¢

&

Soviet Arctic explorer dead

A great Arctic explorer, Pyotr P. Shirshov, former Soviet minister for merchant shipping, died in
Moscow last week. Shirshov achieved world fame in 1937 as one of six Soviet scientists, led by Ad-
miral Ivan Papanin, who established a scientific station on a drifting icefloe in the North Polar regions.
After a journey of 800 miles lasting over nine months they were rescued by two Soviet icebreakers
The expedition established the possibility of regular flights over
the North Pole. Shirshov is shown at extreme right in ee photo, taken in 1937.

OCULISTS TOUR REMOTE DISTRICTS ~

lwhen the floe began to break up.

Czechoslovakia's mobile clinics

fit eyeglasses free of charge

NUMEROUS SPECIAL health
institutions have been establish-
ed in Czechoslovakia to safeguard
the health of the country’s work-
ing men and women. Their func-
tions include safeguarding of food
standards, organisation of acci-
dent prevention measures,
iding for regular medical examin-
ation of all citizens, supervision

of health and hygiene standards

/Pprov-".

and facilities in factories — in
short, the protection ‘by every
possible means of the people’s
health.

One of the most recent activi-
ties along these lines has been a
campaign to protect the eyesight
of the working people. Normal
vision absorbs 25 percent of
man’s nervous ‘energy, and where
there is defective vision or eye

P.O. Oo

CHAMPION

PAGEANT *

Postponed to
FRIDAY,
MARCH 6
8 p.m. :

PENDER :
AUDITORIUM 7

Please enter my subscription to CHAMPION for one year
for which I enclose the sum of one dollar. :

CHEQUE

‘

CASH

Send to CHAMPION, Room 200, Ford Building
» Vancouver 4, B.C.

disease, the figure is considerably
Further, defective vision
the cause of nerve

higher.
is frequently
disorders, headaches,
and other complaints.

In remote districts many
ple who needed glasses have been
without them, or used glasses un-
suited to their needs. The care of
children’s eyes was also neglect-
ed. Such neglect had disastrous
results, adversely affecting the
people’s general health and their
working efficiency.

To combat this situation,
Czechoslovak public health serv-
ices have organised mobile oculist
clinics through the national enter-
prise, Sanitas, which is respons-
ible for the distribution of ‘eye
glasses. Three-ton ambulances
now regularly tour the southern
regions of Bohemia and the Bo-
hemian-Moravian highlands. With
them go oculists from the nearest
targe town, to visit unified agri-

peo-

“cultural cooperatives, factories,
mines and schools.
Each ambulance is provided

with adequate supplies of frames
and lenses, including a minimum
of 7,000 meniscal lenses, 3,000
astigmatic lenses, 2,500 spectacle-
frames .and hundreds of cases.
They also carry sunglasses and
protective goggles for various
types of work.

Glasses are fitted on the spot

in accordance | with
medical prescriptions following
eye-examinations. All working
people receive their glasses free
of charge except where they
choose expensive frames, in which
case they pay the difference in
price.

by experts

These mobile oculist
country under the slogan “Let ex-
perts treat your eyes” also do an
important educational job, seek-
ing to convince people that good.
eyesight is an important part of
good health.

. erial from which

dizziness.

clinics,
which visit remote parts of the-

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Beatrice Webb's diaries
omit vital last decade

THROUGHOUT her long life,
from girlhood, Beatrice Webb
kept a diary. With the first por-
tion of it she constructed the book
My Apprenticeship, which told the
life story and views of Beatrice
Potter, one of nine daughters of
Richard Potter, a wealthy mag-
nate,

This book gave a vivid picture
of a family. of the upper bour-
geoisie, of a gifted young woman
disquieted with that iife, and her
subsequent social investigations
which brought her the acquaint-
ance of Sidney Webb.

The second part of the diary
was used to make the book Our
Partnership. .. This showed the
Webbs at work and play for a
score of years, steadily carrying
out their Fabian policy of per-
meation with its effects on suc-
cessive Liberal and Tory cabinets
—mainly disappointing.

Though not of *the same ab-
sorbing interest as My Apprentice-
ship (which gained a deservedly
wide circulation as a Penguin),
it-was nevertheless a notable book.

Beatrice Webb’s Diaries, 1912-
1924, edited by Margaret Cole, is
of a very different quality.

