1.29, paper cover, $2.06
cloth ‘cover, -including — tax)
he relates matters greater than
any Marco Polo had to tell. He
ventures to prophesy that his de-
seriptions will take but a few
years to verify and not the cen-
turies which passed before Marco
was upheld.

Assisted by the drawings and
maps contributed by his wife,
Dr. Johnson gives a lively ac-
count, based on his own recent
travels of what China is like to-
day.

The new schools; the new
plays; how the railways work;
the future of oil in China; the
nosition of the Christian Church:
farm warfare: science for the
peante—he brings them all in.

He introduces ns fo the lead-
are af tha Chinaca nennle—Chou
Frat Che Toh, Pane Teh-hnai
and Maa Teaching. Wa tealle ne
hau Fhae Tank ond talk and what
thoiv Tivac have hean,

He discusses the great plans
ef the Peovle’s government to
end for ever flood and famine.
He takes us alone to the great
Hitai River vroiect, vioneer of
schemes to harness China’s vast
destructive waters to the drive
for her neonle for prosveritv.

His remarks are illuminated
by shrewd common sense, -sup-

ported by his own observations, |

extracts from his wife’s diary,
and by conversations he had
while in China.

Take the chapter on the Chris-
tian Church in China. This in-

DEAN OF CANTERBURY

cludes conversations with Bishop

Tsen, the doyen of the Anglican ©

Chinese bishops, who visited Brit-
ain in 1948; letters from other
bishops; statements of the Chris-
tian Reform Movement and its
leaders; and much besides.

GUIDE TO GOOD READING—2

All this gives an excellent and
authoritative picture of the Chris-
tian Churches in China.

Here is an account far more
weighty than the vaporings of
some disgruntled missionary who
never liked the ordinary Chinese
anyway, and therefore gets such

publicity in the United States

and Britain.

To help his readers, Dr. John-
son adds an appendix of state-
ments to Roman Catholic and
other Churches on U.S. germ war-

‘fare against China.

The Dean’s visit to China last
year was not the first. Thus he
has the great advantage,. both
to his readers and himself, of
being able to compare new China
with the state’ of affairs in the
old.

For him the new mines and
factories, houses and irrigation
schemes are important, but what

transcends them all is the trans-
formation of the Chinese people.

The roots of the. old corrup-
tion Have been destroyed and
now the Chinese people are
“learning to live together” and
to help each other.

Here is “a new morality,” he
concludes, which outweighs all
other factors and lies at the root
of all China’s great successes—
a new attitude to criticism, wel-
coming it and learning from it;
to children; to work, to others.

—ARTHUR CLEGG.

Dalton’s first volume reveals
Labor government's betrayal

HUGH DALTON, son of a can-
on at Windsor, educated at Eton
and Cambridge, is a large man
with a loud voice and an easy
manner.

The manner is useful to others
besides this former cabinet min-
ister in Clement Attlee’s Labor
government. For it reveals much
that has happened behind the

political scenes, much that might .

be obscured by a man with less
aplomb and more caution.

Consider the first volume of
his memoirs, Call Back Yester-
day. It contains in its rather
formless bulk a great deal of
salutary interest to those millions
who, full of hope, send Dalton
and others of his stamp in the
British Labor party to the House
of Commons.

Dalton tells us that in May
1930 he recorded a. talk wtih
Tom Johnston, a fellow member
of Ramsay MacDonald’s govern-
ment. They discussed “the con-
fused pattern of committees —
some not meeting for months at
a time—which were supposed to
be studying, or preparing to

_Teach decisions on, unemploy-

ment and connected problems.”
Johnston said:

“If the (Labor) party meet-

ing only got to know of a few

things like this they’d all be

climbing. up the walls. .. .”

This remark applied not only
to the left wing in the party
of that time, but also to “the
Soberest trade unionists.”

Dalton shows how it was that
the Parliamentary Labor party
had got into this state.

