oo oad eee

BOOKS

Honest man faces up
to truth about war

TWO YEARS ago a. war cor-
respondent came back from Ko-
rea, his head bursting with the
horror that he had witnessed;
horror perpetrated by the United
States against a defenseless peo-
ple.

His name was Reginald Thomp-
son and his book, Cry Korea, was
the first to tear away the camou-
flage of lies and deceit with
which the U.S. had tried to hide
the truth of what its forces were
doing in Korea.

The account he gave in that
book was all the more damning
because the author himself had
for long been deceived by these
lies. When he realised what was
happening he wrote in terms that
were bound to offend those whose
attitude was support of the US.
and its policy at any price.

Now in a second book, 9°A.B.
(obtainable in Vancouver at the
People’s Cooperative Bookstore,
337 West Pender, price’ $1.50)
Reginald Thompson tells what
happened to him as a result of
that book, for what people said to
him about Cry Korea, caused him
to think further and write 9 A.B.
—the ninth year of the Atom
Bomb era.

“J did not understand when
I wrote these things,” says
Thompson, referring to his
earlier book, “that they implied
a personal conflict which would
take many months to face and
resolve.

“I did not know that a great
many of my countrymen had
accepted the position of Brit-
ain as a satellite state, quite

powerless to act and accepting
world war as a fact.

“J encountered with horror
an abject fifth column of des-
pair and dishonor, and its
spokesmen dared to call my
words of faith in my country
and my rejection of war ‘treas-
on.’

“In the months since I re-
turned from war.I have had to
face the results of my think-
ing. In my innocence I had

thought it enough to be a good ~

reporter, It is not enough.”

Anyone who knows the dung-
hill ethics of the commercial
press—whether in London, New
York or Toronto—will know what
it must have cost this former
London Daily Telegraph corres-
pondent to write such words.

For as Thompson has discover-
ed, it doesn’t matter how good a
reporter a man may be, let him
once dare tell the truth on a
matter on which editorial policy
has been laid down and he will
find himself without a friend.

This book is Thompson’s
answer to the atom-bomb maniacs
and his reply to the “abject
fifth column” which is prepared
in word and deed to sell the
country down the road to the
U.S. warmongers. ,

It is a very confused book in
parts and one wonders how
Thompson squares his panegyrics
on the empire—“this great fed-
eration of peoples embracing
millions of Asiatics’—with what
is happening in Malaya, Kenya
and British Guiana.

But it is above all a passion-

PROVINCIAL LEADER \

Monday, January II -- 10:15 p.m.

LABOR PROGRESSIVE

PARTY

CBC NETWORK

New novel on Seamen

Canadian seamen, members of
the fighting Canadian Seamen’s

Union (shown above in a demon-
stration in London), and British
dockers are the people around
whom Jack Lindsay (below), Brit-
ish novelist, has woven his new
novel, Rising Tide, which follows
Betrayed Spring as second in a
series. The book is expected to
be available here next month.

ately sincere book, and, as Thomp-
son himself says:

“Whatever your views, you
cannot avoid the challenge of
the atomic bomb and weapons
of mass annihilation.

“It is not enough to stand
on the sidelines. You cannot
wash your hands of this affair.
You can reject mass annihila-
tion or accept it. You cannot
evade responsibility.”

This book is a challenge to all
those who may have thought they
could shrug off their own. per-
sonal, individual responsibility
for the failure of their govern-
ment so far to take its stand
against the atom-bomb maniacs.

The issues of peace and war
are presented with searing sim-
plicity. The last chapter is a re-
port as it might be written after
the event in a newspaper—if a
newspaper still existed—of what
London was like on the evening
of the second day after three
atom bombs had exploded over
it—SAM RUSSELL.

STANTON
MUNRO & DEAN
BARRISTERS :
SOLICITORS
NOTARIES

Suite 515
FORD BUILDING
(Corner Main and Hastings)
193 East Hastings
MArine 5746

Soviet ballet, opera
artists in new film

-WHAT DO YOU want in a
movie show? Music, color, gran-
deur, gaiety, beauty? Then you
shouldn’t miss The Grand Con-

cert, the Soviet. magicolor film
which opens at Hastings-Odeon
Theatre here this Monday, Janu-
ary 11, ‘

It will be a great day for Van-
couver when an exchange of Can-
adian and Soviet cultural dele-
gations enables us to see some of
the great Soviet artists on our
own stages, as the people of Lon-
don and other British cities were
-privileged to see them recently.

A film cannot have the im-
mediacy of a stage performance
but, as The Grand Concert does,
it offers the partial compensation
of showing the artists performing
in a full setting rather than
against a makeshift background,
which is all that Vancouver, at
this moment, could provide.

Included in the magnificent pro-
gram. of opera, ballet, folk danc-
ing, choral and, orchestral selec-
tions of The Grand Concert is the
incomparable Ulanova in Proko-
fiev’s ballet, Romeo and Juliet; a
scene from Glinka’s opera, Ivan
Susanin, with Mark Reizen sing-
ing the aria, “You Will Come, My
Dawn”; and Marina Semyonova
and Vladimir Preobrazhensky in
a rehearsal of Tchaikowsky’s bal-
let, Swan Lake.

* * *

A VICIOUS moral attitude to
colored people mars All the

Brothers Were Valiant, a saga =
involving stubborn New England- =
ers, family pride, a whale hunt, =
mutiny on a sailing ship and a 2
hunt for a fortune in pearls in =
which nearly all concerned are Z

killed.

Stewart Granger goes ashore in
the Gilbert Islands drunk and is

%S

immediately marked down as her
own by the most beautiful island
girl present.

Granger subsequently falls in
with a pearl-hunting expedition
during which he makes no at-
tempt to stop his companions
cheating and killing islanders
who work for them.

All this he expiates by helping
Robert Taylor to put down a
mutiny he himself has instigated.

In this sort of moral atmos-
phere it is not surprising that
Taylor goes through his part as
Granger’s more respectable broth-
er with a concentrated scowl that
seldom leaves his face.

* * *

NOW GOING the rounds is a
smear piece involving Richard
Widwark, Jean Peters and
Thelma Ritter, called Pick-up on
South Street.

This crude piece of moronic
propaganda sets out to establish
the proposition that crooks are
high-minded and noble citizens
se long as they hate Communists.
The logical implication of this,
of course,:is that honest citizens
who hate crooks are probably
dangerous Reds.

Considering the personal re-
_ cords of some members of the
UnAmerican Activities Commit-
tee, past and present, this is
doubtless what they would like
to have people believe.

SUMAN

PENDER q

AUDITORIUM

(Marine Workers)

339 West Pender
LARGE & SMALL HALLS

FOR RENTALS
Phone PA. 9481

Batten Pa at f

*

SELECTED

WRITINGS

OF.

MAO TSE-TUNG

Authorised English translation
to be completed in five volumes

AVAILABLE JANUARY

Vol.

1921

One
- 1936 -

Covering the period of the
First and Second Revolutionary
Civil Wars :

$1.35

Available in British Columbia at

People’s

Co-operative

Bookstore,

. 337 W. Pender St., Vancouver 3, B.C.

_— |[,AWRENCE

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 8, 1954 — PAGE 8

& WISHART

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