GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Manhattan shows how Vatican

operates in

Marxist Book. Fair

set for November

A MARXIST Book Fair and
Literature Institute will be held
at Pender Auditorium November
18, 19 and 20, devoted to the
theme “The half-century mark
and the future of Canada.”

The affair will open Friday |

evening, November 18, with a
showing of a progressive film
and the reading of two papers
en Canadian imperialism and
Canadian foreign policy.

Saturday afternoon the book-
fair will hold the spotlight, and
in the evening a concert program
will be presented.

Papers on the growth of mon-
opoly in B.C., tasks facing labor
in 1950, and new trends in Can-
adian cultural development will
be presented during the final
sessions Sunday.

BOX OFFICE DECLINE

~ Hollywood
feels pinch

“THE GREATEST films could
come from Hollywood if the men
in ‘control will not be frightened.
We need men of courage in high
places who will not be intimidated

Ar coerced into making only ‘safe’
pictures—pictures devoid of any
ideas whatsoever. .. . You can't
say the public wasn’t ready years -
ago. It was. The time is always
ripe for quality films. Mediocrity
in pictures can be traced direct-
ly to the fact that many produc-
tion executives are trying to play
it safe. As Samuel Goldwyn has
said, ‘The screen should have the
same freedom as the theater.
The only ‘code’ neceSsary is one
néeded .to control those who
would get out anything to make

 @ buck’.”

The words are by William Wy-
ler—the man who directed The
Little Foxes and The Best Ye®rs
6f Our Lives among others —»
whose The Heiress has just gone
_ into release—and whois now

_ preparing screenplays on Sidney
Kingsley’s: play, Detective Story,
Theodore Dreiser’s novel Sister
Carrie, and Thomas Wolfe’s Look
Homeward, Angel. :

“Story needs are desperate and
the selection of subject matter
is the crucial key of the picture
business, Good story material
has not been plentiful in recen&
months. We will do all we can
to obtain the proper material
for our forthcoming production
purposes.” a
: The words are by Darryl Zan-

uck who made Gentiemen’s

Agreement and is preparing No

Way Out—but who also was re-
sponsible, on the other side of the
sealé, for The Iron Curtain, and

Pinky— and, in the middle, The

Snake Pit. , ;

~The men who have something
to say about what goes before

the cameras are worried at the

public’s current lack of interest
in boy meets girl and in man
hits man—and its patronizing,
more. and more, the intelligent
foreign films. The contradiction
between the monopolists’ desire
to poison the public mind—and the
‘@eclining box office—is starting
«to catch up with the picture

‘ i> es

CURRENT FILMS —

world politics

AN EXCELLENT BOOK, factual and quite detailed, and

coming in specially good stead at this time when the Vatican is deeper
in world politics as a key prop of reaction than at any other time
in its history—this is how I would describe The Vatican in World
Politics, by Avro Manhattan (Gaer Associates).

The author,*born in Italy and
now living in, Britain, does not
in any way deal with the Cath-
olic Church as a faith and a
religious system, except to the
extent that dogma is distorted
to serve the’ ends of preventing
social progress.

The book has 20 chapters.
Some of the material has been
presented before, and some of
it appears for the first time. But
none of the facts about the
hierarchy have even been com-
piled, to my knowledge, in such

‘a coordinated manner.

One. of the chapters, for ex-
ample, deals with the organiza-
tion of the Vatican State, an-
other with the various - religious
orders it controls, such as the
Company of Jesus, with its vows
of blind obedience, and the Com-
pany of St. Paul, which has the
main function of fighting prog-
ress in the field of education.

But most interesting are the
ten chapters that deal with the
role ~of the hierarchy in the
politics of 11 different nations,
as well as in all of Latin
America.

