By JOHN WILLIAMSON In Britain, which Paul Robeson considered his second home for many years, arrangements are already well under way to pay tribute to this. great artist and roe fighter on his 70th birth- ay. World famous British artists will participate in an evening of music, poetry and drama reading at the Purcell Hall; an annex of the Royal Festival Hall, on April 8th, to celebrate Paul’s birthday the following day. Participating will be Sir Mich- ael Redgrave, Dame Petty Ash- croft, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Mary Ure, Adelaide Hall, Alan Bush, Bruno Raikin, Robert ’Shaw, Anna Pollak, Naida Cat- touse, and others. Still others, unable to parti- cipate because of professional commitments or absence from _the country, have sent personal messages to Paul. These inckde Sir John Gielgud, Yehudi Menu- hin, Dame Flora Robson, Johnny Dankworth, Cleo Laine, Hugh McDiarmid, and John Nevill. When Paul was 23 years old he made his first stage appear- ance in Britain in Blackpool, and later in Liverpool. In 1930, to Dame Peggy Ashcroft’s: Desde- mona and Dame Sybil Thorn- dike’s Emilia, London acclaimed Paul as Othello. In 1959 he re- peated an outstanding perform- © ance of Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Strat- ford-on-Avon with Mary Ure. Wherever Paul Robeson went in Britain when he reurned here on July 18, 1958, he met a tre- mendous welcome and played to packed halls. In the midst of these successes he also sang at the annual Daily Worker meet- ing and concert in the Royal Albert Hall. ‘One of the first activities this correspondent participated in Joan Baez SINCERITY CONVICTION Joan Baez, well-known Ame- rican folk singer and advocate of non-violent opposition to war was in Montreal for three days. She gave two concerts at place des Arts and March 14 she spoke at the Unitarian Church. ‘A crowd of young people were already waiting at the church door a few minutes after 7. Before 8 p.m. the Church was jammed. Far into the evening ushers and police were busy turning away late-comers. Some 500 to @00 people got in. From the questions asked, it was evident MARCH 29, 1968—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 10 after deportation to Britain in 1955 as a result of Smith Act conviction. and imprisonment, was the organizing of a nation- wide campaign demanding that Paul be granted a passport so that the British people could once again hear him. ‘When victory finally capped these efforts in Britain and Ame- rica, Paul, on arrival, worked ceaselessly, at concerts and at mammoth coal miners rallies in Scotland and Wales. In between he was making flying visits to the Soviet Union and other so- cialist countries to sing before their thousands. It was as if he had to make up for the years that the forces of McCarthyism in Aerica had _ successfully gagged him. In a few short years AND that many were somewhat cri- tical of the practicality of her non-violent- thesis, but ‘over- whelmingly with her in their anti-war convictions. Her appeal was for the bro- therhood of man and nations, an alternative to war-making states, a conviction that non-violence “if properly understood” would work in opposition to violence. It was an idealistic position which made her audience some- what restless and concerned about “vagueness”; but her ob- vious sincerity, and the evidence of her conviction in her actions which have put her in jail more than once ha eee MUTT TSM UETTETE MEL CM TRE TOC e er Tem ooo Tm Teen eT TT ATTY LLL ut iia tom oe | Ce he fell ill from overwork. Among the sponsors of this birthday tribute to Paul is the Musicians Union, whose. assis- tant secretary, Mrs. Harry Fran- cis, is one of the active organiz- ers. Francis has received a letter from Robeson expressing plea- sure at the news of the event. Another country holding cele- brations is the German Demo- cratic Republic. The organizer of these birthday events is the German Academy of. Arts, in which Paul Robeson is a Corres- ponding Member. The main cele- bration will be in Berlin, with many leading artists participat- ing. Professor Albert Norden will speak. On the following day a Paul Robeson exhibition ‘will be opened. eee a powerful affect on her audience. She took a position for the withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam — her reason — they don’t belong there — “the only thing to say to them is: stop it, come home, get out of that ridi- culous uniform —it’s the only hope to save mankind.” Her appeal