THIRD INA
THREE PART SERIES

By RAY STEVENSON —

In 1943, after the Soviet Army had
Seized the initiative and was advancing
all along the front, Churchill came for-
ward with a strategy that called for an
invasion of Europe from the Mediterra-
Nean areas, through ‘‘the soft underbelly
of Europe’. Implicit in this plan was the
placing of a Western Allied Army in the

Centre of Europe, directly in the path of
the Soviet advance toward Berlin.

Plainly the coordination and syn-
chronization of war plans by the western
powers with the Soviet strategy, and
their advance into central Europe, was
Neither exactly straightforward nor sim-

ple, and carried within it the seeds of a

post-war attempt to isolate the Soviet
Union following its superhuman efforts
for victory over the Nazis. For its part,
the famous January, 1945 plea by
Churchill to Stalin, asking for an advance
in date of the planned Soviet spring of-
fensive, and the immediate positive re-
sponse of the Soviets, at considerable
Sacrifice to themselves, under lines the
scrupulous manner in which the Soviets
pod their commitments to total vic-

ry. :
But by this time, the military fate of the
Nazi forces was sealed. In the winter and
Spring of 1945, they were caught between
the gigantic pincers of the advancing and
Victorious Soviet armed forces, and a
Much smaller, but effective western al-
lied advance through France, Belgium,
Holland and into Germany itself. May 8,
1945 rang down the curtain on the Euro-
pean war.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

_.With its two partners, Germany and
Italy out of the war the resistance of
Japan to total defeat was merely a matter
of time, although one comment regarding
this is necessary. The final military ac-
tion of the war, the dropping of the
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, opened a new era of inter-
National diplomacy for the post-war
period, but it had at that time, August,
1945, no military objective or aim con-
nected with the war itself.

Madrid 1980

Last summer the federal government
established a Parliamentary Sub-Com-
Mittee on The Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe in Prepara-
tion for the Madrid Conference.’’ The
sub-committee published a small news-
Paper advertisement on July 19, 1980

seeking opinions from Canadians in the ©

form of written briefs on security and
Cooperation in Europe.

The sub-committee suggested in its
advertisement that the briefs should
focus on two main questions: (a) what
objectives should Canada pursue in such
fields as disarmament, human rights,
economic relations and human contacts?
(b) how well has the Final Act of the 1975
Helsinki Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe been imple-
mented so far?

* ae bd

For the uninitiated the Madrid Confer-
ence to be held in November of this year
is a meeting of the signatory countries to
the Final Act of the 1975 Helsinki Con-
ference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe. Those signatory countries in-
cluded all the European countries plus
the United States and Canada. The pur-
pose of the meeting (the second such
meeting since Helsinki) is to examine
how well the principles embodied in the
Final Act have been observed by the sig-
Natory states. ; ;

The Final Act is a 10-point declaration
of princivles worked out in conformity

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_ Peace greatest monument to

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The banners of the fascist army are turned to the ground before Lenin’s tomb in Moscow.

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Pe ak

By May of 1945, Hitler's hordes were defeated.

During June and July, 1945, the Far
Eastern Soviet Army had engaged and
smashed the sole remaining land army of
the Japanese, the Kwantung Army,
through the Pacific and- throughout
southeastern Asia the U.S. Navy and the
allied forces of the area, including Au-
stralian, British and U.S. troops had
broken all offensive capacity of the
Japanese military. In fact, before the
dropping of the bombs, Hirohito and the
Japanese High Command had put out
‘‘peace feelers’’ obviously to salvage
what they could from the debacle. But
Truman and the. U.S. High Command,
acting unilaterally, dropped the bomb
anyway. _.

The excuse given that ‘‘it would save
American lives’, was a hardly credible
position in view of the desperate military
situation confronting the Japanese. It
was clearly a show of U.S. nuclear mus-
cle, designed to intimidate friend and foe
alike in the post-war period.

On the celebration of the thirty-fifth
anniversary of the massive victory over

Marxism-Leninism

with the principles of the Charter of the
United Nations and international law.
They accord with the principles of peace-
ful co-existence between states with
differing social systems. The Final Act
covers: sovereign equality, respect for
the rights inherent in sovereignty,
refraining from the threat or the use of.
force, inviolability of frontiers, territorial
integrity of states, peaceful settlement of
disputes, non-intervention in the internal
affairs of other countries, respect for
human rights and fundamental freedoms
including freedom of thought, consci-
ence, religion or belief, equal rights and
self-determinattion of peoples, coopera-—
tion between states, fulfillment in good
faith of obligations under international
law.
* * *

As can be seen from the above sum-
mary of principles the Helsinki Final Act
covers a good deal of important ground
which the sub-committee’s advertise-
ment invites Canadians to comment on.
To pose such a question to the average
citizen mocks all reason. How can ordi-
nary Canadians be expected to voice a
reasonable opinion when they have
never seen, let alone studied, the Final
Act? In fact, they were actually deprived
access to this historic document by the
then Government of Canada in deliber-

the forces of Nazism and Fascism, the
Second World War, replete with its un-
paralleled death and destruction, it is to
be remembered that it was a turning
point of immense and_ historic im-
portance in the affairs of the human fam-
ily.

