J conferences held by the

Allied leaders during the war
laid down in unmistakeable words
the purpose for which the war
was fought. From the Crimean
sessions came the declaration
that: ;

“It is not our purpose to de-
troy the people of Germany, but
only when Nazism and militar-
ism have been extirpated will
there be hope for a decent life

m for Germans
_ and a_ place
for them in

the comity -of
nations.” ‘The
Allied Occupa-
tion which
was to be im-
posed on Ger
many was “to
destroy GerI>
man militarism
: wee. and to ensure
or Bill that Germany
will never again be able to dis-
turb the peace of the world.”

Such were the decisions of the
Allied leaders, signed by Roose-
velt, Churchill and Stalin.

But the extirpation of Nazism
would be impossible physically,
without rooting out the agents
who put it into practice so the
Allied leaders meeting later in
Moscow, issued a declaration
which read in part with refer-
ence to these agents. “. . . the

AVE you got that pre-depres-

sion feeling? You have!
Then get rid if it. You’ve nothing
to worry about that can’t be
cured. The pepper-uppers are
discovering new elixirs of life
almost daily.

At a recent Vancouver Board
of Trade luncheon in the posh

Hotel Vancou-
ver. Robert A.
Whitney, top
sales executive
unloaded a
few windy
burps on how
it can be done.

““Salesmen,”
belched Whit-
ney, “must
not be domin-
ated by econ-
omists who
predict

T. McEwen ;
gloomy future. All that is neces-

sary is to “create buying power.”
After unlimbering some doubtful
statistics (among them the startl-
ing news that 93 cents of every
dollar earned in Canada goes
for wages?), pepper-upper Whit-
ney drew some snappy comparis-
ons between capitalism and com-
munism. “In Canada” says our
B-of-T booster, “a man has only
to work 10 minutes to earn
enough for a glass of beer,
while in Russia he must work 8
hours to earn enough for a
glass of beer!”

With this comparison aS &
barometer of our superiority in
economic: well being, even Ab-
ott’s austerity plan can be re-
garded as a gift from heaven.

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|

Tom McEwen

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three Allied Powers will pursue
them to the uttermost ends of
the earth and will deliver them
to their accusers in order that
justice may be done.” To this
also they signed their names,
Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin.

Unfortunately for those who
hope for the extirpation of Naz-
ism, there were, and are, on the
Allied side some who did not
then and do not today, see eye
to eye with the leaders; people
like Herbert Hoover, who was re-
ported in the New York Times to
have said, “We should remember
that after the disarmament of
the enemy the only dangerous
armaments are those in the
hands of our Allies.”

To this group must surely be-
long the men who compose the
U.S. military tribunal sitting at
Neurnberg in the American zone
which sentenced Field Marshall
Wilhelm List to life imprison-
ment and seven other generals
to lesser terms, According to
the Yalta and Moscow agree-
ments, these butchers should have
been tried in the Balkans where
their crimes were committed.
They were accused of responsibil-
ity for 63,000. murders of civil-
jans and partisans. The evidence
compelled the court to admit
that some of the killings were
plain murder: but exonerated
them on most of the other

counts.

While we are not in a position

at the moment to quote the.

Russian workingman on what he
thinks of the price and quality
of his beer, we do recall that
organized labor in B.C. has look-
ed a shade ‘suspiciously at the
helping of Capilano water with
its preponderance of froth, served
up for a dime. But there is no
question about it; even in the
realm of beer we are superior to
the Russians. We at least have
a millionaire brewing monopoly
which gets a goodly whack out
of the Whitney 93-cent dollar,
while the Russians, poor devils,
haven’t got a monopolist left.

©
ANOTHER angle of “our way
of life’ was pitchforked into
the news last week. MHavard’s
famed anthropologist, Dr. Ernest
A. Hooton, compared the modern
world to a “society of savages,”
with the modern Whitneys pretty
low in the social scale.
Hooton’s criticism however
wasn’t based on the length of
time it takes a Canadian or a
Russian to earn a glass of beer,
but on the Malthusian approach
to an ideal democratic state)
The bulk of the world's
troubles, according to savant
Hooton, came from over-breed-
ing—too large families—too many
people. “Savages,” noted intel-
lectual Hooton, “keep their popu-
lation in line with their food
supply and territory.” Sealed
up in his ivory tower and only
making rare excursions to the
outside world, Hooton obviously
failed to “note” that the trouble
with the world is not inability

|

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Naananssusttltnecstl artian judwusnrumnlis

anvasteet een

Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857; Business, MA. 5288

Tom McEwen

Editor

wee e tees

Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50; 6 Months, $1.35.

Printed by Union Printers Ltd. 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.
Authorized as second-class mail by the post-office department, Ottawa

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1948

This U.S. war crimes court
took upon itself to make a
ruling which affects any civilion
patriot who takes up arms to
prevent his country from being
despoiled by foreign or native ag-
gressors. It holds that the Ger-
man general staff was not crim-
imally responsible for the actual
murder of tens of thousands par-
tisans by the Nazi armies.