In the chapter on Germany,
Manhattan shows’ the _ back-
ground of the present pope as
a special expert on that coun-
try, dating back to 1917, when
Pope Benedict XV was deeply
concerned that Germany. would
lose the war ard socialism
emerge aS a result. :
“The young priest named
genio Pacelli, then sent to
many for negotiations with
ticians, went back later to
country as Cardinal Pacelli,
the function of Papal . Nuncio.
Manhattan ‘shows that during
this whole period the Vatican
supported actively the parties of
reaction, and finally backed
Hitler. —

Dr. Heinrich Bruening, one of
the Vatican’s. key figures in Ger-
man politics and chancellor of
Germany in the early thirties,
called upon the people to vote
for Hitler in 1933.

‘In Italy, Pope Pius XI, who
assumed his office in 1922, did
everything he could to further
fascism. He said on many oc-
easions he considered Benito

Eu-
Ger-
poli-
that

{

Hollywood brings classic

with

Mussolini as a
Providence.”
* * *

MANHATTAN’S treatment of
the Vatican's activity in the
United States is very illuminat-
ing.

He explains that the church

is adapting itself to the demo-
cratic traditions of this country
on the surface, while actually
working to overthrow them. As
an example, he cites a quotation
from the magazine America, the
Jesuit publication, of May 17,
1941:
_”° “How we Catholics have loath-
ed and despised this. . . civiliza-
tion which is now called democ-
racy. ... Today American Cath-
olics are being asked to shed
their blood for that particular
kind .of .secularist civilization
which they have heroically re-
pudiated for four centuries.”

He also points out how, by
the use of red-baiting, the hier-
archy is trying to win the sup-
port of Protestant groups for
its political activities aimed at
making it the leader of a united
crusade for fascism.

Unfortunately, the author has
‘failed to show that this move
is meeting with only limited suc-
cess. Many Protestant church
leaders have expressed their con-
cern over the Catholic hier-
archy’s growing influence in
public life.

: na * *

THE’ AUTHOR has by no
means exhausted the subject of
his book. To record the Vatican’s
sinister role
would take a large staff with
plenty of money, and the results
of their labors would fill many
library shelves. Still, this book
is packed with enough facts to
help people to a better under-
standing of such maneuverings
as those engaged in by Joseph
Cardinal Mindszenty, convicted
of treason in Hungary.

Progressives should make sure
this book finds wide circulation
among Catholic people, many of
whom are
‘doubt whether the political ac-
tivities of their church officials
are in line with the faith they
preach. —G.L. :

“man sent by

x

to level of soap opera

HOLLYWOOD'S Yankee dollars continue to produce screen

week out.

- drivel which Canadian movie patrons are subjected to week in and _
For\every foreign picture like Paison, which was worth

standing in line to see, the once-a-week film fan has to sit through
a dozen movies of the low caliber of The Girl from Jones Beach,
Manhandled, Forever Amber and Don’t Trust Your Husband.
Currently showing is an alleged screen translation of Flaubert’s
great novel, Madame Bovary. Hollywood transforms a_ penetrating
analysis of bourgeois values into something close to soap-opera.
__ Another highly touted Yankee production, Come to the Stable,
in which two nuns battle worldly odds to establish a children’s hos-
pital, is merely a continuation of the Going My Way glorifications
of the Catholic Church. Both the design and the effect here is to

*** Champion. .
**Not Wanted, Sorrowful
with Father. peed teats

’

~ gloss over the reaction and corruption of that wealthy institution.

Jones, The Rope, Dear.Ruth, Life

Madame Bovary, I Was A Male War Bride, The Girl from

Jones Beach, Roadhouse, Alias Nick Beal, Christopher Columbus.

!

in world affairs

already beginning to.

;

- political obscene strips |

and other obscene literature long sought by school boards, —

‘now departed -feminine lead. Similarly, Wunder depicts the.

~ the ‘‘cold war.’ Like the movies, they exert a mass influence.

‘COLD WAR’ IN THE COMICS

Why not action against

THE HOUSE.OF COMMONS has given second read-
ing to a bill to make publishers, distributors atid sellers of crime
comics subject to prosecution under the Criminal Code. The —
bill will remain before a committee of the House as a whole
until the provinces agree on the form of the amendment, and
Justice Minister Stuart Garson has promised to bring the bill
back for final reading before the end of this session.