The party leaders had, in fact,
long ago abandoned Labor’s So-
cialist policy and its traditional
democratic principles. MacDon-

ald dearly loved a lord and a
lady:

“He loved being flattered,

made a fuss of, run after by

_ the polite and considerate rich.

‘Ah, Mr. MacDonald, if they

were all like you!’ he liked to

hear them say.”

If MacDonald loved a lord he
worshipped a king. The late
Arthur Henderson at least had
no illusions about these things:

“Uncle (Arthur Henderson)
told me .. . that the Palate
and the P.M. -(MatDonald)
seem to be echoing one an-

other. .. . To me alone he said _

that he knows he’s unpopular

at the Palace, but that doesn’t

worry him. J. R. M. (MacDon-
ald), no doubt, is disowning
him behind his back.”

It was not surprising that Mac-
Donald was running to King
George V behind the back of his
colleagues. He had already giv-
en way to the King’s Tory poli-
tics. It was only through Hen-
derson’s determination that the
Labor party’s policy of recogniz-
ing the USSR was carried out.

- * +

THE GREAT problem that
wrecked the second Labor gov-
ernment was unemployment, Yet
to a Socialist that was no prob-
lem at all. Socialism—if applied
—does abolish unemployment.

MacDonald and his friends
would not apply socialism. Some
—including MacDonald himself—
did not understand it. Some,
like Philip Snowden, did not be-
lieve in it. _Some, like J. H.
Thomas, neither understood nor
believed.

But they were the government.
They had to do something. But
they did nothing—except wliat

they were told by their ruling-
class mentors and, eventually, by
the bankers of Wall Street.

Reading through Dalton’s chap-
ter an the end of the second
Labor government, one may trace
the process of decadence, de-
moralization, and disintegration.

One may judge. too. how great
was the influence of the Court.
the permanent officials and the
capitalist “experts” imported by
MacDonald.

MacDonald set up an economic
advisory council. But he would
listen to no one but Hubert
Henderson, an economist who

“explained so clearly and with
such insinuating charm, that
nothing any member of the

Labor party ever proposed

would: do any good.”

Dalton comments: “There was
a terrible and growing defeat-
ism . . . about the possibility of
reducing the number of the un-

- employed.”

It followed that Snowden was
“eager to reduce unemployment
benefit”—a piece of almost un-
believable treachery — rather
than apply the Labor movement’s
program.

It all happened 20 years ago
and more. Dalton promises to

write two more volumes. Will -

he be as frank about the period
from 1945? S

Or must we wait for someone
else to give us the inside story
of the greatest betrayal of all —
to the U.S. warmongers?

To study this book (and reflect
on the course and development
of the CCF in this country) is to
be warned. To act on the warning
is the greatest of political good
sense.—MICHAEL MacALPIN.

A section of the huge crowd that heard Paul Robeson at

-the Peace Arch last year.

AT PEACE ARCH, AUGUST 16

Expect still larger crowd
at second Rabeson rally

THE SECOND Paul Robeson
concert at the Peace Arch on
August 16 is expected to draw
even greater crowds than last
year’s historic rally, atcording

_to officers of the International
Union of Mine, Mill and
Smelter Workers, sponsoring
the international event.

Mine-Mill secretary-treasur-
er Les Walker said this week
that the union will ¢harter
scores of buses to help trans-
port the tens of thousands of
Vancouver and Lower Main-
land citizens who will want to
attend the Robeson concert.
Last year the traffic jam was

so great that car drivers were
forced to park their cars
miles this side of we Peace
Arch. :
A campaign to double last
year’s participation from the
U.S. side was launched in Se
attle last week by the U.S:
Friends of the Robeson Peace
Arch Concert. The U.S. com
mittee is functioning in a suP”
porting role to Mine-Mill in
Bice

A record album of the 1952.
Peace Arch concert, “I Camé
to Sing,” was recently release
by Mine-Mill and has had
tremendous sale in B.C. ;

Oe
ene ’

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 24, 1953 — ?:

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