Picnic crowd ferrorized by fascist DP's MONTREAL The war in Korea and the height- ened danger of a new world war have given new hope to the Luthu- anian fascists who came to Canada as DPs. Remembering the days when they murdered the Jews and progressive people in Lithuania dur- ing the Hitler occupation, press and radio attacks on progressives have encouraged them to start ’terroriz- ing people here. Recently, Lithuanian DPs attack- ed the supporters of Liaudies Bal- Sas, progressive Lithuanian-Cana- dian newspaper, at a picnic here. The attack was organized and led by the DP newspaper, Nepriklau- soma Lietuva. First the paper advertised that “cultural picketing” would be or- ganized against the pienickers. All DPs were invited and urged to take cameras with them to take pictures of all who came to the pienic. Then every reader of Liau- dies Balsas was phoned and urged not to attend the affair. In an attempt to provoke a fight, one of them grabbed a camera from one of the picnickers. A veteran followed him to see who it was, Then a group of fascists seize him and beat him with sticks and - eut him with knives. He was badly eut. _ The DPs insulted the picnickers in every possible way and tried to provoke fights. In nearby bushes they had stormtroopers who walk- ed along the edge showing knives. _ Behind them was a Ukrainian DP - pienie from which picket leaders - gave orders through the loudspeak- Veterans who wore service but- tons drew special attention from the fascists, who tried many times _ to tear off the buttons. One of the owners of a dry 5 of the shop.” openly talk about the days when _ they will be able to take care of “Communists.” They boast that they have lists of those who will be killed and those who will be put They act as though they were _ given power by the authorities to “handle” the LithuanianCanadians who are independent of them and not listen to their Nazi propa- The people these DPs threaten— by direct word, letter and phone— have lived in Canada for 20 years and more, raised their families here and contributed to the cultural life of the country. During the war many of them served in the armed forces to end the fascist terror which now reaches out intimi- date them here—imported into Can- _ ada with DPs who were ranged on the Nazi side during the war. MONTREAL American tourists came out of their hotels here one morning re- eently to find their automobiles plastered with a bit of friendly ad- vice from French Canada. “Welcome to Canada—and take this back to Truman — HANDS OFF KOREA,” the stickers read. Hundreds of these anti-war stickers were affixed to Yank cars during the night by Quebec’s peace forces. ‘have been victorious.” Democratic Rights League will fight attacks upon > people’s right to petition TORONTO A creeping attack on the time-honored right to petition is underway across Canada, according to Thomas C. Roberts, national executive secretary of the League for Democratic Rights. Proposals to launch a major campaign to protect this basic Canadian right are now under study, he said. ee Recently returned from a national tour, Roberts reported on shocking instan_.es of police inter- ference with petitioners circulating the Stockholm Appeal to outlaw atomic bombs and declare the first government using one a war criminal. “The attacks on the Canadian Peac e Congress movement across the country; the wave of arrests in Quebec against anti-war expression of the Social Credit organization is all part of a strategy to ‘sneak up on our civil liberties and snatch them away one by one before the people fully realize what is happening. “In Toronto arrest of Walter Krehm under Section 222 B of the Criminal Code for peace petition- ing is a particularly obnoxious case, since it employs a se..tion of the code designed for drunken and dis- orderly conduct in public places,’’ said Roberts. x “Arrest of five peace workers in Vancouver; picking up of dozens of honest citizens whose only ‘crime’ is that they fervently desire an end to the insanity of atomic war; and questioning them in police cells, appears to be nothing less that an attempt to create the idea that the right to petition is no longer a democratic right enjoyed by Canadian citizens.” The LDR, said Roberts, will “fight gainst any and all attempts to restrict or abolish the right of petition. We know that there are millions of people in Canada who will support this view. We know that even if some of these people may not agree or support the pe- titions carried by the molested citi- zens, they will certainly demand that the right to petition be fully respected by police authorities.” Urging mass protests on the cur- rent wave of arrests to Premier Duplessis of Quebec and Justice Minister Stuart Garson at Ottawa, Roberts called for support of the]. LDR campaign to build a defense fund for taking all cases to the courts. Need for a national civil rights organization has become more ap- parent since outbreak of the war in Korea, continued Roberts. Fif- teen centers in Canada already are directly associated with the LDR| in the form of active or provisional organizing committees, : The current drive to protect the right to petition launched by the LDR will dovetail with its main THOMAS C. ROBERTS campaign to remove the padlock law off the statute books in Que- vec province, where the most flag- rant attacks on elementary rights are in progress. Had anti-war posters in car, woman arresied MONTREAL Arrest of a number of Social ‘Credit members demanding peace and no involvement in the Korean ‘war, has been sharply condemned by Edmond Major of the Civil Liberties Union in a letter to Mon- treal’s executive committee. Major is co-president of the national League for Democratic Rights. (Mme. Cote-Mercier, organizer of the Social Credit movement, was arrested by city police for carry- ing anti-war posters in her auto.) “The people of Quebec will not tolerate this persecution which is being directed against any move- ment in favor of peace,’ Major declared. He demanded that police be instructed to permit free ex- pression of opinion on the ‘issue of peace. The statement pointed out such “flagrant violation of all democrat- ic principles’ drew its inspiration from the dictatorial padlock law. nator urges end to intervention in Korea SAN FRANCISCO California’s only living ex-United States Senator, a notable conservative, has come out emphatically for