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his book does very little to

widen the knowledge of those
who followed the press fairly
closely through the Diefenbaker
years, although it is useful in
refreshing one’s memory about
many of the dramatic develop-
ments that took shape in that
period,

What is added is mainly poli-
tical gossip picked up by New-
man on the Ottawa cocktail cir-
cuit when he was the Ottawa
editor for MacLean’s Magazine.
There are many working report-
ers who would have hesitated
to so repeat the ‘‘off the record”’
tales that Newman commits to
print, if for no other reason than
that one who so little respects
the confidence placed in him,
can hardly expect to be entrus-
ted in the future with anything
but official hand-outs,

Newman worships The Estab-
lishment. He is FOR, whatever is
officially most respectable. Heis
for the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, he is for more
Snuggling up to the United
States, he is for ‘‘sound” finan-
cial policies, with just the right

dose of liberalism as adminis-
tered by John Maynard Keynes
(spend more when times are
bad, tighten up when times are
good, etc,)

He sneers at the search for
peaceful solutions with which
External Affairs Minister How-
ard Green became identified, His
line on the nuclear arms issue
is the official Liberal line that
Canada was committed to take
these arms,

ee eer

Any suggestion that some in
the Tory cabinet might have
honestly changed their minds in
light of changing conditions is
brushed aside. He is contemptu-
ous of the statement of Diefen-
baker that his mail was running
two or three to one against nu-
clear weapons,

“Until the end of his term in
power,’’. says Newman, ‘John
Diefenbaker acted as if ‘the peo-
ple’ and not he and his govern-
ment, were charged with the task
of deciding whether or not to ac-
cept nuclear weapons,’’

Here, Newman reveals his idea
of government, The people are
incapable of making decisions
even when they affect their very
lives, They must be governed by
their betters.

* * *

There are many questions that
need to be answered about the
Diefenbaker government. But
Newman does not supply the
answers, He devotes a chapter
to trying to prove that the Dief-
enbaker government . ruled for
Six years without any support
from big business in this coun-
try. It is impossible to accept
such a viewpoint of Canadian
Politics,

What is true is that during the
time of the Diefenbaker govern-
ment, differences within the capi-
talist class came more and more
to the fore with respect to the
future of this country and our
relations with the United States,
These found expression in the
Diefenbaker government, but
they also continue to find ex-
Pression in the Pearson govern-
ment,

Clearly, we are dealing here
with a complicated process

which cuts across the two old
parties,

PSN AT TE Ft a) We 5 ee

W hy oO S & Cs X e Lease th paleo 3) ddibi den Saesald
e eee ia d ° co
is Newman grinding:
RENEGADE IN POWER: THE
DIEFENBAKER YEARS, by Peter
C. Newman. Published by McClel-

land and Stewart. Price $7.50 at
People’s Co-op Book Store.

It is a process to which the
working class and its organiza-
tions need to give deep study.
Newman, however, views the
working of history not in terms
of classes, but of individuals,

* * *

The relationship between mem-
bers of the Diefenbaker cabinet
is explained in terms of personal
rivalries and of Diefenbaker’s at-
titude towards his colleagues,
some of whom he trusted and
some of whom he distrusted.

Again, the many vacillations of
the government are explained not
as a reflection of conflicting in-
terests, and forces, but almost
solely as a reflection of the in-
ability of the Prime Minister to
make up his own mind,

But Newman’s book is some-

‘thing more sinister than simply

a superficial account of the Dief-
enbaker years,

It is a book written with the
undisguised intention of discre-
ditting John Diefenbaker and
destroying him politically, of
both preventing a possible come-
back by the former Prime Min-
ister and of speeding his de-

thronement as chief of the Pro-.

gressive Conservative Party.

One does not have to be a de-
fender of John Diefenbaker to
raise the question: for whom is
Peter Newman doing this job?

This reviewer can come to no
other conclusion than that New-
man is enthusiastically and to-
tally in the service of those in
this country who are working
for the complete sell-out of Can-
ada to United States big busi-
ness, and that he is out to ‘‘get’’
not only John Diefenbaker but
every other public figure who in
any way, and however feebly and
haltingly, has stood for the in-
dependent development of Can-
ada,

I am strengthened in this
Opinion by the fact that in re-|
cent months, while finishing his
book on Diefenbaker, he has un-
dertaken in MacLeans to deve-
lop the same type of biased and
belittling attack on the present
Liberal Minister of Finance,
Walter Gordon.

Newman set out to prove that
John Diefenbaker was a ‘‘rene-
gade in power.’’ He - succeeds

“much better in convincing his

readers that he himself is a
renegade from all the ideals
which inspired those who built
Canada as an independent na-
tion, —N.C.

Pete Seeger
on world tour

Dp ete Seeger (who’s not con-
sidered good enough for
national television in his own
country— because he’ll un-.
dermine ’em, you know) is
currently on a world tour do-
ing concerts, television and
radio appearances in 28 coun-
tries,

In September, he did five
television shows in Austra-
lia plus a.one-hour solo spe-
cial for Australian TV Net-
work plus two TV appearances
in Japan.

Next, Seeger appears on
All-India Radio, followed by
visits to six African countries,
London, Amsterdam, Brus-
sels and Milan. He returns
home in June, 1964,

Seeger, always in demand,
last performed in Vancouver
several months ago,

* ray

Loe To a a a Bo

obody — not even Rembrandt
N:: Velazquez — is so much
a painter’s painter as Goya, and
artists, aware that the 1963-64
Winter Exhibition at Burlington
House (London) was to be devoted
to his work, have been looking
forward to it with excitement and
curiosity.