The government’s commitment indicates that it is finally |
prepared to take the action against publishers of crime comics

gt

Parent-Teacher and other organizations. But no action is con- 4
templated against the politically obscene newspaper comics,
designed in the U.S., whose destructive influence reaches into
every Canadian home.

Steve Canyon, Milton Caniff’s caricature of a democratic.
young American, will continue to act out the line of the U.S.
state department in Cdnadian daily papers from Vancouver —
to Halifax. Like the state department itself, Caniff—through —
Canyon—refuses to recognize the~Chinese People’s Republic.
The People’s armies are stil] the “‘rebels,’’ the demoralized
Kuomintang mercenaries the real patriots. And, still adhering
to the real-life pattem of the U.S. state department, Caniff
finds his ‘democratic’ heroes among an assorted gang of cut-
throats, adventurers and organizers of an anti-popular inter-
ventiog posing as newspapermen and businessmen, with a suc-
cession of curvaceous women providing the Hollywood romance.

This is the plot, with the political design superimposed, that
Caniff used in his old strip, Terry and the Pirates, which he
abandoned to start the Steve Canyon strip. For a time George
Wunder tried to continue Terry and the Pirates in the original
Chinese setting which was at once too realistic for political com-

. STEVE CANYON—

FEMAL
SMITH IN THE DRAGONFLY

WF” OUT OF THIS HOUSE!
ct ORGANIZATION !

HIS EXCELLENCY, OUR

COMMANDER, WOULP

PUT IT TO USE ASA
HEADQUARTERS!

fort and too remote from the new political reality. The cor ~
ruption, intrigue and piracy portrayed were inseparable from:
the Chiang Kai-shek regime and therefore too faithful a pic-
ture for those readers who related the strip to the occasional.
disclosure of Kuomintang corruption.

Now Wunder has followed Caniff into the lower depths
of U.S. state department policy and Terry and the Pirates has
become a pictorial version of the news columns—the only dif-
ference being that on the news pages fiction 1s presented as
“sews” while on the comic page the same “news” is presented
as fiction.

Thréugh their strips, both Caniff and Wunder are reviving ©
the old canards of the front pages. So Caniff presents the
Chinese “‘rebels’—the People’s armies whose strict discipline —
and exemplary conduct are noted even in front page dispatches
—as abusing and torturing the captured Summer Smith, his

leaders of a national liberation movement in Indo-China as

schemers contemptuously using the people's rebellion to attaim

power for themselves. eer see
* : gin * - x:

LIKE THE movies, the comics, which for better or worse

are part of the cultural pattérn of the U.S., Canada and the

Latin American countries, are being bent to the purposes of

, A few, like Al Capp’s Lil Abner, Chic Young’s Blondie. —
Gasoline Alley, Major Hoople, Out Our Way and Archie
retain the satire and humor of their purpose, The majority _
have gone far afield into the realms of fantasy and crime oF —
have become counterparts of the radio soap operas.
Orphan Annie, the smug little brat who sounds like the
Chambers of Commerce, has been voicing Harold: Gray’s crude
propaganda for years, but her windy soliloquies and homesput
harangues were never so insidious as thé super-poison of Super
man, the comic strip embodiment of American fascist ideas.
Against the “cold war’ propaganda of the newspape!
comics, with their baneful influence upon Canadian culture an
progress, St. Laurent’s “cold war’’ government proposes to take
no action. are a multi-million dollar business, part
the ‘freedom of the press” to spread war propaganda
incite hatred. But organized protest, by striking at the circu-
lation on which they depend, can force withdrawal of the
most vicious of them, just as public opinion, by its influence 0? —
the box office, has struck at the “cold war” films. — - a
ig _ —HAL GRIFFIN. ¥
at ae

= ‘

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 28, 149 — PAGE ©