ae TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor — RITA WHYTE, Business Manager. EDITORIAL PAGE Comment Published weekly by the Tribune Publishing Company Ltd. at Room 6, 426 Main Street, Vancouver 4, B.C. — MArine 5288 Canada and British Commonwealih countries (except Australia), 1 year $3.00, 6 months $1.60. Australia, U.S., and all other countries, 1 year $4.00, 6 months $2.50. Authorized as second class mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa Printed by Union Printers Ltd., 550 Powell Street, Vancouver 4, B.C. Tom McEwen FOREIGN visitors to the Soviet Union, whether they be British lords, Indian artists, tradé unionists, farmers, medical Scientists, housewives, or just small fry editors like myself, should all be in a bit of a quandary. .On the one hand, while visiting the Soviet Union everyone without excep- tion is treated with the utmost courtesy and kindness, subjected to a lot of over- eating, opera and ballet, and given every aid to see what they want to see. Even the British parliamentary delegation, Which included four noble lords, veri- ed these on-the-spot observations. On the other hand, it looks as though every one who visits the Soviet Union or other areas of the socialist world is just a plain sucker. Instead of spending time and money on such tours it seems we €an get all the “information” needed on the USSR for one. nickel bye just fol- lowing some of the bright columnists of our “free” press who produce “inside information” on the Soviet Union which neither the foreign visitor nor the Soviet _ People could ever dream of. A couple of shining examples. Wil- liam Ryan, whose syndicated foreign hews analyses appear in one of our local - Papers, has discovered that the Rus- Sians, following the lead of the great Russian scientist Pavlov, are engaged in a new and horrible plot: — to produce Mass neurosis in the Western world. According to Ryan, when the Rus- Sians talk about “co-existence,” that means they are out to liquidate capital- ism. When they make “warlike noises” about West European defense that obvi- ously means they want “peace.” And phen they say “da” (yes), that means ey mean “nyet” (no). : Ryan then goes into some detail on avlov’s alleged experiments in the. pro- duction of neurosis among dogs in order to emphasize that, by the same treat- Ment, the Russian aim to turn this con- tinent into a land of gibbering idiots. No one will deny the existence of a high state of neurosis bordering on in- Sanity which prevails 6n this continental bastion of our.“Free World.” But why blame the Russians for the neurosis of Dulles, MeCarthy and company which hangs over us like a locust blight? — “Another Yankee, this one: a Frisco _ Police lieutenant named Nicolini with &@ flair for sewer journalism, comes for- ward as an “authority” on Russia. It Would appear, according ta Nicolini, that the “Kremlin has issued orders to a0 Tse-tung to plant every available acre in China with poppy seed. The pur- Pose of this remarkable “order” is obvi- us: “the Kremlin is so anxious for the free world to be saturated with opium and its deadly derivatives” that Mao has Just got to suspend all other production and get into the “poppy” business in a 1S way. ae oa ‘As his “authoritative source” Nicolini Quotes “, |. the United States Western Intelligence (?) Command which has de- tailed on-the-spot findings” on the Krem- lin’'s “orders” to China! 9 top off his neurosis, our cop- turned-columnist tells us that the chief reason the Chinese people don’t like: Chiang Kai-shek is because that US. Stooge “cracked down on the opium traffic.” That is like saying that gang- Ster Al Capone spent his time cracking wn on gangsterism. These are only two samples of the ‘things one misses when visiting the Soviet Union. Thesé warm-hearted and lendly folk, proud of their great social- ist achievements, just don’t resemble i any shape or form the “real Russia” aS seen through the eyes of “Free World” columnists or “opium-saturated” ankee cops. For this we can all be ~ duly thankful. ’ os inne ‘US. is guilty in Formosa HEN warmongers run amok W. tiny spark can start a world conflagration. ' The stage for the First World War had been set years before its outbreak. It neeeded only an “‘in- cident’” to touch it off. The assas- sination of an archduke furnished the spark. Similarly with the Second World War. It just required an incident.’” Umbrella-toting Neville Chamberlain provided that by his deal at Munich with Hitler. Today the concentration of U.S. naval and air forces in Chin- ese waters to ‘‘defend’’ the cor- rupt Chiang Kai-shek regime on Formosa could provide the “‘in- cident’’ to ignite a world conflict. There are dangerous incendiaries in the U.S. today yearning to ap- ply the spark. A perjurer ANY union halls throughout Canada are deplorably lacking in interior decoration. In most union centres there is little more ‘than the local charter on the walls, relieved perhaps by a long-past con- vention.’ The case of Harvey Matusow sug- gests a new decorative — and edu-— cational — theme, that of display- ing the pictures of labor renegades. who have lied their fellow men to prison and death, and then repent- ed of their perjury. _ Harvey. Matusow, renegade from the U.S. Communist party, became one of the U.S. Justice Depart- ment’s “expert witnesses” on com- munism, or, as it is better known in the labor movement, a hired stoolpigeon. igen On, Matusow’s perjured evidence, an American Mine-Mill leader, Clin- ton E. Jencks, was sentenced to five years in prison for alleged violation of the infamous Taft-Hartley Act. On many previous occasions this same Matusow had appeared before U.S. Congressional witch-hunts to railroad militant workers and union leaders into prison. The FBI re- garded Matusow as a “professional witness” of a high order. China’s right to Formosa is es- - tablished by a thousand years of history. The de facto U.S. occupa- tion is maintained by force. All the specious arguments of the Eisenhower administration cannot hide the fact that U.S. actions in Formosa violate U.S. pledges. As such they are illegal. More, they constitute flagrant provocation that merits the strongest con- demnation of the United Nations. The St. Laurent government in- dicates that it is reluctant to accept the full U.S. position, but it is still more reluctant to oppose the U.S. Instead, it seeks everywhere for a solution except where one is to be found in voicing the overwhelming demand of. the Canadian people upon the U.S.: Get out of For- -mMmosda. ssa i confesses” Now, Matusow has confessed in sworn affidavits that in the Jencks and other cases he consciously and deliberately lied; that his evidence in the Jencks trial was a tissue of falsehood. Not only that, but con- science-stricken Matusow has writ- ten a book entitled False Witness in which it seems he has chronicled the whole unsayory career of a pro- fessional perjurer. The same kind of lying buried Tom Mooney for more than twenty — years in a federal prison; it sent the Sacco and Vanzetti to the electric chair, and 26 years later it accom- lished the martyrdom -of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Today hundreds ’ of America’s best sons and daugh- ters are in prison on the perjured evidence of professional witnesses. And this foul disease of professional perjury is now appearing in Can: ada, in the labor movement of Van- couver. A union hall decorated with the pictures of some of these conscience- stricken Harvey Matusows would serve as an educational refresher to union men that a volume of perjur- ed “evidence” is poor compensation for a wrecked union, even with a repentent fink thrown in! Hal Griffin P in the Arctic, where the waters of Canada’s greatest river empty into the ocean most Canadians have never seen, the government has taken a de- cision which may be as fraught with significance for the future as was the founding of the infant city of Vancouver four generations ago. Aklavik, the little settlement in the vast Mackenzie Delta 120 airline miles above the Arctic Circle, is to be moved to a new site. In itself the project is no great un- dertaking. We are only doing in a small way what the Soviet Union has been doing in a big way for years over the entire extent of its Arctic territories. The fact that we are doing anything at all is more important for the future than the present. It shows what could be done. : % 5° 3 $3 Over a 40-year period Aklavik has grown into our largest Arctic settle- ment, yet it is still no more than some 400 people, whites, Eskimos and Indians. From the brief order of its main street, a board walk fronting its few government buildings, trading posts and hotels, it straggles along a tongue of land jutting into the Mackenzie River until the last of its shacks and tents is lost in the immensity of the delta. Every year, at Easter and again over the Canada Day holiday, its permanent population is swollen by hundreds of Eskimos and Indians. The Eskimos come from Tuk-tuk, the summer port on the coast, and from Banks Island, entire families of them, to lounge around Pef- fer’s and Kost’s hotels and consume huge quantities of ice cream. The Indians come from other Mackenzie River posts. The talk then is of furs — fox, lynx, beaver, but above all muskrats, on which the economic life of the com- munity depends. Permafrost is Aklavik’s biggest prob- lem—a problem that Soviet scientists have overcome by controlled thawing, incidentally. As the frozen mud on which they are built thaws beneath them the houses sink. The difficulty of installing sewers poses the constant danger of epidemics. So over the next two years the government will move the settlement to a better site on the east channel of the Mackenzie, 33 miles away, where there is space for an airfield, gravel for streets and a natural slope for water and sewer systems. : Here, when we have a govegnment that reflects our aspirations, an Arctic city will arise some day. ¢ There have been and still are dream- ers at Aklavik who have endeavored to give substance to their. dreams — men like Dr. L. D. Livingstone, who main- tained a dairy herd there for some years, and Father Biname, who has proven for himself what Soviet scien- tists have demonstrated on a large scale, that fruits and vegetables can be grown in the thawed muck during the brief Arctic summer. But the gov- ernment that.would give full scope to eh dreams has yet to be brought into eing, <4 _ Out of the huge sums we are spend- ing on war preparations there may come a better appreciation of our Arctic ter- ritories—if we don’t discover too late that the U.S., on the pretext of defend- Ing us from the Soviet Union, has seiz- ed them for itself. How much better if those sums were spent on developing our Arctic, asserting our sovereignty and providing ‘an opportunity and a challenge for our youth! : PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 11, 1955 — PAGE 5 2