Honorable Sirs:

By virtue of your lofty station
And awful power in the nation
As presidents of trusts and banks
And business’ partners of the Yanks *
And shareholders in corporations,
And by the power you ,possess
As owners of the daily press
And masters of the public purse _ .
(The people’s funds which you disburse),
Which makes you rulers of the nation,
I see you’ve written a decree

By which to take away from me

My citizen certification .. .

Since you decree this dissolution,
You will, of course, make restitution.
I hereby an account present”
To you, our country’s government,
Of what has been -my. contribution. .
You take my papers? Then return
The eager dream that in me burned
- When I set off across the, seas
In answer to this country’s pleas.
The CPR reached o’er the ocean
To lure me here . - .. (Somé of you are
Directors of the GRR. ton

My dream I claim for restoration.

No deal made we in those early days

So I will waive the int’rest due

And all the carrying charges too.

If my investment you will replace:
“Return my youth, restore the strength /
Which I so generously spent ~

In ardent, ceaseless, selfish toil

Since first I landed on this soil.
My back is bent and my head is a
So give me back my youth, my healt
(I spent them to create your wealth),
Since now you say that we part our ways.

In bush and swamp in the early west

I wrought a farm from the wilderness,
I cleared the land and built a home
And worked my fingers to the bone
(Later, it’s true I was. dispossessed,
But not because my ate al

\ ly harvest did not yield; a8
Ce said your Grain Exchange,
Low prices—I was nigh deranged! —
Your mortgage company did the rest . . )
Since you don’t recognize me more,
I deem it right that you restore
The farm I ‘cleared to the wilderness.

oy

t

wa

4

(No thought had I that we'd part .our ways),

- For my life’s work is entered here

~~ Will you make him live again for me?

A naturalized citizen ~
writes to the government

“By JOHN WEIR

If yours the strength, exalted sirs,

The mines I dug will you fill again?

The rails I laid will you take away?
The trees I felled will you replace?

And all I made will you erase

To square accounts since the day I came?
The months I walked without a job, °

The nights my children hungry® sobbed
Themselves to sleep \cause you decreed
That we had raised,'too much to eat. . .
(Was there ever “order” so insane!)

To put things back to where they were, |
Will you scarless make my heart again?

Will you bring me back my bright-eyed bride,
My love and the yoke-mate at my side?

She wore her strength out doing chores

For your fine, ladies, washing. floors . . .

(She was just past forty when she died.) ~

She knew no rest by night or day >

Until. death came—now, in her grave,

At last she can relax and there

Lie like a lady, without care. . .

Half of her life she sacrificed 5
(Her mother lived to eighty-five).

Will -you revive that martyred life—
Bring back my bride to my -lonely side?

My little lass (she was only three

When she took ill) please return to me..
Company doctors had no*time
«For “‘bohunk kids’? and so she died. . .
(You, 'sirs, have shares in that company! ):
And then—the apple of my eye,

My manly son, my joy and pride, :
Left for the war. Your letter said ©

He died a gallani soldier's death

To keep (you promised!) this country free...
Now that you say I have no rights

In this, the land for which he died,

*
No, gentlemen, no!. a ge
My pact was not with the wealthy few i
But with the country. You can’t undo
The ties that bind me to this land
(The ties you cannot understand —
For ‘‘buy and sell” is your “golden’” rule.)
My rights I would not trade away
Regardless what the price you’d pay

.

And that’s what makes my country dear
No matter what you may say or do.
My woes with joys were intertwined,
“You have not killed that dream of mine—.
Do what you will, it will still come true!

Giant excavators

‘walk’ to

canal site __

By RALPH PARKER

MOSCOW

WO electrically operated excavators, each weighing several hundred —
tons, “‘walked’’ twelve and a half miles over the Stalingrad steppe —

to their new job, a report from the

construction site of the Volga-Don

canal says. It took them three days and they “‘walked’’ day and
night. They were preceded by a telegraph man who cleared the

wires for their long tapering beans,
removed all obstacles so that their

evenly. They left behind them a

Scrapers filled in the ditches and
flat, ski-like “feet” could advance
track. where earth was pressed as

hard as concrete and of the color of burnished steel. The excavators
were accompanied by a mobile transformer linked with high-voltage

grid by cable.

\

At one stage. of the journey

they met a camel caravan. The

camels stopped dead in their tracks, eyed the enormous machines sus-

piciously and then moved on.
by searchlights.

