GUIDE TO GOOD READING — 1

Book Union selects novel by two
leading writers of People’s China

TEN MILLION Chinese peas-
ants took courses in reading and
writing during the winter slack
season of 1949-50. Twenty mil-
lion attended the “winter
schools” in 1950-51. This year
the total rose sharply again, Ever
greater numbers of adults,: as
well as children, are acquiring
the knowledge‘ of the‘ written
word that the bureaucracy of
feudal China monopolized.

Kung Chueh and Yuan Ching,
whose Daughters and Sons is the
first long sample of this new
writing to be translated and pub-
lished here. were young mem-
bers of the Communist party at-

‘tached to guerrilla forces in
North China during the war
against Japan. Now, a husband
and wife still in their thirties,
they are script writers in the
Motion Picture Bureau in Pe-
king.

How a country on the great
North China plain became an
anti-Japanese base and how the
jandlord-ridden countryside was
thus transformed — this is their
theme of Daughters and’ Sons
(obtainable at the People’s Co-
operative Bookstore, 337 West
Pender, at the regular price of
$3.50 or to oBok Union members
at $2.35 plus 15 cents postage).
The impact of the invasion on
the villages, stirrimg resistance
among the peasants but promot-
ing some, particularly the land-
lords and their agents,-to col-
laborate or vacillate; the crea-
tion of organized strength out
of the anti-Japanese feelings of

the people; the emergence from |

the peasantry of young leaders

who slowly. after painful error,
gain skill] and wisdom commens-
urate with their bright visiion of
a new life.

But the leading ~ characters,
those who give the book its title,
are the young men and women
whom the alchemy of the eight
years’ struggle turned into the
leaders of the community. Da-

shwey, Blacky Tsay, Twur, Sch-
wang, Nyur and the others —
sons and daughters of the people
who felt most deeply the hope
for the future and who came to
lead the effort to realize it.

GUIDE TO GOOD READING — 2 |

Spanish War anthology tells of
— people's resistance to fascism

from battlefronts to village and
farm hundreds of miles behind

_ SIXTEEN YBARS ago last
month the International Brigade
ottene its strength to the people

of Spain in a battle to halt the

tyranny and sorrow clearly prom-
ised the world in the growth of

fascism epitomized in the person

of Francisco Franco, ;
They were called “premature

anti-fascists,”’ they were harass-

ed by pro-fascist and appease-_
- ment-minded governments they-

were held -up to ridicule and
scorn by “the great leaders” of
the time. Literary magazines
solemnly weighed all sides of
the question before reluctantly
_ finding them wrong.

The fruit of that “wisdom” is
millions of dead, trillions of dol-
lars in debts and a world that
has not known peace from the
threat of fascism since. ‘

' Jt ts just in this that The
Heart of Spain, edited by Alvah
Bessie and published by Veter-
ans of the Abraham Lincoln

Brigade, takes on a quality that

sets it above most anthologies.
This is no dead report of a long
_ past war. The problems you'll
find discussed in this book are
as alive as tomorrow’s news-
paper; the forces at play in the
‘Spanish war will top the agenda
at the next meeting of the
United Nations; the people who
fought on both sides and the rea-
sons behind their choice of sides
—all could fit almost unchang-
ed into a book about Indo China,
Mayala, Korea or the Philippines
in the year 1952.

ALVAH BESSIE, with fine

discrimination. selected poems,
essays, letters: and short stories
to give the book a splendid bal-
ance and ¢ompleteness, Here is
the battle for human freedom
in all its multiform phases from
the eyes of a toddling child in
Barcelona under a bombing to a
speech by Paul Negrin before the
League of Nations—which, I -re-
call, amused England’s aed

- Eden no end.

Here too, is the story of heroes,
of the men and women of Spain,
of the anti-fascist volunteers
from the U.S., from Canada (the
Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion),
and a hundred other nations
whose loyalty to the cause of
freedom and human worth set a
standard for all the world. The
battles of the International Brig-
ade, that glorious collection of
hearts and talents, is told by a
score of authors, many of them
members of the Brigade.

