a RITISH COLUMBIA'S | government-owned railway, the Pacific Great Easten (PGE) is one of -those “public” undertakings which, for nearly half a century, has provided Liberals. and Tories alike with a good vote-catching plank: “Completion of the PGE.” And last June this “completion” was again the noisiest promise in the Coalition’s pre-election Santa Claus speeches. Costing the taxpayers of this province mil- lions of dollars to old-line party contractors, the PGE. has stood out as a striking monument to the utter bankruptcy of “‘capitalist planning” for more than 30 years. A railway that has been fittingly described as “beginning nowhere, and ending the same. place.” ewe ce _ In past years various moves have been made by successive B.C. governments to. have the CPR or our “‘own’” CNR: adopt this abbreviated “‘socialist’’ orphan, but to no avail. Canada’s rail monopolists regarded the PGE as an “unprofitable liability.” The tremendous public pressure created by the growing needs of the people in the northern constituencies and their insistence on fulfillment of the Coalition’s pledge has finally forced the govern- and Prince George which will tap the rich resources of the Peace River. ee Meanwhile, in the war-mad United States, the project of a U.S.-Alaska railway, running through Canadian territory, is again being reviewed in top- : HEN Canadian government officials seized all the documents, resolutions, pamphlets, souven- irs and other knick-knacks from Canada’s youth _ delegation on their return from the World Youth Festival in Budapest, Hungary, they settled one question which has been confusing a lot of people for some considerable time—the exact location of the “Iron Curtain”. Hitherto: we have been given to understand that it was draped somewhere through central Europe, -incorder to hide from the outside world what goes ‘on in the countries east of this highly publicized “curtain”. Now it is clear, thanks to Canada’s immigration officials, that our political geographers have been lying. The “Iron Curtain”, patented by the late Doktor 3 sy: around the Western Hemisphere—to keep out the truth. Those who heard the report on the great World Youth Festival by Norman Penner, leader of the 1949 “Beaver Brigade”, to a Vancouver audience last weekend, got the true answers to a lot of deliberately confused questions. They got the answers, for instance, as to why our “free press” is silent on the World Youth Festival; why the Yankee imperialists and their Canadian - counterparts apply the gag-rule to Canadian youth ment to start work on the link between Quesnel P. Goebbels, and later copyrighted by Dollar — Diplomacy, Inc.. is hung on this side of the world— speaking for peace; why efforts in support of peace — adventures against the Soviet Union. of “PGE completion” spells ruin and disaster for Keep the PGE out of Yankee clutches level government circles. A “‘deal’’ is in the making. Coalition “Boss” Johnsén is now in Washington discussing incorporation of the PGE into the U.S.- Alask rail project. It is reported that President Truman may soon open “negotiations” with Ottawa for the “‘right-of- way” through Canadian territory to Alaska, with the trite press observation that “negotiators will have to keep in mind that the B.C. government already owns a railroad on part of the route.” It should be remembered that part of the Coalition’s pre-election promising spree included the declaration that the PGE “would not be sold’’ to Yankee interests. It should also be remembered that the prime concern of these so-called ‘American interests’ in the PGE is twofold; to use it as part of their U.S.-Alaska rail project, in their war plans against the Soviet Union, and to speed up their long range ‘plans for transforming Canada into a_ hinterland for Yankee imperialism and exploitation. Even partial completion of the PGE makes these im- perialist vultures the more eager to get their claws into the rich resources of Canada’s northland. _ British Columbians, and Canadians generally, must never agree to the “purchase” of the PGE by American imperialism as a key link in its war That brand British Columbia’s economy, peace, and _ security. The ‘Iron Curtain’ is here are branded subversive, and war propaganda is re- garded as the highest expression of patriotism. For the warmongers the real truth of the social and economic advance of the Hungarian people, or the peoples of the new democracies of Europe and the USSR, is bad business. It shatters their Marshall planned “‘philanthropy’’. It rips the mask off their sham defense of democracy, religion and the home, behind which they seek to foment! civil strife and full-scale war. Above all, it exposes their imperial- ist aims to subjugate peoples who have their own ideas of a “way of life’, and a determination to live it that way. : Norman Penner’s report on the progress of the Hungarian people under a democratic people’s gov-— ernment, and the magnificent efforts of the world’s youth for peace, must reach far wider circles than the Canadian audiences he meets. Jt should be printed in pamphlet-form and placed in every Can- adian workingman’s home. ; Canadians are entitled to learn the truth, available only from’ their own sons and daughters, who en- hanced the honor of Canada in Europe through par- ticipation in the World Youth Festival. The voice of our young people for true Canadian independence, against militarism and Wall Street’s ‘“‘cold war”, and for the outlawing of the atom bomb, must not be silenced by the St. Laurent government’s new “ron curtain’’. They have a right to be heard, and will be heard, because ‘they express the desire of the world’s youth and the world’s people, for peace. ’ -and scientific affairs in the USSR ,he would have land have passed up social democrat Schumacher in picking the new TOM McEWEN As We See le a 6sP\OKTOR” Mladin Giunio-Zorkin (Zorkin for short), ex-Yugoslav “diplomat” now. in this