Review * EDITORIAL PAGE x Comment

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WITH a federal election ap:

| Proaching, opposition parties
ee reported to be looking around
i for issues with which to attack
the government.
They need look no further
| than its foreign policy.
@ The Liberal regime has de-
eeloped a theory that Canada
( #8 no other course than to fol-
pW the whims of Washington,
ome hell or high water.
» And if the Eisenhower Doc:
witine means what U.S. Secretary
rot State John Foster Dulles says
tt means, hell or high water it
Will be,

|. This government signed away
its right to independent action
j™ any European involvement
F When it signed the NATO pact
ten years ago. As this news:
# Paper pointed out at ‘the time,
TO automatically commits

c to war should a NATO

“Ountry insist.

Now we are automatically
fommitted to get into a Middle
yt war should the Eisenhower
) ~Xtrine stir one up.
External Affairs Minister
_ ~“tson told the House of Com-
Pinons on J anuary 14 that it was

.."Nrealistic and unprofitable

Mgoism’’ to suggest that Can-
da could follow a policy other
than one made in the U.S.

It was difficult to imagine a
Teally critical situation involv-
NM war or peace, he declared,
Where the government's view
Would diverge widely from
Washington’s attitude.

i ashington’s attitude today
Sa € Eisenhower Doctrine, a
" of Republican Truman Doc’

|
r

| resident authority to send U.S.
J0ps into the Middle East

Whenever he felt it necessary—

?p fe e

acific Tribune
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year,

ones

- Where it leads us

on the pretext, as ih the case of
the Truman Doctrine, of “‘Com-
munist aggression’ from within
or without. It also gives him
$200 million to spend as he sees
fit to buy up whatever loyalties
he can, as the United States tries
to replace Britain and France as
the colonial masters of the Arab
world.

When Dulles explained the
whole thing to sundry Congres
sional committees, he made it
clear that it automatically com-
mitted NATO, SEATO and
Baghdad Pact ‘countries. Ask-
ed if he had consulted any of
them he replied No, then add-
ed: ‘The United States ought
not to have its policies fixed by
consultations and agreements
with other nations.”

That includes Pearson and
Canada.

bes xt it

Can Pearson declare what
would happen to us, what Wash-
ington would do, if Canada were
to advocate:

+ A European security pact
involving the countries of
NATO and the Warsaw pact?
Or a nonaggression pact be-
tween the two?

+ Support for Sweden's pro-

SPEIDEL DOUBLETAKE

moratorium of H-bomb tests?

+ Recognition of People’s
China?

+ An end to foreign inter
vention. in the Middle East,
coupled with UN action to settle
the Israel-Egypt dispute peace-
fully? :

+ An‘end to the war in
Algeria and the recognition of
that country’s independence?

These are aspects of an inde-
pendent policy which, to quote
Pearson again, is ‘‘Canadian,
based on Canadian consideration
of Canadian values and Cana-
dian interests.”’

To follow blindly in the foot-
steps of the Eisenhower Doctrine
is to teeter on the brink of war
—as so many have warned in
recent years.

Hine, which would give the.

posal in the UN for a two-year

Griffin

SEE that Finance Minister Wal-
| ter Harris is exhorting us all
to save our money in order to beat
inflation. By no remarkable co-
incidence, the same advice is be-
ing offered by James Muir, presi-
dent of the Royal Bank of Cana-
da, which is the institution re-
sponsible for all those thoughtful
little homilies about thrift on
our billboards.

Now, it might be concluded
that because Harris. speaks for
the federal government and Muir
for big business the two are of
one mind. So they are. It’s in the
definition of saving that both
government and business betray
the schizophrenia which reflects

ir dilemma.
"Be business seems to be of two
minds about saving. There’s the

viewpoint expressed by Muir, who
complains that the banks are co-
operating with the government
in enforcing a tight money policy
but that the finance companies
and credit unions are recklessly
helping the rest of us to strangle
ourselves in debt. :

There’s the other viewpoint
epitomised by the big depart-
ment store flier I have on my
desk which urges thrifty shop-
pers to “rush down and save” the
money they haven’t got by ex-
tracting still another payment
from pay cheques they have yet
to earn. : :

The same schizophrenic ap-
proach extends to government.

Premier W. A. C. Bennett dis-.
agrees with Harris as usual. He
thinks the solution lies not in our
saving more but in our having
more to spend. With an eye to the
coming federal election, he
shrewdly calculates that every-
one will applaud him for this. And
so they will — until they stop to
think that Bennett is basing our
provincial economy largely on
the proceeds of the five percent
sales tax.

Bennett has to be an exponent
of the “save by spending” school.
As a retail hardware merchant
he may get stuck with the credit

but as minister of finance he col-
lects in cash.

There are, it seems to me, sev-
eral flaws in Harris’ reasoning.

It’s rather late in the day for
him ‘to be talking about saving.
Those of us who emerged with
a few dollars in the bank from
the financial ice age of the mid-
forties, with its wage freeze ec-
onomy, know what happened to
those dollars in the political ice
age of the fifties, with its cold
war economy.

The result is that most of us
have nothing left to save unless
we want to stop eating. Infla-
tion has already beaten us.

It can be pointed out that Har-
ris is the last person to be telling
us to save our money. To use a
homily which seems to be in dis-
favor with both the St. Laurent
government and the Royal Bank
of Canada at the moment, char-
ity begins at home. And contrary
to the opinion expressed by some
rugged individualists every time
a national health scheme or in-
creased pensions is mentioned,
the government is not operating
a charity.

Far from it, the amount the
government spends on: its arms
program leaves most of us in the
hole — the hole in our pockets.

FEBRUARY 8, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 7