First, it is simply the raw mat-
Beatrice, had
she lived on, could have construct-
ed a third book, enriched with ripe
reflection on the dozen: years. The
editor, quite properly, does not at-
tempt to substitute herself for
Beatrice.

But inevitably this suffers by
comparison with the previous two
books, so much so, indeed, as to
make it doubtful whether these
selections were worth publication
at the present time. \

Second, there is no longer the
fresh impressionability of the
Beatrice or of the young married
couple, with all before them. The
diarist is frequently tired, some-
times sick and to a great extent
disillusioned.
itself to the reader.

Third, mainly the
characters reappear.

same old

The exception is Arthur Hen-
: derson,

Labor party secretary, the
wooing and winning of whom by
the Webbs is the pink thread that
runs throughout this book.

‘(Omitted is the record of the
world tour of 1911-12, of which I
remember Beatrice telling me
some quite strange .stories about
what they found in China and
Japan, Singapore and India.

* * *

THESE DIARY extracts begin _

in 1912 in the autumn months
that saw the foundation by them
of what is now the Labor Re-
search Department and the work
for launching of their New
Statesman, now the most widely
circulated weekly paper of its
kind.

The diaries end with the entry
of Sidney Webb into the cabinet
a year after his election to par-
liament. ‘

In these dozen years two people
passed from their fifties to their
late sixties. They lived through
much

national

This communicates °

They were, in. short, tw?
Fabians with all the cleverness
and all. the basic inadequacy of
that outlook.

The first of the great events -
imperialist world wat —

was ‘the
of 1914-18, the second was a
Russian Revolution in 1917.

Though Sidney had been com
cerned with the Socialist Inter ”

national he had no real belief i?!
international action by working-.
class. bodies and busied himself
chiefly with what form of inter
organization by. states
should arise after the war. ee

For the rest, “with urbanity of
manner and unconsciousness 2%
sin,” he ignored the anti-war poli:
ries of the international Socialist
congresses and so played into the»
hands of the imperialist warmone”
ers.

Beatrice, on the question of
that war, professed herself “mel
ancholy agnostic? as she repeat
edly said to me at the time, 4?
this standpoint (“depressed 28”
nostic”) is repeated in the diaries.

* _- *

THEN THERE is their attitude

to the Russian Revolution. Some
may have thought that the out-
look in their Soviet Communism
al New Civilisation, was natu
in those whose History of Tradé
Unionism had been translated 10°
to Russian by Lenin and whos?
studies had been so extensive.
On the contrary, ‘as these
diaries show, it was from the most
completely prejudiced standpoint
and from a fierce antipathy $9
Marxism that they, viewed
Russion Revolution, both in 1917

and for many years afterwat a
They detested it. ;

It took every sort of experiential
including their  disillusionme?”
with the two Labor cabinets ?
which Sidney was a member, 2?
a severe factual investigation °
the Soviet state to change them:

Beatrice, at the end of her life
told how they had been mistake™

about capitalism: for most of the

lives, and how Marx, and sti

e x
more Lenin, had been right whet’

the Webbs had been wrong.

But these diary extracts, unre" ay

lieved by any comment that *
enlightened Beatrice of the: last
decade of her life might have
vided, crudely represent a perioe
of right wing opportunism Ww
the Webbs were operating throws
right-wing labor leaders for
many of whom they had no
but contempt.—H. PAGE ARN
————

ZENITH, CAFE

105 E. Hastings -Street
VANCOUVER, B.C.

UNION HOUSE

ot oe

othing

4 i

greater events than they |

Vancouver
Second Hand Store
@ Stove Parts and Repairs

had hitherto encountered, events @ Used Plumbing Supplies
for which neither their previous Tools Kitchenware
studies nor their association with: 3457
statesmen nor their world tour } 588 MAIN ST. Pacific j
had given them an equipment. - Soa
s!

= STANTON, MUNRO & DEAN

s Barristers - Solicitors - Notaries

= SUITE 515 FORD BUILDING | 193 E.. HASTINGS |

= (Corner: Main & Hastings Sts.)

3 MARINE. 5746 gist
TUES Tht cnmaicadittel

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 27, 1953 — PAGE y

-

= ch iiesincenieeten™ ‘