THE NATION.
St. Laurent plans
for world war three

By TIM BUCK

R. LOUIS ST. LAURENT, who is planning
to become prime minister of Canada with-
out the bother of asking for the approval of the
electorate, is preparing in advance to plunge the
Canadian people into a provocative military and
political adventure overseas. :

lic support for his plan to use

Canada as the bellwether for

United States imperialism he

is resorting to the method,

popularized by Hitler, known

as “the technique of the big

lie.” At the Canadian National

Exhibition directors’ luncheon

on September 7 the prime

minister-to-be gave'a demon-

Stration of that. technique _
which must have left some of

the old-fashioned reactionaries gasping. Some
of Mr. St. Laurent’s statements were in such
marked contrast to Mackenzie King’s calculated
Concern for “the record” that they seemed to
he intended to emphasize the fact that the change
in the prime minister’s office has been much more
than a change of persons. :

’

“Justifying” himself by a completely un-
supported assertion that it is impossible to pre-
‘serve world peace through the United Nations,
St. Laurent outlined a plan for the organization
of the United States, Canada, the United King-
dom, France, and other capitalist states of West-
ern Kurope into a military, political and economic
bloc which he proposes should be called “the
North Atlantic’ Security system.”

@ Mr. St. Laurent indicated quite clearly that,
while the main aim of his plan is to concentrate
What he declares would be an overwhelming
military force against the New Democracies and
the USSR, he has in mind, also, the idea that it
would make it easier for governments in coun-
tries such as\Canada and the U.S., where monop-
oly capital is still firmly in the saddle, to take a
hand in suppressing the political activities of the
democratic masses in Western Europe. oe

Mr. St. Laurent admitted that he does not

an end in itself. He explained carefully that he
, Considers it only a means to an end.

:

In less categorical language, but _ clearly”
enough to exclude the possibility of misunder-
Standing, he indicated that the end for which
his proposal would provide the means is the
elimination of the present. rejection of finance
Capital, the Marshall Plan, and the expansionist
Policies of United States imperialism.

He stated it as opposition to policies sup-
Ported by the majority of governments repre-
Sented in the United Nations, but he made his

Meaning clear.

@ “The Canadian government,” he said, “has
been urging at home and abroad, in public
Statements and through diplomatic channels
and discussions, the immediate establishment
of a North Atlantic Security system. . . .”

“Such collective action,” he added, “even
if at the beginning only on a regional basis,

1s urgent and necessary. .. .” — "

By The reader is justified in wondering how Mr.

St. Laurent justifies his repeated assertions that.

the establishment of such a military bloc outside

ne € United Nations is “urgent and necessary,
Particularly in view of the active manner in which
1€ suppotted Mackenzie King’s opposition to any

Preparation for, or even verbal endorsement of, .

—S0ncerted action to prevent Nazi aggression dur-
Mg the 1930's.

In the effort to stir up an appearance of pub- .

“experts” consider a Communist.

consider his North Atlantic Security system as.

Mr. St. Laurent “justifies”
vocacy of preparation for a military adventure
overseas by pnscrupulous verbal sleight of hand

his present ad-

By dishonest and brazen misuse of the Eng-
lish language Louis St. Laurent insinuated to
his audience *at the C.N.E. directors’ luncheon
that the development “which has led straight
to the mass slaughter of recent years” is the
growing influence of Marxism.

He then proceeded to declare that, in the
world struggle between the forces of peace and
social progress and the forces of war and re-
action, communism is on thé side of what he:
St. Laurent, described as “Pan-German imperial-
ism” in 1914-18, and “Nazi and Fascist tyranny”
in the people’s war of liberation.

@ The arguments advanced by Mr. St. Laurent
to “justity” his proposed military adventure, and
even more his insinuations and 'misrepresenta-
tions, marked a new stage, a new low level, in
the drive to involve Canada in the war plans of
United States imperialism.

It-is significant, most of all, however, because
it reveals jthe fact that the engineers of the
scheme dare come before the people of Canada
and discuss it frankly and honestly—this is the
proof that there is still a possibility that it can
be defeated.

A real Iron Curtain

F® and RCMP work together to exclude
trom crossing the boundary anyone ihese
An FBI man
sits in Ottawa checking the lists, says the Tor-
cnto Star. Maybe an RCMP man sits in Wash
ington doing. the same. dirty. work...

