LESLIE MORRIS m June 25, the very day the prime minister announced the Canadian cabinet was taking Part in Korea peace talks, the ‘House of Commons changed the » 800-year-old basic meaning of treason to make it a crime pun- Ishable by death in peacetime. It is the only parliament in the world which has done this. __ The charge of treason can now be laid whether it is alleged to have been committed in.Canada _ 0r-abroad, and whether or not Canada is officially at war. The New Section 74 (i) of the Crimi- Nal Code was aimed at stopping Peace talk in time of peace. The S0vernment made that clear. : Less than '60 MP’s, one quarter ' ©f the House of Commons, were Present to overthrow a common law of 600 years’ standing. No other country has such a Sweeping definition of treason. All other countries make it a _ Wartime crime. It is part of the Common law of Great Britain. It 's in the Constitution of the United States whose farmers (who had themselves commiitted _ treason” in their fight for inde- Vide that two witnesses, to an _ vert act of treason were neces- Sary for a conviction. The government made _ two Changes in Section 74 (i) of the Code, First, treason can be Charged for tan act committed While in or out of Canada.” Second, it is defined now as assisting” not only a declared €nemy with whom Canada is of- -“Aciany at war, as hitherto, but armed forces against whom : Canadian forces are engaged in a hostilities whether or not a state of war exists between Canada -_ 8nd the country whose forces they are ... .” ; Canadian who expresses criticism of a government’ policy which May land us in an undeclared War under the terms of the North _ Atlantic Pact, or any other obli- 8ation which is assumed by a4 United Nations admittedly domi- nated by the United States, could @ charged. : It is aimed at shutting the Mouth of any Canadian. For, What is “assistance”? Advocacy Of peace could be “assistance.” _ Criticism of the Canadian gov- _ €rhment, could be “assistance”. _ The action of Lloyd George in _ the Boer War when he criticized the British government, would _ have been treason. If the Can- adian government sends troops to fight with Nazi generals in &n undeclared war, say against fdian criticized that action, it Prosecution. wie No overt act is defined in the ‘Tew treason laws. It can now be Committed outside Candada, _ Which eliminates the possibility _ f obtaining any witness at all. is defined as “assistance,” which ,Can mean anything the govern- Ment wants it to mean. And above all, it can be committed oe after, parliament has de- L €d war, but if a group of is necessary to send Canadian Gilera into action without any _ Seclaration of war. s Jeoparay, as on 1851, year of the Black > ®ath, when Edward III and the Pendence) were careful to pro- ‘This clearly implies that any cusses € French people, and a Can-. Could be a basis for a “treason” | iberals, the cabinet, thinks that. Very Clanadian is placed in feudal lords of England were . « St. Laurent government changed 600-year old law in considering. their central feudal state and conducting the Hun- dred years’ War with France, treason was defined in the Trea- son Act as consisting of levying war against the King or aiding enemies the Crown was at war with. : This definition held good in- British, Canadian and American law for 600 years. But 60 Can- adians MP’s overthrow the law -in an afternoon. @ Some MP’s were worried but none really fought against this monstrous action. When one of them asked Justice Minister Stuart Garson if any other com- monwealth country had changed the law, he replied: “I—and I am sure I can speak for my staff as well—did not take a poll of what has been done by other members of the commonwealth in this connection, but I, should think it is very questionable in- deed whether these other coun- tries have taken any such action -as we now propose.” One Mp asked Garson if Ex- ternal Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson could be charged under the new section for having said that. communism could not be defeated by military means alone Garson did not answer. In fact, Garson did some fancy side-stepping all afternoon. When Tories. pressed him to put more teeth in\his amendment by speci- fying that treason should include assisting not only the armed forces of a country with whom “we were not at war, but the, . country itself, he refused. to go along and inferred that if that were done; trade might be af- fected. : In other words he is quite will- ing to have a peace advocate or’ a champion of the UN Charter prosecuted for treason and sen- tenced to death, but he leaves the door open for capitalists to trade with a country against whose armed forces Canadians © are fighting. China, for instance. The very government which dis- Mrs. Norah K. Rodd, peace worker who visited the Korean people, as a _ possible candidate for a treason charge, has been under fire by the Tories “for permitting ships flying the Canadian flags and registered in Canada to trade along the China coast. — e : ; No real opposition was put up by CCF MP’s although Hansard reports that Stanley Knowles. of Winnipeg called out, “On divis- ion,” a purely formal disapproval. No actual vote took place. This facing-two-ways attitude is illus- trated by M. J. Coldwell’s re- marks on June 26 before the shameful Garson bill was finally adopted: “Consequently, I should be in- clined to support the minister in letting it stand as it is.” (Cold- well was speaking against Solon Low last-minute amendment along the Tory lines.) “If I were going to» amend it I would want more safeguards in order to make sure. that the powers in the clause could not be abused, as I think they might be.” Coldwell is right. The new treason law can be-.abused. But what did he and, his party do about it? If they had put up a battle “and aroused the labor movement it could have become a public issue and the govern- ment could have been compelled to backwater. It had to retreat on the Criminal Code amend- ment permitting the police to tap gamblers’ phones, and use such information as -evidence. Cold- well spoke at some length on that, but on the second day of the debate when he returned to the House from the West he failed to oppose the treason amendment although the House had gone to it at Salon Low’s request. é , Does