During the night their path was lit
Further south the canal builders are being assisted ©

by experts from the Moscow Metro (underground railway) who are

driving four three and a half mile
the river Don. These are for irri
from the main Don canal.

long tunnels through the hills near
gating the arid steppes with water

——

By GEORGE BRIDGES

average expectation of life in
Egypt is 27 years.

y

process began nearly 50 years ago
with loans to Egypt. .

Between 1864 and 1873 British

ANYONE who thinks the British
‘A should stay in Egypt in the
teeth of the burning desire of
every Egyptian to turn them out
Should meet Abdul.

_ Abdul lives in one of the most
fertile stretches of land in the
World, the Nile delta. He works —

hard and Yong to get the most
Cut of his land.
_ Yet he lives in a squalid mud
‘hut, is illiterate, more than half-
Starved and has probably the
lowest, standard of living of any
Peasant or landworker in the
World. : ‘

The Egyptian climate is one of
the héalthiest. Yet Abdul has
bilharzia, a worm disease, which
Will evenually kill, him.

‘If he didn’t have bilharzia, the
Chances are that like nine out of
ten Egyptians he’d have hook-
Worm, dysentery, pellagra, tuber-
Culosis or an eye disease.

At 30, Abdul is an old man. In

few years he will dead. The

.

During’ the Second World War

something like a million British

troops who passed through Egypt
did meet Abdul or Egyptians like
him. They were horrified and
angry at what they saw and at
the men responsible for this state
of. affairs. j
‘ " ‘
They expressed something 0.
this anger in 1945. AS a Com-
munist candidate at mock elec-
tions in Alexandria before the
British general election of that
year, I spoke to at least 10,000
troops. \ he

In HMS Prometheus there was

-a 90 percent vote for the united

kers’ ndidate, 85 percent

ct the RAF ‘station, Aboukir, 93

percent at an Army signals unit.

It was a vote as much in anger

at the misery of the fellaheen as

a desire for the change from
Toryism in Britain. ;

® : ‘ :
British Tories created Abdul’s

misery ‘for their own profit. ‘The

. financiers lent Egypt $250 million:

at heavy interest rates. About
$100 million of this money never
even reached Egypt. London

men’s commissions and expenses

took that.

The money Egypt did get was
nearly all paid at once to British
contractors, who made huge pro-
_fits on jobs like the harbor works
at Alexandria, which were need-
ed for the further exploitation
of the country. +

‘By 1876 {Egypt was paying
Britain in interest $30 million a
year out of a total revenue of
$50 million on a total debt of

$400 million. Peasants were bled |

white to pay the foreign bond-

holders,.and they have bled white ~

ever since,

When a nationalist government
seized power in 1881, the Glad-
stone government sent “warships
to bombard Alexandria and safe-

guard the bondholders’ interests.

Joseph Chamberlain, then
president of the Board of Trade,
announced: : \

‘As soon as order is restored,
we will withdraw.” -There have
been British troops in Bgypt
ever since. Pe

Later, British control was ex-
tended to the Sudan and a “Con-
dominium” was set up. Britain
ruled the Sudan and took the
profits while Egypt was gracious-
ly permitted to foot the bill.

There were vast pickings for
foreign speculators and finan-
ciers.. The Egyptian people, who
produced this wealth, were driven
steadily nearer to starvation.
@ é t :
Today the Egyptian death rate
is the highest in the world. In
1942 one out Of every five Egyp-
tian babies died in infancy.

Of the four million families
living on the land, :three million -
own less than one acre or no
land on ee : ,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE —

‘he highest death rate in the ‘world

~In 1947 the average income was
‘about 20 cents a day.

‘Now the Egyptian people want
to clear out of ‘their country
the British troops who garrison
the country on behalf of the
bondholders and financiers. They
have forced Nahas Pasha’ to re-
pudiate the treaty he signed with
Britain in 1936. one

If they succeed in clearing for-
eign troops out of Egypt it will.
not immediately mean prosperity
and long life for Abdul and his
compatriots. They do not gup-
pose it will. ‘

But it will clear the decks for
the next fight—against the pas-
has, protected by foreign powers,
who live in ostentatious luxury
on the peasants’ work, and
against their debauched king,
Farouk. ;

Occupied Egypt. and the Con-
dominium of the Sudan are crea-
tions of 19th-century Toryism.
They have no place in the world
today. shes zz

NOVEMBER 16, 1951 — PAGE 5