If any history books are going
to come out of World War Three
— to paraphrase Tom Leyrer —
we'd better start writing them
now ...

At the rate that literary (and
no-so-literary) visions of Ar-
mageddon are accumulating, we

ought to have a sizeable library

of them to send up in smoke when
the moment arrives. At least three
different versions of the
Apocalypse ~— are making
bookstore rounds these days. The
most celebrated among these is
retired NATO General Sir John
Hackett’s ‘The Third World War’
which has been serialized in
countless newspapers. and
magazines, and, now in paper-
back, threatens to become an in-
ternational best seller.

The Third World War is a ‘‘fu-
ture history’’, written as though
from the vatage-point of 1987, just
after the close of hostilities. Gen-
eral Hackett, and his. bevy of
military co-authors, write as
though looking back soberly upon
the trail of political, economic and
military causes that led up to the
outbreak. Given the identity of
the author, one would not expect
an objective, analytical projec-
tion, and that, indeed, is what one

The THIRD WORLD WAR, Sir
John Hacketts, Sphere Books,
London 1979. Paper $4.25.

does not get. The Third World

. War reads like an old war-

monger’s . exercise

in wish-
fulfillment. fe a

The scenario is as old as the |

Cold War: an aggressive USSR,
out to conquer the world, decides
that the moment is ripe to launch
an all-out invasion of Western
Europe. The ‘‘free world’’, for
too long soft and lax about pro-
tecting itself, is forced to rise to
the challenge. Fortunately, all is
not lost — and here is where Hac-
kett’s contrived hindsight pays off
— because by the late 1970s and
early 80s, people were beginning
to wake up to the menace of ag-
gressive communism. In those
dark days, a few voices in the
wilderness were able to persuade
the West of the need to beef-up its
military forces to prepare for the
inevitable onslaught. Hackett’s
voice from 1987: ‘‘The world has
stood on the edge of an abyss.
Under providence, through a
gradual but significant shift of
public attitudes and the work of

growing numbers of men of fore-
sight and good sense in the last
few years before the outbreak —
work. often done in the face of
vociferous and passionate opposi-
tion — it has been held back, but
only just, from destruction.”’

The meaning of The Third
World War becomes clear. Gen-
eral Hackett and friends are not
so particularly interested in his-
tory, past, future. or possible, as
they are in putting across and jus-
tifying their own militarist view of
world affairs, and rationalizing
the policies that go with it: bigger
arms budgets, more power for the
generals, and sharper confronta-
tion with the USSR. ‘‘Future his-
tory is a device adopted because it
enables them to ram their propa-
ganda down the public throat, and
say I-told-you-so at the same
time.

The Third World War has
plenty of exciting violence, that
readers of more traditional war
fiction will enjoy. However, it as-
pires to read like history, and
therefore tries to analyze world
affairs from a broad perspective.
Unfortunately Hackett has the
professional soldier’s rather dim
and confused perception of politi-
cal realities, and as a result his

NATO’s hope for future — nuclear war

view of the world in the
nineteen-eighties could hardly be
more improbable. -For instance,
in 1984, the most stable pro-
American state in the Middle East
will be — guess what? — the
Shah’s Iran.

On the home front we’re going -

to experience big changes. Before
we in the West will be able to
effectively counter the Soviet
threat, we will have to do a little
house-cleaning. Trade union
power, the welfare state, liberal
education, and all that nonsense
will go. We will all become more
willing to join the army, the
militia, and even the girl-guides.
Fortunately, by 1984, we will
have overcome most of our sillier

notions of the 70s: ‘‘A total addic-

tion to redistributive economic
and fiscal policies, which showed

itself in hostility to profit-making -

and in penal taxation on industrial
enterprise, was gradually being
replaced by more sensible at-
titudes. ...”’

Then World War Three does
break out, it is kept within com-
fortable limits: troops, tanks and
airpower fight it out on the plains
of central and northern Europe,
with subsidiary — and equally
conventional — conflicts in the

third world. General Hackett’s
only nod to the age of nuclear pr
liferation, ICBMs, and Pershing
Ils is a single exchange of missiles
in which Birmingham, England,
and Minsk are, regrettably, 1°
cinerated. ;

mediocre work of fiction which 1s

being hyped as prophecy by 8

publishers and all those reviewers

who find it in their hearts to 2°
along. Its message likely appeals

to many of them: world war 8

inevitable, but it need not be

feared if we give the generals #
free hand to prepare for it. In fact,
in Hackett’s fantasy, the war is 4
positive trauma, and one that ga
vanizes the ‘‘free world’, t
storing its lost will and vigol
while breaking the back of the 48°
gressively evil USSR. None of it
is bloody likely, and the fact that
Hackett raises the spectre of’

- III in this way shows that he has
nothing to contribute to the gem
eral problem of our time, which1s
how to prevent world war.

The book, on the other hand,

does reveal a great deal about the »

internal workings of a NATO
general’s mind. And the view §
frightening.

__ Fred Weir

With Arrow went
~ Canada’s aircraft industry

THE ARROW, James Dow.
James Lorimer and Company, ©
Toronto, 1979. 160 pages.
$15.00.