With excitement, because an
exhibition on the usual scale of
the winter exhibition means the’
opportunity to see a collection
of his work such as we may see
only once in a lifetime.

With curiosity, because, in
addition to being the supreme
painter’s painter, Goya is also
the supreme people’s painter—
not the same thing at all as
being a popular painter.

* * * :

And yet Goya is not here in
his complete and _ terrifying
wholeness, :

The two great paintings in
which he celebrated the rising of
his countrymen against Napol-
eon’s puppet-brother Joseph, and
their terrible defeat—the Dos de
Mayo and the Tres de Mayo —

have not left Spain.

Nor has that most unflattering '
of official paintings, the group
portrait of Charles IV and his
Family; nor the great picture of,
the meeting of the Junta of the

Philippines,
Nor are there any of the
‘*plack’? paintings — black in

spirit as in appearance, the hor-
rifying decorations from the
walls of the Quinta del Sordo—the
House of the Deaf Man,

Here, self-exiled from his own
country, completely deaf, suffer-
ing from nightmares andhalluci-
nations, tormented by the tragedy

-of art,

of man’s inhumanity, Goya spent
his last years and, at the age of
80, opened up new worlds of
technique and imagination,

~ It cannot be said too strongly
that the omission of works like
these is to be regretted, and not
simply on social or political

grounds, eee

It is because he was a great
and powerful, an original and
sensitive painter, that Goyaholds
his unique place,

It is not merely by recorded
fact, but in their quality as works
that his drawings and
paintings both reveal and con-
demn the horrors of war, oppres-
sion, and superstition.

Without those paintings that

‘give his moral indignation its
fullest expression, we do not see
the full extent to which he
created a new kind of painting,
how he foreshadowed so much of
the century and a half that would
follow him,  —_

Realist and Romantic, Impres-
sionist, Expressionist, Sur-
realist have all drawn from this
tremendous source.

It is above all as a realist
that Goya is to be considered,
I do not now use this as a
stylistic term. I speak of Goya’s
vision,

* * *

If realism means only the faith-
ful account of the visible features
of people and things, a cata-
loguing of mere likeness, then
Goya has been surpassed,

But if it means — as it must.

ae

“Perhaps they
are of another
breed,” one of
Goya’s etchings
from “The Horrors
of War.”

Goya—a people’s painter

mean if it is really to compre-
hend human experience as well
as making records — the capa-
city to look steadily and with com-

- passion at life as it truly is, then

Goya is not only the supreme
realist, but the very cornerstone
of possible painting for the world
in which we live,

If he shows’ us less of what
is possible in the world we hope
to make, this is a matter of
history.

His greatest works were pain-
ted in a decade of despair and
torment and disillusion, under
the cruel shadow of political and
religious reaction. ©

But he made no compromise
with either fashion or tradition in
finding equivalents in paint and
print for what he had seen and
experienced,

To speak of Goya like this is
not to prescribe imitation as the
condition of excellence in paint-
ing. The work of half a dozen
of his followers shows how
great a gap there may be between
the original artist and his most
convinced follower.

* * *

Painting, for this toughest of
individuals, became in the latter
half of his life, implicity, a social
matter,

It would be wrong to go to this
exhibition and shut our eyes to
the social implications of Goya’s
art; but it would be as wrong not
to go seeking experience of the
wonderful power of painting
from the hand of a master,

—Charles M orris
(Br. Daily Worker)

‘Dekadas’ growing

he proposal to bring the

unions of Soviet writers,
artists, actors, composers and
other workers in the fields ofthe
arts and literature together in
a closely cooperating federation,
with joint club rooms where they
can meet and discuss what are,
after all, common problems, has
not yet been carried into life,
But practical steps in that direc-
tion are already being taken,

Last week, together with a
group of other correspondents, I.
listened to a group of 10 pro-
minent figures in arts and let-
ters describe their 10-day visit
in the Asian Soviet republic of
Uzbekistan, They were among
the 250 Russian ‘‘stars’? who
went to present concerts, give
readings, show films, organize
art exhibits, and to hold talks
during the ‘‘dekada’’(10 days)
dedicated to popularization of
Russian literature and arts in
the fraternal eastern republic.

Such ‘‘dekadas’? of cultural
fraternization between the vari-
ous national republic and nation-
alities in the USSR are not new.
Recently, for example, there was.
a very warmly welcomed festival

of Lithuanian-Ukrainian literary
exchange, At one time annual
dekadas of the various republics

.in Moscow brought the finest

Centennial Target
1967

There is a land

Where wealth is naught
The land that bred

The Cosmonaut

Where Valya soars
Her people’s pride
_And every girl

Is starry eyed,

We have a land

As good as theirs

Make it a land

That dreams and dares,

—J.S. Wallace

in USSR

talents fr6m each of the Soviet
nations to the capital in what
was a truly glorious display,

What is new is that in the
present dekadas, such as the
Russian one in Uzbekistan, a
regular *‘army’’ of workers is
sent to what we sometimes hear
disdainfully and insultingly called
**the sticks’’,

They are gathered together
from all branches of literary and
artistic pursuits, and for 10days
they go to every nook and cranny _
of the republic they are visiting,

-meeting personally with and ‘‘de-

livering’’ to practically the entire
population (they split up in three
groups to do it), and at the same
time learning about those
people’s life and work—yes, and
what they want to read and to
see in movies, on the stagé or
on canvas,

Other dekadas are being plan-
ned for 1964, They are an excel-
lent means for the drawing
together, and for cultural
exchange, which enriches both
visitors and hosts between the
various nations that make up
this vast country.

—John Weir

January 10, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9.