Coldwell for a moment think that this amendment is aimed only at Communists? Let him remember that thegman who founded the CCF, J. S. Woods- worth, was charged with sedition ‘for quoting -the pr »phet . Isaiah. In the same Criminal Code Bill the government increased | the maximum penalty for sedition from two to seven years. J. S. Woodsworth fought long and hard to have thé sedition penalty reduced to two years, as it fin- ally was in 1931. > e Tey Mark it well friends. June 25 was a day of destruction of de- mocracy in the House of Com- mons. Not only was the tradi- tional definition of treason destroyed in an attempt to gag free speech about the foreign policy of the government, but police officers were given the zight of search without warrant and a. definition of sabotage was adopted which could lead to 10 years in prison for an innocent act of mischief. — The pity of it is that this step to fascism, this destruction of freedom, was done stealthily, without public outcry. | The League for Democratic Rights sent a deputation to Ot- tawa. The LPP warned that ' steps to war would be accompan- ied by steps to. fascism. This newspaper long ago warned of the coming amendments. But the labor movement, mainly in the hands of right-wing Jeaders, was unaware of what was going on. : In 1919, in 40 minutes, tie House of Commons passed the infamous Section 98 of the Crimi- nal Code. Seventeen years later the Canadian people compelled ‘the government to repeal it. We cannot wait 17 years this time. We must) act now to res- tore the rule of common law by demanding the repeal of this vicious attack upon the freedom to criticize the government peacetime. in DEREK KARTUN s a Polish cartoonist sees the Marshall Plan Where denazification has been carried out fe may seem a little absurd to demonstrate after all this time that the German Democratic Re- public has really been de-Nazi- fied. But in the West the charge is still made that the Nazis have been kept in key jobs in Eastern Germany. This, of course, actually is true of Western Germany. But the picture in the East is totally dif- ferent. In Berlin I asked to visit a town and question citizens on this matter. I was given a map and told to choose. : I chose Chemnitz, a big indus- trial centre which was once a Nazi stronghold. In Chemnitz I asked to see the mayor, the chief of police, the chief magistrate and the educa- tional director. I saw them all. The mayor is. Heinrich Berthel, 54, a former carpenter and ac- tive member of the labor move- ment since he was 14. Berthel was a city councillor before Hitler came to power in 1933. Hitler threw him out and. later jailed him and his wife. As mayor, the Nazis installed a travelling salesman, Walter Schmidt, who personally assisted in the burning of the Chemnitz synagogue and is now serving a life sentence. “We have no Nazis in the ‘ad- ministration,” said Berthel. “There is a law against it.” The chief of police is a lively balding man of 47 named Kar! Beuchel, and by a coincidence -he, too, was a carpenter. He was persecuted by the Gestapo under Hitler. He became police chief in 1948. “We select progressive workers and peasants for the police force,” he said. “Half of our personnel are in their early twenties. “Phe police go in groups to the factories to talk with the workers and ask their opinions about the laws and the way the police enforce them. The work- ers know it is their police force and they trust it.” : The chief magistrate is Paul ‘Siegal. He is only 30. He has 20 magistrates attached to his court. Not one of them was a member of the Nazi party. Nor were any of them public prose- cutors. It contrasts strikingly with Bavaria, in the American zone, where the Americans themselves ‘admitted that 60 percent of the prosecutors had been prosecutors in Hitler’s notorious “People’s Courts.” Co Paul Siegel was formérly a student of chemistry. He went to a legal school in 1945 and be- came a magistrate within a year. Speedy methods were essential its leading » Hitler’s industrialists. 4 There is no greater imaginable | to get the country into working order after the collapse. About half the occupants of the Chemnitz Bench are of work- ing-class origin. @ The director of schools is Kurt Schawohl, 48. He was a teacher from 1928 to 1933, when Hitler fired him because he was a member of the Social Democratic party. “There are 1,350. teachers Chemnitz,” he said, “and none was ever an active Nazi. Only eight percent of the whole teach- ing staff taught during the Nazi regime.” ; The shortage of textbooks has been severe, for they were oblig- ed to throw out almost everything used under the Nazis. With no history books until re- cently, teacher themselves had do in attend briefings, and then dic- tated the necessary texts to the children at the end of each class. As in the universities, I found the slogan: No books rather tham Nazi books. . And I found that inside the © schools everything, possible is being done to eradicate every trace of Nazi ideology which parents, consciously or ‘unconsci- | ously, might pass on to their children. : € ; ; It seemis to me, then, that Chemnitz — or, for the matter, Berlin, Weimar, Leipzig, Rostock or Dresden—affords pretty solid proof of the genuine nature of de- _ Nazification in the German De- | mocratic Republic. Industry affords another proof of the same process. I saw plenty of factories. In each I questioned the directors on their background. Everywhere the story is the same: no Nazis — activities, no truck with Hitler. . And of course in the civil ser-— vice and the government itself you find absolutely no trace of Hitler and his henchmen at all. : The leaders of the government — are all men with a lifelong struggle for democracy to their credit. Many were persecuted by _ ‘Hitler and saw the inside of his jails, : = If the Same were only true of Western Germany, the state of Europe and the world would be altogether more promising. But there the Americans are prepar- ing a war base for the future. For that reason they are using — they must use — the former Junker officers, the former Nazis S.S. men (Hitler Guards), and — contrasts than that between the terrible situation in Western Ger- many and the bright promise of the Democratic Republic. nee ‘PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 13, 1951 — PAGE 9 4