What is fallacious is the widely trum-
peted idea in the western world, and in
particular in North America that victory
was primarily. the result of western im-
perialist actions. The truth is the re-
verse. It was the encompassing and un-
conquerable actions of the peoples of
the first land of socialism, the Soviet
Union, who not only bore the brunt and
the most terrible cost of that un-
precedented war, but won the decisive
strategic contest with the Nazi monster.
The price they paid more than equalled
all other sacrifices made by all other
peoples. The Western imperialist pow-
ers’ role was wavering, hesitant, and in
the end, vastly inferior of the role of the
Soviet Union.

The opening of the new era of dip-

in Today’s World

ate violation of a solemn obligation to
make the text available to Canadians.

The signatory countries in signing the
Final Act undertook that the text of the
Final Act “‘will be published by each par-
ticipating state, which will disseminate it
and make it known as widely as possi-
ble.’’ Unfortunately for the average
Canadian the government failed to take
the necessary steps to ensure that the
text would be made known in Canada as
‘widely as possible’’. It only published
3,500 copies in all. Of this number 3,000
copies were made available to the Min-
istry of External Affairs for internal use
and by its embassies abroad. The re-
maining 500 were retailed through
Government of Canada bookstores at $2
a copy. And, as far as we can ascertain,
not one leading newspaper or periodical
published the complete text, or even a
significant part of it.

* * * ;

The parliamentary sub-committee’s
advertisement drew special attention
also to those Canadians concerned with
‘‘human rights in eastern Europe’’. One
can well wonder why only in eastern
Europe? Surely the Final Act is applica-

ble to all of the signatory countries in- -

cluding Canada. We are of the opinion,
that singling out of “human rights in

By ALFRED DEWHURST

victims

lomatic and military history by the use
of the nuclear weapon, has in a military
sense shifted the parameters of military
science and the concepts of total war
and mass destruction.

To illustrate the point, if by the use of
so-called ‘‘conventional weapons”’ and
military technology of. the Second
World War, more than fifty million
died and destruction which cannot be
estimated done today, under the Damo-
cles Sword of nuclear weapons, neatly
stored in their silos and already targeted
on the great-cities of the world, the po-
tential human carnage and destruction
defies precise definition. To send the
ICBMs, and the various land and sea-
based nuclear missiles whistling
through space to the already targeted
centres of population could destroy our
world-as we know it.

But that is not all. The insane U.S.
and NATO escalation of an arms race in
both the nuclear war capacity and in the
so-called conventional arms, just as
Werner said in 1939, is today exerting
‘‘terrible pressure on foreign policy, and
forcing it in the direction of war’’. That
we believe to be incontrovertible.

But another factor exists today that
did not exist in 1939, a worldwide con-
sciousness and a worldwide movement
of the peoples everywhere for peace, for
disarmament, for national liberation, for
détente and for the right to live.

It is this immense, creative and grow-
ing spirit that leads to actions by peoples
everywhere that will in the end destroy
the arsenals of destruction, together
with the obscene Nazi doctrines of **to-
tal war’’, so that a state of creative
labor, peace and future security will be
ushered into our world.

There is truly no alternative for hu-
manity.

Ray Stevenson, of Canada, is serving
as a member of the secretariat of the
World Peace Council, Helsinki. He
served, during World War II, as the
Chief Information and Educational Of-
ficer of the Canadian Armored Corps.
The present article first appeared in New
Perspectives, the journal of the World
Peace. Council.

eastern Europe’’ is but an invitation to
those rabid anti-Soviet, anti-socialist
elements in Canada to participate in a
spate of anti-Sovietism under the guise of
a parliamentary review. This suggests a
continuation of the shameful action of
parliament, which by unanimous vote of
all parties in the House passed a motion :
of censure against the Soviet Union for
arresting certain individual citizens who
undertook actions contrary to Soviet
law.

- We can only judge such an invitation
as an incitement for gross interference
into the affairs of a fellow co-signer of the
Final Act with Canada. Such behavior
can only be seen as a hostile act by the
receiving country on the eve of the
follow-up Madrid meeting.

So much for the consultative process
followed by the parliamentary sub-
committee.

Canadians would be much better
served if Canada goes to the Madrid Con-
ference with the aim of searching out
ways and means of improving relations
between the participating states; con-
solidating security and cooperation in _
Europe; defending peace and detente
beginning with winning agreement that
NATO should not deploy U.S. medium-
range nuclear missiles in western Euro-
pean countries; to take steps to end the
arms race and to establish parity as the
basis of an international accord on ways
to disarmament.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCT. 31, 1980—Page 9