AVE you ever been asked the
question that is the last re-
sort of the argumentative reac-
tionary who has been defeated in
debate, “Why don't- you go to
Russia?” Of course you have!
And I hope you were as well able
to answer it as a couple of school
kids I heard of in the past week.
‘The answers of
these two young-
sters make m&

self about the
old - timers
week or

ago for

part they

ed in our
drive.

They are both high school stud-
ents, one of them-a girl and the
other a boy. Neither of them ever

* misses a chance to drive home the
lessons we should all learn from
the changes that have taken place
in the Soviet Union in the past 30
years.

The girl was asked by her
school teacher, with a vicious note
in his voice, after a discussion of
some phase of life in that coun-
try, that question which is con-
sidered the clincher by the ignor-

*

HUME wrong, Canadian am-

bassador to the United States,
has publicly reproved Tim Buck,
national leader of the Labor-Pro-
gressive Party, for his assertion
that Canada and the United
States are transforming Churchill
into a gigantic base from which
to launch an

opment. Bet then, as thoug

aware of the thousands of people .

between Nome and Goose Bay
whoce could readily prove hima
liar, he raises the oblique argu-
_ ment that the Arctic would never
have been developed at all if it
had not been for war.

“Too often it takes the impetus
of a great war to start or to fur-
ther developments which should
be undertaken in the interests of
peace and progress,” he states.
Only in this last statement does
Wrong come anywhere near the
_ truth and then he uses it to sup-
- port the great hoax that His gov-
ernment is merely engaged in the
peaceful continuation of war-

Undoubtedly he has in mind the

ant, “Why don’t you go to Rus-
sine"

Without a moment’s hesitation
and without batting. an eye, she
answered Scottish fashion, with
another question. Looking him
straight in the eye, she asked,
“Why don’t you go to Spain?” No
legal quibbling or persiflage about
that answer!

The boy was a little more elab-
orate, but his answer to the same
question from his teacher carried
as much punch and was just as
much of a “clincher” as that of
the girl, :

“Well,” he asked the dominie,
“suppose you and I are neigh-
bours. We live in next-door
houses, both of them kind of
broken down. You go to work and
fix yours up. You decorate it, out-
side and in; refurnish it and
make it a very desirable place to
live in. I don’t do a thing to
mine.

“Now, what should I do? Move
into your house or fix up my own
so that it’s as good as yours?”
That school teacher had no an-
swer any more than the other.

After'50 years in the labor
movement it makes me feel proud
that our class produces boys and
girls like these two and as long
as we do, we need have no fear
of the Bob Morrisons, the Hlad-

of northern airfields constructed
during the war. And, if honesty.
is not the lost art it appears to be
among Western diplomats, he
should round out his statement
by recalling that it was the King
government which prevented con-
struction of the Alaska Highway
in the years before the war be-
cause it would infringe on Can-
adian sovereignty,

Where are those ardent defend-
ers of our sovereignty now that
American troops are quartered on
Canadian soil, governed by their
own laws, the advance guard of
the American army of occupation
that will be “invited” into Can-
ada should a third world war be
provoked? They are apparently
otherwise occupied in trying to
superimpose the American eagle
on the new Canadian flag.

6

}™ TOOK a war to build the

Alaskan Highway. But does
Wrong or anyone else seriously
contend that the highway as con-
structed, its route dictated by
military considerations, is an ef-
fective substitute for the planned
development “in the interests of
peace and progress” which his

government and such monopolies
as the CPR blocked in 1938? :

These latter-day pioneers of the
North, wearing American and Ca-
nadian insignia on their Arctic
battledress, will undoubtedly learn
a great deal about living in the
Dominion’s northern reaches, But
the peaceful application of this

OH

ee Nee

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uns and all the other riff-raff
sophomorons who earn their
bread and butter at the cost of
moral integrity.
€

AT practically the same time as

this issue comes out, two pic-
tures will be showing to Vancou-
ver audiences, both described as
“spy” films One of them is a
genuine spy film, the other is a
phoney. One, Military Secret, is a
Soviet film and exposes the meth-
ods of*the Nazis and how they
were stopped in the fiercest days
of the war to save civilization.

The other, The Iron Curtain, is
a piece of boloney made with the
express purpose of stirring up na-
tional hatred against our most
valuable ally in defeating the
hordes of Hitler and fascism.

- Make a point of seeing Military
Secret and its companion picture,
Russian Ballerina. In the latter
you will see the Russia ballet as
it is danced only in the Soviet
Union, although the picture would
have been improved if it had been
made in color.