On Friday, February 20, 1959,
the Diefenbaker government an-
nounced its decision to cancel
production of the Avro Arrow.
The thousands of workers who
were involved in the production
of this Canadian fighter plane
heard the news at about two
o'clock of the same day when an
announcement was made over the
factory intercom telling them to
stop work, to go home, and to
stay home.

Such was the callous and
shoddy end to a brief attempt to
develop an independent Canadian
aircraft industry. It was also the
end of any dreams. that Canada
could have an independent de-
fence policy while the United
States waged its cold war against
socialism.

The story of the Arrow is the
story of the sale of Canadian
foreign policy to the U.S. gov-
ernment. It is the story of the sale
of Canadian defence policy to the
Pentagon. And it is the story of
the sale of Canadian jobs to
American industry.

Avro Canada was established
in 1945 as a Canadian subsidiary
of Hawker-Siddeley of England.
It began in Canada by purchasing,
very cheap, Victory Aircraft, a
Crown Corporation which had
produced Lancaster bombers
during the war. In 1953, the com-
pany expanded by buying, for
$17.5 million, a government

owned jet engine factory which
had cost the taxpayer $40 million.

Nearly all of Avro’s business
dealt with government contracts.
Its first major contract was with

.Trans Canada Airlines, to design

and produce a jet passenger
transport. The government,
through TCA, sunk millions of
dollars into this project, and the
Avro jetliner was almost the first
passenger jet to get off the
ground. The British Comet got
into the air just thirteen days
ahead of the Canadian designed
and built model, almost five years
before the American Boeing 707
flew. .

But only one jetliner was ever
built. In 1950, the government or-
dered Avro to suspend all work
on the jetliner and to turn full at-
tention to producing the CF-100
to help the American war in
Korea.

The jetliner made its first flight
on August 10, 1949. It logged a
total of 13'/2 hours of flying time,
and in March, 1957, it was cut up
for scrap.

The Arrow was a much more
costly and shameful episode. The
government spent $200 million‘on
a program which resulted in the
production of only five aircraft. In
April 1959, all five of them were
cut up for scrap. Two years later,
the government bought sixty-six
Voodoo interceptors, airplanes
which would do the same job the
Arrow was designed for, from the
United States. :

These, and other, facts are con-
tained in a book by James Dow,
an aviation teacher at Seneca Col-
lege. The book traces the history
of the A.V. Roe Company of

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 15, 1980—Page 10

Canada from its beginning just
after the Second World War until
its demise just after scrapping of
the Arrow.

This is a subject which should
be studied by anyone interested in
the methods through which
Canadian interests were linked to
the U.S. by successive Liberal
and Conservative governments.

The book by James Dow is an
interesting beginning to one as-
pect of this study. But it is not
without its shortcomings.

Dow accepts all too readily the
cold war logic that led to the
spending of millions of dollars to
defend against a non-existent
Soviet threat.

He concentrates far too. much
on the comings and goings of
businessmen and politicians. Ex-
cept for a handful of minor refer-
ences, no one would know from
this book that the airplanes that
Avro did produce were built by
the sweat and toil of Canadian
workers. And we are never told
what opinions these workers, or
the labor movement, had on the
Arrow. :

However, by reading this book,
we can find proof of the complete
disregard of the basic interests of
the Canadian people by politi-
cians like Louis St. Laurent, C.D.
Howe, Lester Pearson and John

- Diefenbaker.

By looking at the effect of the
sale of crown corporations to
Avro by the Liberal St. Laurent
government, we can see the in-
evitable outcome of the sale of
crown corporations by the Con-
servative Clark government.

———

The Third World War is 4

The cold war led to the Arrow ending up on the scrap heap along with the —

Canadian aircraft industry and Canadian sovereignty.

TORONTO — Canada’s Ex-
ternal Affairs Minister Flora
MacDonald is quoted in the To-
ronto Globe and Mail, Jan. 29, as
saying that U.S. Secretary of
State Cyrus Vance was ‘‘very ful-
some” in his appreciation of
Canada’s help in smuggling six
U.S. embassy officials from Iran.

Some may take it from this that
our Flora is illiterate; others will
say she hit the nail right on the
head.

According to the Gage Cana-
dian Dictionary, fulsome means:
‘‘so much as to be disgusting; of-

=. Alan Pickersgill suanecaen

nonsoerrn

‘Fulsome’? Flora

fensive, influenced in meaning by

foul.”” Funk and Wagnalls New —

Desk Standard Dictionary says,

fulsom: offensive from excess of

praise hence, coarse; indelicate.
Obsolete meaning: Lustful, wan-
ton. A more ancient Funk and
Wagnalls says of fulsome: Rank;
gross, disgusting; nauseous; as,
fulsome flattery, compliment, or
praise. Synonym: Excessive,
gross, loathsome, sickening,

fawning, offensive.’’ And finally, |

Webster’s New World Dictionary

defines fulsome thus: ‘‘disgusting —

or offensive, especially because
of excess of insincerity.”