‘ha a saa vr HISTORY NO RESPECTER OF GENERALS Montgomery harks back to Any admirer of Viscount Montgomery of Alamein who eps a file of press clippings Must find the 71- -year-old field Marshal a confusing character indeed, For his public statements *€em equally divided between sertions of the folly of ‘tldiers meddling in_ politics Md excursions into what he Calls, rather unoriginally, the itty game.’ tt cannot be long-ago, when Rossing his retirement from aa last military .post, deputy Boome commander of NATO Rees, he said: “No politics for me.” ie €ven said of Soviet Mar- aa khukov: “A very good dier, but he was led into Making comments.” Yet here he comes with a Powerful but erratic barrage: ae has fallen down on the te the “Welfare State” has ta €d the moral fibre of Bri- nN, the U.S. is undermining € British Empire. What to Make of him? Rees can only be one inter- ~ 1on of these frequent dis- ies: of politics by one of MmM’s most political brass- ) ee hats — that politics have got him beat. es 503 xt For 50 years he soldiered —he came of age in the. army after an unhappy childhood in the home of a colonial bishop and a session in one of the more modest exclusive public schools, St. Paul’s. Nowhere in his career does he seem to have faltered — as a soldier. In thee First World War -he earned the DSO and mentions in dispatches. Be- tween wars he developed, as regimental commander and staff officer, that knowledge of the men, machines and tactics of war that has made his name. Between 1938 and 1948 he shot up the ranks from bri- gade commander to chief of the Imperial General Staff. On the way at Alamein and Nor- mandy, he established him- self as Britain’s best battle commander of the war and probably one .of the best in the country’s history. Yet on the field of politics, he stumbles, lashes out here and' there, returning constantly to the theme of failure — the Sa FREE PREMIUM BOOK OFFER YOUR CHOICE OF ONE OF THE BOOKS LISTED HERE WITH EVERY NEW OR RENEWED SUBSCRIPTION ACT NOW! This offer expires November 15 RENEW T year ($3.50 _..... O RENEW T year ($4.00) ______ oO CLIP AND MAIL My subscription at your special rates: my Subscription at your regular rates: &nd send me the book indicated. Morning, Noon and Night, Lars Lawrence -...- oO he Cannibals, Stefan Heym .-.--------—-—-—----—--— js Pp Y Universities, Maxim Gorky —-----—----------— s) etry and Prose, Walt Whitman _.———------—--- Oo T € Great Midland, Alexander Saxton —.-.-------- Oo he Cross and the Arrow, Albert Maltz —------------- 0 € Wrote for Us, Tom McEwen - a Sa MAIL TO — PACIFIC TRIBUNE, ROOM 6, ! 426 MAIN STREET, VANCOUVER 4 ENTER [] Grmos. 2.00) -- = Oo ENTER (J 6 mos. ($2.25): ------ oO — Soviet Union is winning the battle on the economic and political front, unless we shape up to it we shall all be in the Communist fold in the next 25 years. Why, Why? 5 Ses % In one of his off moments, Churchill called him a Crom- wellian figure. The thought is worth pursuing. Like Cromwell, he is an austere, dedicated figure, a genius in the order of battle, a cutter-through of red tape and a foe of bureaucracy. As his memoirs demonstrate, he is no respecter of military per- sons. He claims to have seized con- trol of the Eighth Army from Auchinleck two days before the date set by the British War Office for the change of com- mand, halting a headlong re- treat to the Nile, and turning defeat into victory at El Ala- mein. Like Cromwell, he found a discouraged army, revitalized it, took it into his confidence — and a supreme confidence it was that carried all before it on the field of battle. But Cromwell was a rural politician turned soldier to drive through his political be- liefs. Mongomery is a soldier turn- ed politician and now retired to a rural home trying to understand why politics and people refuse to marshal them- selves to his command. If only everything in the haze of postwar European politics were as clear as it was in the dust and smoke of the African desert! He appeals to people to place duties before right; he regrets that members of the Eighth Army now find themselves on opposite sides. If only Britain on opposite sides. If only Brit- ain would swing, swing to- gether, well-disciplined. bodies between well-bent knees! When in his favorite cricket- ing terms he told the British people that Rommel had been hit for six, the nation applaud- ed. Now when he talks about the European “Test Match” against the Soviet Union (nu- clear bats and balls), the Left cries havoc and the Right winces and says “hush.” Why, Why? What had Cromwell that Montgomery lacks? Is it this? Cromwell took up arms to drive a new class to the top, to force through the burnished steel and trampled turf of Naseby a new form of society. Montgomery, with the rumbles of battle still in his ear, is trying to pick up the pieces of General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery in 1944 ... Politics don’t marshal themselves to their command. a world form of society which El Alamein helped to shake to the core. He does not grasp the fact that the victors of El Alamein were more than comrades in arms to the victors of Stalin- grad — they shared a desire for a peaceful new world And the men who rule Brit- ain including Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, whom Montgomery admires, have this in common with the men who sent German troops to de- feat at El Alamein and Stalin- grad—they want the old form of society, not the new. To see the world today in terms of the old sweats of Stalingrad and El Alamein against one another is more than wrong — it is against the march of history. And his- tory is no respecter of gen- erals. anne en — o~ Tl cngntel SE ‘CHINA AS | SAW IT Canadian Cameraman ED SIMPSON presents A FULL-LENGTH COLOR FILM of a three months’ visit to the People’s Republic of China See history being made PENDER AUDITORIUM 339 West Pender Street Friday, November 14 — 8 p.m. Admission 75 cents Sen Bases 7, YYZ, ip» in pn wi November 7, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 7