Here is the story of fascism in
all its naked horror, of the
slaughter and avarice and lies
and deception that marked its
slimy path from the day Franco
first announced he had God’s
blessing on this ‘““Holy Crusade”
to the final victory of the com-
bined armies of the unspeakable

trio of Franco, Hitler and Mus-.

solini, Here too is the shameful
report of the aid given to Fran-
co by the U.S. State Department
and the British Foreign Office
—aid then necessarily restrain-
ed, now shamefully open and
generous.

The stories wander widely

. Nelson,

Some did not survive, but those
who did changed history, For the
organizations of the people of
which they were the immediate
leaders changed the balance of
power in. the North Chinese
countryside — perhaps the de-
cisive event in the second great
revolution of our times.

During the years of the anti-
Japanese and civil wars few writ-
ers had time for such ambitious
undertakings as novels; Daugh-
ters and Sons is one of the first.
Kung Chueh and Yuan Ching,
moveover, like all writers in
China today, have sought a mass

readership, and this aim has had —

a limiting effect on their scope

- and method.

The Chinese people. as Mao
Tse-tung pointed out in his ad-
dress On Literature and Art in
May, 1942, have been limited

culturally by illiteracy; they are

CONCERT-GOERS READ APPEAL :

HUNDREDS OF Toronto
concert - goers atending a
prome™ade symphony concert
on July 17 read a leaflet urg-
ing them to support the cam-
paign to win reinstatement of
six members of Toronto Sym-
pheny Orchestra w ho were fir-
ed because they were denied
admission to oe United
States.

- Headed “They Ask Fair
Play,” the leaflet reproduces
a letter addressed to the
chairman and members of
the TSO board of directors
from the Association for Civil
Liberties, headed by Rev. Dr.
R. S. K. Seeley and including
on its leading executive body,
B. K. Sandwell, Dr. Malcolm
Wallace, Andrew Brewin, E.

_-B. Jolliffe, Prof. E, J. Pratt,
Senator Arthur Roebuck, Wil-
liam Arthur Deacon, Rabbi
Feinberg, Charles Millard and
others.

‘Reinstate six musicians

healthy development of the

The ACL letter cites two-
reasons why the decision 09
fire the six TSO sams :
should be revoked. :

“4. It would mean con: |
demning these people with- —
out even hearing what they —
have to say in their defense.
The United States Immigra- |
tion Department is not infal-
ilble,

“2, It would mean that
henceforth to be a member |
of the Toronto Symphony Or-
chestra is conditional upon —
being admissible to the Unit-
ed States and is subject to —
final approval by the United
States Immigration Depart
ment.”’

The letter asks reconsider-
ation of the decision “so that |
it will be in closer accord with |
the tradition of freedom
which is so essential] to the —

musical life of our country. __|

ON THE SCREEN

Theme of ‘Secret People

) might have made real film

only now escaping from its. pris-
on. :
It is a vivid and essentially ac-
curate portrayal of a struggle of
which we know too little’ and
from which we can take heart.

the lines; from the desperate
struggle on Hill 666 — ‘Bessie’s
own story—to the work of sal-
vaging the lives of orphans de-
serted by the Catholic church
when the people first claimed

their land (“The First Days,”
‘by Constancia de la. Mora); from

the combing of a great city (Lil-
lian Hellman’s “The Little
War’) to the simple report of
why one U.S. boy joined the In-
ternational Brigade and gave his
life in struggle (‘“‘SSomebody Had»
to Do Something,” by Ring Lard-
ner Jr.). Spacing the stories
are verses by some of the world’s
finest poets. ; -

Of unusual importance is a
story, “El Fantastico,” by Steve
the U.S. Communist
leader presently fighting a 20-
year jail sentence imposed upon
him for alleged ‘‘sedition,”
against the state sof Pennsyl-
vania. Nelson was a command-
er in the Abraham Lincoln Brig-
ade,

Nelson’s story of this won-
derful Spanish hero is told with
such warmth and understand-
ing, such sensitive appreciation

of the qualities of greatness in’

the man that the piece in itself
is enough to convince any sane
reader of Nelson’s own character
and innocence. ‘

The Heart of Spain may be ©

ordered through the People’s’
Cooperative Bookstore, 337 West
Pender Street, Vancouver, B.C.

