Reject Brussels war sprouts
as Claxton’s menu for 1951

HE recent meeting at Brussels of the At-
lantic war pact countries adopted a “plan”.
Representing the Canada of finance capital,
Defense Minister Brooke Claxton accepted
this “plan”, and did the honors in nominating
General Eisenhower to take over its supreme
command — to fill the role of a European
MacArthur. :

What does this “plan” involve and how
will it affect Canadians? First, it provides
for rearming Western Germany, for recruit-
ing a quarter of a million or more West Ger-
man soldiers under the titular leadership of
Hitler’s generals and storm troop (SS) feuhr-
ers, who will take their orders from an
American supreme command. It also means
that the sacred international covenants of
Yalta and Potsdam have been reduced to the
proverbial “scrap of paper.” but this time by
a Truman rather than a Kaiser or a Hitler.

By adoption of this Brussels “plan,”
Nazi war guilt is automatically ‘cancelled.
The verdicts of Nuremberg will be wiped
out, the slate of Nazi crimes cleaned in prep-
aration for new crimes. The new Himmlers
and Goerings, and the old Krupps and Thys-
sens will be restored to fyll equality in the
Atlantic pact “community of free’ nations,”
and the Nazi brass, with their social demo-
cratic allies of the Schumacher school, to-
gether with the Vatican-controlled Adenauer
“wovernment” of Bonn, take over the job of
full war mobilization against the Soviet Un-
ion.

The Brussels conference of the Atlantic
Pact Council is the final proof—if indeed
such proof is needed,,that the Atlantic pact
was and is a pact for war, and against peace.
It also serves to point up the desperate plight
the “free democracies of the West’ find

themselves in, when they have to seek as.

their allies all the Nazi and reactionary
scum, upon whom only a few short years.ago
Churchill’ used “to pour “his vials “of” well-
feigned wrath. Those “evil N-a-a-zies” are
now to be our “allies,”-in'a war to make the
world safe for Wall Street!

What will Canada’s role be in this Brus-
sels “plan” for war on the Soviet Union?
Defense Minister Claxton doesn’t say—open-
ly—but he doesn’t have to. The answer is
already all too obvious. As a signatory to the
Atlantic pact and its subsequent conventions,
Canada is committed to contributing a “to-
ken” army. But our Washington paymasters,
smarting under the realization of utter defeat

$ ‘democracy’ in Greece ©

NE has only to read any. daily newspaper
’ from 1946 down to the present day to
appreciate how assiduously the capitalist
press has cultivated the illusion that “demo-
eracy” is now firmly established in Greece.
‘With the aid of British troops. Yankee arm-
-aments and military personnel, Greek fas-
cists and Marshall Plan dollars, to say noth-
ing of the aid given by a back-stabbing Tito,
Churchill can now recite in his best Shake-
sperian manner: “Democracy has been pre-
served in that ancient cradle of culture”.

The majority of the Greek people, those
who fought fascism rather than colloborate
with it. have different views on the matter

M.P. Christakus, editor of the daily
newspaper Demokratikos and a member of
parliament for Athens. is getting a genuine
sample of this “democracy” lauded by Chur-
chill and his imperialist cohorts. Under a spe-
cial decree adopted in 1947,.Christakos has
been summonsed. before an extraordinary
court-martial, while the Greek fascist govern-
ment moves to suppress his paper.

The member of parliament for Athens
‘is charged with the following “crimes”:

@ Allowing to be published in Demokratikos
a report on the Second World Peace Cong-
ress. :

@ Publishing the Stockholm Peace Appeal.
@ For publishing that the Korean people

in Korea, want more than “token” armies
for thefr next mad adventure. In return for
fat war contracts the U.S. warmongers want
mass armies of cannon fodder... “not Ame-
rican boys, but the boys of other countries
we arm”:

“Kites” are already flying out from Ot-
tawa designed to prepare the Canadian peo-
ple for what comes next, as a direct result
of Claxton’s commitments at Brussels. ‘“Can-
ada committed to keeping up with her allies”.
“Compulsory military training seen within
the year.” So run the opening preludes in the
daily press.