If you should accidentally find
yourself in the show where The
Iron Curtain is screened and five
minutes of it is enough for you,
go to the box-office and demand
your money back. But don’t have
any accident!

knowledge must be questioned so
long as the government neglects
the Indians and Eskimos’ who
long ago brought the art of liv-
ing in the Arctic to simple perfec-
tion. It appears to be far more
probable that the rocket
planes, the robot-controlled pro-
jectiles and all the other strange
tools for building civilization with
which these new pioneers are
equipped will be used for their
apparent military purpose. That,
of course, was the import of St.
Laurent’s speech on foreign pol-
wicy the other day.
, e
DURING the war, in Fair-
banks, I talked with a woman

highly placed in the business life
of that lively Alaskan city. Those
were the days when Russian uni-
forms were a familiar sight on
the streets and the people of Fair-
banks were eager to meet and en-
tertain the young Russian airmen,
veterans of the eastern front.

“You know,” she said, “these
Russians are so like us. They’re
big-hearted and friendly, they
like to get out and do things and
they like to do them in a big
way.
neighbor you've lived beside for
years without saying very much
and finding out he’s a pretty nice
guy after all.”

There are still plenty of people
-in the North who still feel that

way, the way Mackenzie King ex-

pressed himself when he said
that “as we become  neigh-
bors we deSire more than ever to
become the most helpful of
friends, The Arctic wastes, so long
an impenetrable barrier between
us, are: now coming to join us
closer together.” :

Yes, Mackenzie King said that
about the Soviet Union on Janu-
ary 99, 1944. Compare it with the
speech St. Laurent made to the

_ House of Commons this. month.

The geographic barrier is gone,
but in its place the King govern-
ment is erecting a new barrier of
hatred and hostility, .

In their own interests, the in-
terests of peace, the people must
tear it down.

‘to break labor

Its just like meeting 2.

Inside job

HOWLER, Gervin and Alsbury have nailed the bosses’
favorite ilag to the mast of the Vancouver Trades and
Labor Council—the banner of anti-communism.

With CCF leader Tom Alsbury waving the 21 points of
the old Communist International program—a document he
is incapable of understanding historically or otherwise —
a resolution was adopted asserting that communists seek
control of unions to further “the violent overthrow of the
free development of our Canadian way of life and the en-
slavement of its people.”

It was.on this bald lie that Showler, Gervin and Alsbury
hung their efforts to swing the efforts of the council away
from the struggle with the employers into removing econo-
mic “evils” for the “purpose” of combatting “communism”,
in other words, of “winning” sops to stem the mass, united
action of the workers which showler, Gervin, Alsbury and
Howard J. Mitchell see as “communist”.

“The Trades and Labor Council is highly thought of by
the employers we do business with,” boasted Showler. The
kind of respectability aimed at in the resolution is linked
to the kind of “business” that allows Showler’s teamsters
daily to cross the Typos’ picket line. °

Ford Motor Company sent the first flowers to Life
magazine’s darling labor leader—the anti-communist Reu-
ther—when he was shot. Then Ford proposed a wage
cut.

Phillip Murray launched a drive against “communists
—but U.S. Steel wouldn’t give a cent this year.

In Vancouver, the ultra-conservative Typographical
Union was the first to. feel the bosses’ current onslaught
in the courts.

?
”

Bosses don’t spare “respectable ” unions.

The history of martyred unions shouts that labor can

‘only go forward on the basis of a fighting unity of which

the Communists in unions are an indispensable part.

«
To win rising living standards, security and peace the
man who punches a time-clock will have to clean out the
red-baiters who are doing an “inside job” on labor. ;

“Isn't it wonderful what that Mr. Gervin is doing to
protect the unions from those dreadful Communists?”

Looking backward —
(From the files of the People’s Advocate, Wind 20, 1988)

More than six and a half million pounds of copper from Granby
Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power company’s mine were
shipped to Japan, to supply the military machine now devastating
China, during the first three months of 1938, and the initial reports
for the month of April show a substantial gain over this figure.

Church and social organizations, Liberal, CCF and Communist
branches, veterans, women’s and youth groups have demanded at
embargo on such shipments of war materials to Japan in strongly-
worded resolutions, but while the federal government hesitates to act
British Columbia’s mining magnates are reaping bloody profits.

They are able to report at their annual meetings, as Granby’S
President N. L. Amster reported at the meeting of his company last
week, that “Granby is shipping to Japan as fast as we can produce.’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 21, 1948—PAGE 6

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