According to their ruling, Ger-
many’s right to kill members of
a population as a deterent to
partisan warfare “has been re-
cognized by many nations, in-
cluding the U.S., Britain, France
and the Soviet Union.”

This is a barefaced lie as far
as the Soviet Union is concerned.
The practice was first introduced
in modern warfare by the Prus-
sian military clique who domin-
ated the German army in the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1,
when every French “franc-tireur” -
captured was shot out of hand.
It was a practice which brought
& scathing indictment from Marx
and Engels at that time.

To tie the question up in legal-
military phraseology is as great
a crime as the murders them-
selves. The only right the Nazis
had to murder civilians, shoot
hostages, destroy towns like
Lidice, was the right of con-
querors, but such a right is a
crime against humanity.

to produce, but unwillingness to.
distribute the abundance that is
—and can be produced, — .

The Hooton “theory” for “lim-
iting the size of population as a
prerequisite for freedom from

want and for maintenance of
democratic forms of govern-
ment” has a lot of merit—to
those who regard the atom
bomb and the mighty dollar as
symbols of a “superior way of
life.” To the bulk of thinking
humanity, his “theories” are
similar to Whitney’s beer rhap-
sodies, in that they are mostly
froth.

e :
“CANADA'S economy is no

longer geared to United
States,” says the Financial Post,
organ of big business, and cau-
tions Canadians against worry-
ing too much about the recent
stock market slumps in the U.S.
According to the Post we are
now fully “cushioned” against
US economic disorders.

How does this “cushion” work?
Simple. Take the price of bacon
in Canada. It is not determined,
as some good people think by
the price machinations of the
packinghouse monopolists, but by
the price the British government
pay for hogs. And since the
British “demand” for bacon is
stilt far in excess of “surplus”
capacity to supply, there will be
no weakening in prices paid to
Canadian producers... or asked.
from Canadian consumers.

A fine “cushion,” were it not
for.one important factor the
Post omits to mention — the
wherewithal]
pay for the bacon needed by
Britain, whether processed or on
the hoof? With this new Abbott
austerity “cushion” the Post
waxes optimistic, and assures us
that recession or no recession,
prices are not going to drop in
Canada and “the food business
at least, is guaranteed a secure
future.”

Undoubtedly that profound ob-
servation will hold good until
someone discovers a plan on
how to live without eating. They
very nearly managed it in the
Hungry Thirties! ,

in. US dollars to |

Coalition can be swept out
AA oe the Johnson-Anscomb Coalition government
scored a victory in the Saanich and Cariboo byelections
it did so by only a very narrow margin. Both seats have
long been held by Coalition Liberals and were considered
“safe.” The vote indicates that, given a realistic approach to
election issues and the overall need of progressive unity at

the polls, the CCF can win a majority of seats in the next
provincial election.

In the Cariboo it was a straight fight between the Coali-
tion machine and the CCF, and Walter Hogg, the Coalition
candidate, obtained a bare 400 majority. In Saanich five can-
didates contested the election, but the main fight was again
between the Coalition and the CCF. Votes of the Democratic,
Social Credit and independent candidates were too smal] to
affect the outcome. The outstanding fact is that the 1,500
majority by which Arthur Ash defeated Colin Cameron, his
CCF opponent, has been whittled down from 2,000 in 1945.

The election of Coalition candidates by small majorities
in both constituencies emphasizes a number of importamt
political lessons for CCF, labor and progressive forces. The
first and most important of these is that the Coalition can
be decisively routed at the polls-in the next election.

Secondly, recognition by the CCF of the urgency of the
widest labor and progressive unity at the polls. The injection
of red-baiting and questioning of LPP “motive” in the middle
of an election campaign can only result in demoralising the
electorate and throwing the margin of support needed for
a CCF victory into the arms of the splinter groups, or back
to the Coalition itself.

The LPP worked diligently and sincerely for election
of the CCF candidates in Saanich and the Cariboo, and will
continue to do so in all constituencies where LPP candidates
are not running. It did so because the over-riding need of
the people of B.C. is the defeat of the monopoly-dominated
Johnson-Anscomb Coalition government, and a return of the
resources and opportunities of British Columbia to the people
of B.C. The LPP believes that the way can be opened to
achieve this by the election of a CCF government—a belief
shared by thousands of CCF, LLP and non-party labor and
farm supporters, -

Saanich shows that red-baiting can lose elections for the
forces of progress.

a oe |
bop him in the other eye.”

Looking backward

(From the files of the People’s Advocate, February 25,
‘THE recent increase in the price of bread was unjustified.
~ of the bread sold in the city is underweight
quality. Small bakers are victimized. These were
into ee ee ee ye igd cg

Ald. Bennett,
last Friday at the city hall. = i =

stated that bread in the United States was 87 cents a loaf 2
that government figures showed cost of ingredients as 2.6 cents a loaf. ae