MASON ROBERSON

If A FILM director, using
the conflict between conscience
and loyalty as his theme, dared
to draw on life for his material
he would indeed have a picture
worth seeing. He would also
have a picture that would damn
all the propaganda now.-domin-
ating our screen and press and
radio, for the essence of that
propaganda is to stifle all con-
science and exact unquestioning
loyalty. _

The material for such a pic-
ture is inexhaustible: the pilot
who must drop napalm bombs
on civilian targets, the soldier
who must shoot as ‘‘bandits’” the
patriots who restored his coun-
try’s flag to their land in the
belief they would be granted
independence. ‘But the picture
is not likely to be made in any
Western country.

One proof of this is Secret
People (Paradise). Whatever the
director’s intentions in taking
the conflict between conscience
and loyalty as his theme, he
works it out — if a film with
so many loose ends can be said
to be worked out — in an un-
believable. romantic fashion.

The only credible characters

. in the picture are the police, the

men of the Special Branch whose
function is to spy upon and re-
cord the words and actions of
all citizens the government con-
siders ‘‘subversive.’’ This is one
branch of government the pub-
lic knows all too little about, but

it is not likely to gain anything

more than qa carefully fostered

‘illusion from this British film,

which was made with the co-
operation of Scotland Yard.
* * *

FOR 10 YEARS, it appears.
Thorold Dickinson, director of

Secret People, has been brood-

ing about the problem of consci-
ence overcoming loyalty in an
individual, .

Now he offers the eon” asa
“simple and contemporary” il-
lustration of this theme, a story

with a pre-war setting in which

an ‘organization‘ vaguely sug-
gestive of the Irish Republican
Army is conspiring in an amat-
eurish sort of way to assassinate
a} Mussolini-style dictator.

' Valentina Cortesa, the Italian

-foolish

exactly what they are doing

‘actors,

star now owned by Hollywood:
was borrowed to play the Pat
of a refugee whose father }@
been\ killed by the dictator 2?

who is drawn into the conspiracy

* by the man she loves.

When a bomb shé has nelped
to place kills a waitress inst
of the dictator she becomes
illusioned in her cause an
trays her‘ companions to
police,‘ who obligingly‘ ron
her with a new identity. But 7
rescuing her young sister {0
the clutches of the ane
she is killed.

All the conspirators are either
innocents or sini
fools and the only characters -
the picture who seem to k?

the police, which places @ fr
ther strain on the public’s ¢T@

—ulity.

The woolley-mindedness of the ed
film’s conception defeats the b
intentions of all concerned, 3%
cluding Irene Worth and Aude
rey Hepburn, to make a conel
ent story of its unbelievable be
cidents and still more incr ple
coincidences,

* * *

REGULAR movie-goers wh
see Macao (Dominion) will hi
the vague impression that the S
have seen this picture before. ~
they have — not‘ under’
title, of course, and with Ki
ferent backgrounds‘ and — oth
But the formula
familiar one, are

Its principal ingredients is
slow motion action to give re
matic tension to a bape a
and a round of k pene
ling, gambling a nate sent
that ends only when all the is
characters have coy is
each other and been killed ot
leaving the romantic‘ le
maintain a pretense of
Macao furnishes the exotic I an
ground which is supposed t@
credulity to the whole th

Perhaps this ‘accounts fo?
fact that Robert Mitchum |

‘through the preliminar®™

though he were half asleeP
one could really blame 5
he were) and Jane Russell

Pe

plays her ponderous char

though she had never "
woken up (she was Pro?
bored, too).

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 1, 1952 — pace