The schools and universities of the na-
tions are already being used to condition the
mind of young Canada for military service.
The hysteria of “civil defense,” coupled with
noisy clamor for military conscription, is
spreading across Canada. Economic ‘and so-
cial pressures of all sorts are being applied
to young people, from the working class
youth looking for a job of some sort to the
university student—all are being cajoled or
threatened to “get into the armed forces
and see the world.” When a young Cana-
dian counters with the idea that he wants
“to, live and let live in peace,” he is regarded
as “subversive”! In Toronto during Christ-
mas week, Churchill Mann, one of Claxton’s
top warmongering and conscription propa-
gandists, went so far as to “deplore the sing-
ing of Christmas carols” because they put
too much emphasis upon peace. and made his
job of providing cannon fodder more difficult.

One of the key jobs facing all progres-
sive people in 1951: is to mobilize mass opposi-
tion to the Brussels “planners”. To keep our
schools and universities free from the evil
virus of militarism and war, and make them
great youthful bastions of peace. To defeat
those exponents of military conscription and
war, who would compel Canadian youth to
outrage Canada’s war dead, by having to ac-
cept as “allies” the .dregs of Hitler’s) Nazi

X

Wehrmacht or the sadist fascists of Japan.

selected by MacArthur.

The ideal for 1951 must be patterned
on the Sheffield-Warsaw concept of a better
world, where negotiation, tolerance, and the
determination to preserve peace is para-
mount.

Canada’s youth demand jobs, opportunity,
the right to life, to make the second halt
of this decisive century theirs. Claxton has
committed them to goosestep to a new
Horst Wessel song, sung’ in Brussels but
produced in Washington.

are taking the offensive against Yankee and
foreign aggressors.

® For allowing to be published the memor-
able August 17, 1944 struggle against Ger-
man atrocities, when thousands of Greek
anti-fascist fighters were murdered in cold
blood or herded into German “work’’ camps.

© For calling for an amnesty for 118 Greek
trade unions leaders, under sentence of death
for the “crime” of calling upon the Greek peo-
ple to organize a national movement for
peace.

These “charges” against a leader of the
Greek people and the suppression of papers
like Democratikos for giving them promin-
ence, is a much better yardstick of the “dem-
ccracy” imposed upon the Greek people by
Anglo-American imperialism, than any of
Churchill’s histrionic phrasemongering.

The Greek-American Tribune calls upon

all progressive organizations and the pro-—

gressive labor press to vigorously protest
this attack on one of the very genuinely
democratic papers in Greece, and the perse-
cution of a couragous editor and parliament-
ary spokesman for the people by the Greek
government. Affiliate unions of the WFTU
in Canada should urge upon that body to
make the strongest’ possible protest to the
Athens government against this latest out-
rage on the democratic rights of the people.

2

pee Be

TOM McEWEN

As We See lt

With the Christmas deluge of genuine and ersatz goodwill getting

back to normal levels, it is now possible to survey some of the
damage left in the wake of ethe flood. For most of our little folk
from about two to eight years, Santa Claus is a very lovable old man,
a concept fully shared by their mothers and dads, and often preserved
at no little cost and sacrifice. But for the more sophisticated folk
of eight to eighty years, the concept of Santa as a benevolent old
saint is beginning to show the effects of commercialism, plus the
wear and tear of cold-war ideology,

It can be said for Santa’s 1950 visit—for North America at least—
that aside from the super-duper high-pressure commercialism which
accompanies Santa on his annual trip “outside,” as
the Yukoners term it, that something new has
been added. We haven’t all the scripts of the
hybrid propagandists of Wall Street ready to hand
to quote from verbatim, but it became very ob-
vious from most of the Hollywood soap operas
this Christmas that Santa had been recruited
during his brief stay with us to play the role of
Number 1 anti-Sovicteer for aggressive Yankee im-
perialism,

“All things are sold,” said the English poet
Shelley, “the very light of Heaven is venal,” if it
brings grist to the profit mills of the warmakers.
Shelley might have added to his list “even the pure conscience of an
innocent child.” x
/ When the “kulturbund” of dollar imperialism monopolizes Santa
Clause to give a 1950 rendition of the ageless story of the Nativity—
decent humanity gets a super-charged ideological stink bomb!