peace with the Soviet Union and negotiation of the Korean situation. Samuel M. Shortridge, now 89 and an invalid living in retirement at Atherton, told the Palo Alto Times in a recent interview: “Tf I could walk, I’d go up and down California and even the na- tion to wake up our people to the fact that Russia has never been our enemy but rather our close ally, without. whom Hitler would Shortridge, a Republican who re- tired from the Senate in 1933 after 12 years of service, declared: “The Russian mothers and fath- ers don’t want to see their sons slaughtered on a battlefield any more than the American mothers and fathers do. “The Korean question should have been settled through reason- able understanding and negotia- Form shop peace groups, leaflets urge workers MONTREAL Twenty thousand leaflets stating bluntly, “We don’t want war!” have gone into every leading shop and factory in Mont- real. Issued by the trade union committee of the Montreal Peace Council, the leaflet declared: “We don’t want war because we are the ones who sacrifice most in blood and taxes. War will not solve our problems. It won’t give us more jobs but less. War won’t build more homes, but less, apart from tens of thousands that will be de- stroyed. War will not bring us’ prosperity—only murder of millions of innocent people through atomic bombing. .* ; “The only ones that gain by war are the trusts! As in the past world wars, they will fatten themselves with billions of dol- lars at the expense of the work- ing people.” The trade union leaflet called on Quebec workers to see their MPs tion and to take a stand against war. It urged the workers to form peace committees in every shop and to get their union locals to endorse the peace appeal. The Jewish peace committee of the Montreal Peace Council has also gone into action. This week it addressed an urgent letter to every leading figure in the Jewish community here, : tion to give the people of the two sections of that country the unified form of government they most desired.” The aging ex-Senator, who was once chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, cautioned, “Let us not forget that our form of govern- ment is not approved by all gov- ernments, and let us also remem- cn the trouble we had in starting He said, “I neither condone nor apologize” for what he described as “that crowd” in the Soviet Union but added, “The truth is that Americans don’t really know any specifically bad things being done by those in power in Russia. We don’t really know what the Rus- sian form of government is, ; “When World War II came, Rus- sia was forced to fight a defensive war as she did against Napoleon. If Hitler had won that war with Russia, all of Europe and England would have fallen. But Russia drove Hitler back to his death. _ “The Allies stood side by side in that war, Yet it must be re- membered that Russia suffered a greater loss of life than all of the other allied countries put to- gether. We were all friends at the end of the second great war. But no sooner had it ended than We started treating Russia as an enemy.” PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 25, 1950-PAGE ? Intimidation of canvassers will be probed TORONTO: Petitioning for peace with the Stockholm Appeal is a guaranteed: right of Canadian citizens, accord- ing to the majority of members of Toronto Board of Control. With the sole exception of Con- troller Balfour, Mayor McCallum and members of the board assured Miss Mary Jennison, executive sec- retary of the Canadian Peace Con- gress, and 15 leading citizens, that the right to petition was inviolable, during an interview. Controller Balfour's efforts to in- terrupt reading of a brief by Miss | Jennison was quickly squashed by the mayor and other board mem- bers. ~ Mayor McCallum agreed, ag head of the police commission, to “look into” all cases of police intimidation cited by the delega- tion. Both Controllers Lamport and’ Saunders insisted that the delega- tion was a reputable body of citi- zens and had a right to present its’ case. Miss Jennison believed it was a “very satisfactory interview.” In her presentation to the board she said: “... Numerous Toronto residents have been molested by Toronto police and intimidated in recent weeks. This action by the Toronto police force seriously in- fringes a fifhdamental right of Canadian citizens — the right to freely petition their government. It is a right which was established’ 1215 through Magna Carta and zealously guarded since that time as a sacred foundation of British freedom.” Using the pretext that neighbors or commercial people are lodging “complaints” against petitioners, the police move in with cruisers, closely check signed petitions and openly threaten petitioners with “trouble” if they continue, Such “anonymous complaints” turn out to be spurious ones, said Miss Jen-- nison, explaining the tactics used by the police. She believed such attacks in Ontario resembled intimidation of Baptists in Quebec province. An invitation to Mayor McCal- lum to attend a delegation to ap- pear before Attorney-General Por- ter of Ontario was extended. The group will ask for the quashing of the ruling given by a Toronto magistrate’s court when Walter Krehm was arrested un- der Section 222B of the Criminal’ Code, governing drunk and dis- orderly conduct in public places, and fined $50 with the alternative of 30 days in jail for collecting Signatures to the Stockholm peace petition. Two shops sign with Fur Workers Pearl Wedro, district organizer of the International Fur and Leather Workers’ Union, reported this week that Local 197, Interna- tional Fur and Leather Workers’ Union, had signed an agreement with T. Pappas Fine Fur Stores’ and Jurisin Furs. The new agreement contains all the benefits of the master agree ment recently signed in the fur — industry here, including a 10 cents an hour wage increase. A conciliation board has bee? appointed to hear Local 510, Inte! national Fur and Leather Workers Union, which has been negotiating for several weeks to renew its 9& reement with J. Leckie Shoe Com pany. Main demands are 15 centS an hour increase; pay for all statu- tory holidays, and two weeks’ vac tion with pay after two Y Service, ' Similar demands made by ws union’s Local 505 for renewal its agreement with Pierre oat Shoe Company will also g0 pete a conciliator appointed by the PFO vineial Labor Relations Board.