EDITORIAL PAGE *

Penticton beach on Okanagan Lake attracts summer tourists.

Reduce the drownings

Ever since 1595, when the first
book in English on swimming was
published, warnings have been
printed concernings the dangers of
the water.

Yet every year our country suf-
fers heavy loss of life from this
cause \

In that original publication, A
Short Introduction for to Learne
to Swimme. the author, Christopher
Middleton, suggests “to avoyde”
- drowning “I leave it to every sev-
eral mans consideration how neces-
sarie a thing this Art of Swimming

2

The spelling may be archaic, but
the reasoning behind it certainly
is not. Knowing how to swim, like
preventive medicine, can be the
means of avoiding much suffering
and grief.

Of course, even strong swimmers
are not immune to drowning. Com-
mon sense, as well as skill, is
needed if this summer is to be a
safe one at our lakes and rivers.

Now, as the holiday months be-

Pacific Tribune
Phone MUtual 5-5288

Editor — TOM McEWEN
Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE

Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.

Subscription Rates: -

One Year: $4.00
Six Months: $2.25
Canadian and Commonwealth
countries (except Australia): $4.00
one year. Australia, United States
and all other countries: $5.00 one
year.

gin, Canada is preparing to observe
National Water Safety Week, and
the Canadian Red Cross Society is
making a widespread appeal to us
all to learn the water safety rules
and to practise them faithfully.

Only if every one of us takes
this message as a personal one and
acts upon it will the number of
annual drownings ever be reduced
substantially.

Surely it won’t take us another
three hundred years to see the
wisdom of these warnings.

Ottawa's union-busting

HE anti-labor, union-busting role
of the federal Tory govern-

ment is emerging more clearly every

day.

Employees of the government-
owned Polymer crown corporation
at Sarnia have been on strike for
eight weeks. At any time, the fed-
eral cabinet could have instructed
the board of directors to settle: this
strike on the basis of the reason-
able demands of the workers. In-
stead, Ottawa sent down one of its
industrial inquiry commissioners to
“mediate” between itself and its
workers. This farce naturally set-
tled nothing and a few days later
the commissioner was recalled.

While the government thus
washes its hands of its clear respon-
sibilities, “back to work” move-
ments are being organized in Sar-
nia. Such movements are always
boss-inspired. In this case the boss
is the government of Canada.

Thus the Sarnia strike further
develops the ugly pattern of the
CBC strike in Montreal where an-
other crown corporation on the
clear-cut issue of union recognition
stalled and double-crossed for

' weeks, while the police were turned

loose on the workers, in an unsuc-
cessful effort to break their solidar-

ity.
Another crown corporation, the

Comment

CNR, has just imposed a settl

on its locomotive firemen which ¥
ultimately remove helpers
diesels in freight and yard st
despite repeated warnings from
workers of the dangers to pt
safety and of employer - resp
bility for technological unempli
ment. In the year 1958 alone.
CNR threw 11,534 of its wo!
onto the street, and Tsar Got
has recently served notice th
great deal more automation is”
the offing.

All of this emphasizes the dim-
ensions of the fight which lab
bas on its hands, not only again
reactionary provincial governmet
in Newfoundland, British Colut
bia, Ontario and other provinces
but against the federal power itse

To beat back such formid
enemies is going to require a mu
higher degree of labor un
solidarity struggles and in political
action. The times demand urgently
an end to divisions within the lal
movement kept alive by the Can-
adian Labor Congress leadership
and a drastic strengthening —
militancy in that leadership.

A good place to start right now
would be in developing all-out
nation-wide pressure on Ottawa to
settle the Sarnia strike at once
the interests of the workers-

URING recent weeks the mon-
D opoly press of this and other
“Natoized” countries have been
conducting an inspired campaign
of slander against the government
of the Hungarian People’s Repub-
lic. :

The gist of these sewer Inveli-
tions alleges that thousands of
Hungarian “refugees” who were
enticed to leave their homeland

- at the time of the U.S. sponsored
Hungarian “revolution” of 1956,
and who have since returned to
Hungary, have been summarily
arrested, thrown in prison with-
out trial, and in many cases ex-
ecuted. ‘

These Western world press cor-
respondents who produce such
hair-raising tales on the fate of
Hungarian repatriates are careful
to avoid giving any specific facts:
For them and their cold war pay-

masters it is suficient to slander a
government and people who re-
fuse to accept our “free” dog-
eat-dog social system.

There is another reason behind
this intense campaign of slander.
Thousands of Hungarian emi-
grants in this and other capitalist
countries have learned from bitter
experience since 1956 just how *
worthless are grandiose promises
of “good jobs” and all the other
enticements offered if they would
just desert their socialist home-
land for a life in the “free” West.
Now they want to return home,
disillusioned, and ready to face
whatever may be in store in their
own native land.

Every conceivable obstruction is
put in the way of such repatria-
tion, and this sweeping slander
campaign is just another of these
obstacles; to paint horrible pic-
tures of prison and execution

' which awaits the Hungarian emi-

gre when he or she returns home.

It’s contemptinble to say the
least, but then, that’s our “free”
monopoly press! :

At a recent press conference
in Budapest, Laszle Gyaros, Hun-
garian government spokesman,
nailed a few of these lying sland-
ers. “So once again,” said Gyaros,
“some so-called reputable news

agencies sent their stupid lies”
around the world, circulating
them from New York to Vienna.
Why do they have correspondents
in Budapest if they issue reports
about us from somewhere else
without checking the validity of
the news on the spot?”
A good question, which none
of the representatives of the kept
press at the Gyaros conference  ~
made any attempt to answer. It is
always easier to slander your
neighbor at a distance than face
to face. 5
“We have never demanded that
western correspondents should
agree with us,” Gyaros concluded, |
“but we do expect that when
facts can be easily ascertained
they should keep to the most:
elementary rules of journalistic
and common human ethics, by —
adhering to the truth.” .
That is a bit of good advice,
but we doubt very much if a
canned-news factory, dedicated to
distortion and misrepresentation, —
can absorb it. 3
Meantime, if this scribe were a_
hoodwinked Hungarian emigre
worker with a choice between re- _
turning home to build socialism _
—or living on Diefenbaker prom- _
ises, it would just take two sec-
onds flat to make a decision! _

May 22, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE é

bs
> SNe