country, is busy these days prophesy-— ing what the “new party line” of the Communists well be, now that possession of the atom-bomb by Russia has been “discovered” by the Yankee warmongers and their hangers-on. “Refugee” Zorkin, who has gained some little notoriety for his — lurid tales of Yugoslavia—before Tito joined the Wall Street gang— is now getting a tidy bit of press publicity on a new theme: “Now that Russia has the bomb*(she will be touted by the : Communists) as being invincible.” Therefore the only sensible thing for the Western “democracies” to do will be to “appease Russia.” : Despite the fact that Zorkin has been upheld by a Canadian court in his “right” to smear the motives and objectives of Communism, we cannot permit his irresponsible and provocative harrangues to go unchallanged as a “new party line”; even if such a staid organ as the Comox Free Press may regard the featuring of such Zorkinized tripe as good front-page copy. Had Zorkin been an honest student of social known, as most of us did, just what Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov meant two years 4go in the UN Assembly, when he said that the “secret” of the atom-bomb was — “no longer a secret.” Zorkin would have understood that the real — Russian “atom-bomb” which the warmongers fear, and for which they have sought to step up the tempo of their war hysteria, is not the Soviet use of atomic energy for destruction, but to revolutionize Soviet industry and society and speed its course towards a full- fledged Communist state. ; For the imperialists there are profits in bombs . . . even when they fly in both directions, but for the imperialists there is only total disaster to their “way of life’’ when one-third of the world’s peoples begin using atomic energy for social progress. That is the real “bomb” that has burst in their midst and shattered a lot of their war schemes. oh In that sense we Communists do point with pride to the “in- — vincibility” of the first socialist state, an invincibility demonstrated in the patriotic war against Hitlerism, and in the use of atomic energy to build a mighty nation dedicated to peace and Communism. .Communists, contrary to Zorkin’s “cold war” inventions, do not ask Canadians to “appease” Russia. All we ask is that Canadians break with the Yankee warmongers, its atomaniacs and its hired poison vendors, and match Russia’s efforts for peace with our own. — To join Russia in the demand for the scrapping of all atom-bomb manufacture and stockpiles and jointly, advance the development — of atomic energy for peace, progress and life. The “new party line’, belongs to the fevered imagination of Zorkin and his kind, who now blatantly admit their willingness to finance the gangsterism of Tito (their erstwhile “enemy’) against the Soviet. Union, the peoples of the new democracies of Europe, and the people of Yugoslavia. ? The Canadian people have nothing to fear from Soviet develop- ment of atomic energy. They have much to fear from those wal- mongering powers and their socia] democratic lackies, who would hitch the future of mankind to the possession and threat of atom bomb destruction. cd 4 Far from launching a “campaign of fear of invincible Russia,” the Communists will step up their efforts to expose the real “fear” mongers, who are today borrowing the Hitlerite psychosis of fear to cloak their squandering of the people’s resources and “security, to advance their anti-Soviet war plans. In this criminal game the dregs of the fascist sewers of Europe have been called in to serve as a fifth column, and the pages of the Canadian press are opened to give prominence-and validity to their falsehoods. — e : : At last year’s convention of the American Federation of Labor, president William Green had his “European Free Trade Union” committee send over the German social democrat, Kurt Schumacher, as a “fraternal” delegate. Social democrat Schumacher's “fraternal” — delegate harangue on Communism and the Soviet Union, proved Green had made a good investment for the Washington warmongers: In the new hand-picked “government” of Western Germany, Kurt Schumacher has been left out in the cold. Naturally our nia Coldwell is peevish, and vests his grouch in a few obvious ruths. ; hs “The new government of Western Germany,” says er, “is flooded with Nazis.~ Even the majority of Pei tativos a ea liament have pro-Hitlerite pasts.” “This new fascism” as, democrat Schumacher terms it, “has made great strides—in the growth of anti-Semitism and the promotion, of blind nationalism.” . _. What Schumacher forgot to add was that he himself had done yeoman service for the Anglo-American imperialist occupation forces, in whipping up this anti-Semitism and rabid fascist nationalism. Schumacher has opposed the unity of Germany socialist and com- munist parties for precisely the same reason as Yankee General — Lucius D, Clay. He has opposed the World Federation of Trade Unions for the same reasons as AFL president Bill Green and the U.S, state department. He has fulminated against the Soviet Union © and communism with all the vigor and falsehood of a Goebbels: And, not the least important, he has made it clear to the military brass hats of London and Washington, that if opportunity permitted, a Soule el go bse German workers with the same social emocratic enthusiasm displayed b e : Se es oe ae ee ee oe Despite all these qualifications, the “empire” builders of Yankee- Nazi government of Bonn. It will be remembered that Hitler too, spurned the proffered help of the social democrat q l of his Third Reich. Can the Schumachers pate Seis ae ‘ill mn (ie Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD. % Telephone MA, 5288 i 6 Months, $1.35. Printed by Union Printers Ltd. 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC: Authorized as second class mail, Post Office Dept., Ottawa PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 14, 1919 — PAGE 8 | r hy