‘An Iron Curtain (a real one, not the fic-
titious one which came to us from Goebbels via
Churchul) has. been drawn across the line so
that any trade unionist, whether Communist or
not, who belongs to a union not to the FBI’s or
RCMP’s liking, is prohibited from going to the

U.S. cn union business. No defense is permit-—

ted. An arbitrary police ukase is enough!
i The Canadian government has abdicated its
function as a protector of the rights of travel-
ling Canadians. And in its own right, it is an
arbitrary policeman who excludes from Canada
anyone with whose opinions it does not agree.
This is the grim Iron Curtain which has
been drawn between Canadians and Americans
by the mailed hand of the police state. And
they have ‘the gall to lecture millions of people
in Europe and Asia on freedom and democracy?

x

8 Fig Se Lerner ae Dies see Hae ambver ie

- red-baiters

LAbOR FOCUS

The fallacy

of counting noses

By BRUCE MICKLEBURGH

EVER since. the birth of the Trades and

Labor Congress nigh on 70 years ago have
labor conventions received such publicity as they
are getting this year in the big business press.
The Financial Post, Vancouver Sun, News-Herald
and of course the scab Province are showering
headlines, editorials and columns on the October
11 conventions of the CCL (Can-
adian Congress of Labor) and
TLC (Trades and Labor Con-
gress).

This doesn’t mean the boss
| has lifted his news black-out on
labor. On the contrary, he’s
throwing the full weight of his
» public opinion factories behind
the disrupters, he hopes will tear
the guts out of a labor move-
ment he hasn’t been able to de-
stroy from the outside.

Anybody who ‘didn’t know better would
gather trom the boss headlines that the issue
is not labor versus the boss any more but labor
versus the communists. By communists and
“fellow traveliers” the boss means what he has.
always meant—any workers who fight the boss -
all the way down the line. He tries to portray
these militants as labor’s real enemy, and the
in labor’s ranks he pictures as “re-
spectable” unionists. The Financial Post states
openly that the bosses must make common cause
with the “anti-communists” in labor. ;

The open attempt of the employers to inter-

vene and take over labor from the inside has
made the conventions a public issue in a real
sense. Whether Canada marches forward to-
wards peace, independence, security and free-
dom—or is hurled into fascism, ruinous war and
depression—denends in large measure on labor’s
membership asserting labor's rights,
@ Many B.C. unionists realize that forthe
CCL, leadership there is no turning back. Having
taken the road of. St. Laurent’s war policy, of —
red-baiting, expulsions and, wage sell-outs, they
can only move further down the same road—_
even possibly to the extent of constitutional ©
bans a la Philip Murray on those whose political
opinions or trade union policies they may: not.
happen to like.

They Icok on the CCL: convention as a feudal
lord on_ his barony. After all, Steel, Textile,
Packinghouse and Mosher’s, CBRE, with only a
fifth ot the membership, are given half the votes
by the CCI, constitution. Simple to manipulate
such a puppet vote—especially with Mine-Mill
suspended and’ Harvey Murphy suspended and
denied the right to appeal. :

Simple—except for one fact, and that is that
labor’s course is not determined by ‘counting
noses at a stacked convention. What really de-
termines labor's course is what the majority of
workers, on the job and in their locals, think
and do. And that majority in the CCl, asom

-

ganized in the biggest industrial unions, will show

their iighting unity in the stand they take to-
gether on the floor at Toronto. That stand will
not be,on the phoney issue of communism—but _
on the real issues of wages and prices, peace and
labor's rights, housing and health insurance, free

- labor political action to elect a new government—

and—intertwined with all these issues—the de-
cisive issue of union democracy as expressed in
the fight to re-instate Mine-Mill and repudiate
the red-baiters. ‘ a

It’s easy to seé how workers get disgusted
with Conroy, Mosher ,and Millard, but to stay —
away from the convention on that account would
play right into their hands--and the bosses.

The issues are already bared for the TLC
convention.

appealed to the membership to openly discuss —
them and come to Victoria in full strength to,
decide whether they want autonomy or autocracy
for their unions—i.e., the Percy Bengough type:
of leadership or the Frank Hall type of treachery. —

‘There are strong signs the membership is _
rallying strongly behind Bengough. — Actually
the struggle at the conventions is one—a finish
fight that ‘will continue till labor has cleaned
house against elements that now stand exposed
as alien to its ranks,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 24, 1948—PAGE 9 »

The Trades Congress leadership has