was to individual responsibility. She summed up her point of view in the state-: ment: “If there’s any such thing as truth it’s that nobody knows This is not a treatise on the “gold standard.” Merely a few observations on the in- cidence of the “gold rush,” past and present. In the ’98 Klondike gold rush, all the gold was in the creeks in and: around King Solomon’s Dome, or in the glacial gravel of the Klon- dike, all snugly tucked away with what was left of. the dinosaurs. It was much the same way in the B.C. Cariboo, the Lena gold fields, in California, the Transvaal and other famed gold rush areas. ‘All just so until man discovered it. Then things began to hap- pen. Man got sick with what they called the “gold fever’. which ended up by driving him start raving mad. By and ' large, he’s been that way ever since. For gold he will steal, murder, rape, destroy, kill wholesale, commit geno- cide. He has—and is still proving. there’s just nothing he won’t do for gold. If you doubt it just take a gander in at your nearest stock ex- change. ~ aa Collectively he has dug. it out of any hole in the ground - he could find it, then collec- tively dug another hole in the ground to hoard it. Against this gold he prints paper notes, all very fancily engraved, and all generally valued in exact ratio to the value. he sets on his gold hoard. The only trouble with .this arrangement is that, in his inherent greed, he fre- - quently prints and scatters than he has gold to cover. - The upshot of it all is an- other. “gold rush,” this time in reverse, by those who have got themselves overloaded with paper, plus a shrinking “confidence”. that there’s any gold left in the “reserve” - hole at all? : Worst of all, the more gold sold in this “gold rush” to redeem worthless paper, the more worthless the remaining unredeemed paper becomes. And that of course is what gives our Micawberean “con- fidence” in our folding “med- ium of exchange” one hell of a disturbing jolt. In our kindergarten simple arithmetic was used to recite soon be reciting “five bob fol © ‘much sand, rock and gravel fore World War I, when gold ‘the then Robert Borden tory , around far more paper: notes that “twenty shillings make |; one pound.” Now with this | latest “gold rush” hitting panic proportions, we may a blinkin’ quid,” with dollars to match. oe It’s a great racket of course. It is also strictly legitimate. All the best spec ulators (in polite language bankers) practice it. All the most “stable” governments “stabilize” it, by the simple expediency of transferring the risks, hazards, etc. of thé modern “gold rush” onto the backs of the common people of factory, office and farm. ‘Back in the days just be coins were more common 11 | workers’ pay envelopes than | | folding money, the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) promoted a “gold rake-in rather than a “gold rush. The CBA simply instructed government to enact an Or- der-In-Council (a legal tech: nique designed to bypass Parliament) withdrawing all gold coin from public use. there was to be a financial | crisis as a result of the im- minence of war, let the hoi polloi take it in the neck with “shrinking” dollars. The CBA would keep the gold. A later. edition of the “Journal of the Canadian Bankers Association” (Vol. XXX, Pg. 120) this govern- ment-banker hijacking is neatly summed up. “Now it is a remarkable fact that all the measures adopted by the Order-In- Council itself. were directly contrary to law. | “The Order-In-Council it: self was illegal and of, no validity, and if anyone had thought of questioning it, neither the government nor the bankers would have had a leg to stand on.” : Well it’s a nice thought but, like a wartime general’s “memoirs,” it comes a bit late. If in the old “gold rush” days they used to say, “there’s a ghost town at the bottom of every gold mine,’ today we can say with equal certainty that at the end of every new-style “gold rush’ there’s a new crop of mil- lionaires—and new millions of dispossed humans. 1 a enough about truth to take an- other man’s life.” She saw the nation state as the source of violence in this world and the “brotherhood. of man” as the substitute for it. She took a stand against voting. In these and other ways ‘she was. anarchistic in her thinking, making the solution of all pub ‘lic problems an individual OP- tion. A collection of over $400 wa5 — taken to be divided betwee? — the Quebec Medical Aid f0F — Vietnam and her institute for non-violent action.