The Proctor and Gamble soap opera, with Red Skelton starring,
crackled across the air waves with Santa saying something like this:
“You know, little folks, I had a bad accident this year on my way
down from the North Pole. My lead reindeer Rudolph ran smack
into a heavy Iron Curtain. My, my, what a terrible experience. It
knocked him completely out. And on the other side of that horrible
Tron Curtain: no happy, laughing children, no Christmas trees, no
carols, no gifts, no Santa Claus. Only hunger, fear, persecution,
prisons. Only cruel people who want to make the world suffer with
another war.” And so on, : 3

The guy who pinches the pennies from a blind man’s cup is a
nobleman compared to the human dregs who traffic in this brand of
“artistic” filth, It is designed to poison the minds of innocent
children—and gullible adults. It is revolting to every sense of com-
mO0n decency when broadcast in the guise of Santa Claus.

(if this column has erred in the exact quotation we shall be glad
to make a correction provided Proctor and Gamble will forward us
an authentic script of this particular broadcast. But we don’t think
they will.) Meantime, it takes a lot of soap to wash that kind of dirt
from the memory of an impressionable youngster. And it is so

utterly false that one is astounded at the gall of the radio soap ~

sponsors and “artists” for attempting to put it over.
)

It is well known that in many countries, the Soviet [Union in-
cluded; old calendar dates still mark many religious and semi-religious
festivals similar to ours of the so-called West, but at different times.
In the north of Scotland for instance, we seldom paid much attention
to Christmas or even New Year’s Day, but celebrated in good old
Scottish style the festival of “Auld Yule”, one week after New Year's
Day.

But the cold war cum hot war profiteers are not interested
in such mundane matters of fact and usage. Rather their’ interest
lies in monopolizing Santa Claus, first of course, to make the cash
register soar, but mainly as a progandist for war.

Around the first week of each new year, (except when they
were locked in grim battle—our battle— with four-fifths of the
Hitler Wehrmacht), the Russian ° people, men and women and
children celebrate the festival of Father Frost. Now Father Frost
in the Soviet Union looks exactly like Santa Claus, acts like him,
and has a mass appeal to Soviet children, just as Santa has in our
country. For all we know they could be twins, born of a common
ideology, peace and goodwill. —

And on a percentage basis there are probably more Father Frost
trees, gifts, toys, and genuine goodwill towards their fellowmen in
Russian homes than there are in this last tottering stronghold of
“free enterprise”, already reduced to the extremity of having to
transform Santa Claus into a warmonger in order to survive
a little longer. a /

In innumerable radio broadcasts during this Yuletide season,
interspersed with the magic qualities of certain brands of tooth
paste, soap, cereals, cigarettes and mis-directed disinfectants, you
could hear a Marshallized Santa Claus exhorting all and sundry to
“keep our house and our nation free from the menacing designs of
international communism”, to “stand united against the evil schemes
of the Kremlin”, and go on. ;

“Peace on earth” was geared to the ghoulish satisfaction derived

from the biggest stock-pile of atom bombs, and other material of
human destfuction. “Goodwill towards men” was reserved exclusively
for those who were ready and willing, without demur, to goosestep
to the discordant war music of Washington,
_ Some of the Christmas broadcasts revealed Santa piously fulminat-—
ing against aggression and the need to “preserve our free democratic
way of life’, neatly ignoring the fact that there are no Koreans,
Chinese or other foteign troops on American or Canadian soil as
aggressors, but just the reverse, me :

Perhaps someone should have slipped Santa the full text of
the historic address of General Wu Hsiu-chuan to the UN. It would
have, given Santa a refresher course on “peace on earth, goodwill
towards men” and who knows, would perhaps have rescued him from
the unsavory and despictable role of Yankee redbaiter which no
man (or saint) of peace, goodwill and decency can afford to accept.

(A few thousand letters from outraged citizens to the propa-
ganda agencies of dollar imperialism on the use of Santa Claus as

a warmonger might make the saint's trip outside in 1951 a bit more
pleasant.)

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 5, 1951 — PAGE 8