ae From Nanking to Athens |Nothing ne w behind ‘iron curtain’ By ISRAEL EPSTEIN : Confirmation of opinions expressed by this column for a long time now comes from high official quarters. In China, Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer concluded a survey for esident Truman by describing Chiang Kai-s hek’s government as “notoriously marked Y greed, incompetence or both.” He added: “Military force in itself will not eliminate Communism.” Wedemeyer at- tacked Chiang’s regime for ne- Aes reforms and spending ‘eg “blaming outside influ- Ss —Meaning Russian, and Seeking outside assistance” — Meaning American. In Greece, Dwight Griswold, ee trator of U.S. aid, told bee farst correspondent that 4 fre has been no invasion of Ge The rebellious bands are nN No’ foreign uniforms 4, © Crossed any frontier. So far, oR international brigade is just ae Statements, made by Be On the spot, expose the fal- na and ineffectiveness of U.S. 5 sis Policy as formulated in ruman doctrine. ate two years and $4 bil- hii aid to the Chinese dic- initise poh Wedemeyer himself Rae €d while commandin® Am- os ‘i forces in the China thea- bitte « New York Herald Tri- sala = an editorial August 26 ix hiang’s complete collapse Probably inevitable. only oie U.S. envoys had ee Withdraw support of the Yalist cabinet of Prime Min- ister Maximos to make it fold up. With the Greek government army in the field suffering de- feat after defeat, demands are now being heard for U.S. soldiers to back it up. Despite the statements by We- demeyer and Griswold, .the course of trying to make foreign peoples love their unwanted rulers by force of American dol- Jars and arms has not yet been ubandoned. Take Wedemeyer. He de- nounced Chiang Kai-shek, among other things, for “lethargy and defeatism.” But he had no word of censure for Chiang’s arrests of political opponents, destruc- tion of unions or slaughter of villagers. These are the Chinese people’s chief grievances. Saying “military force alone” was no good against communism, he seemed to grant that the civil war must continue, but with something added. The ordinary person, however, would find it hard to see why Chiang would need military suppression at ‘all if he governed democratically. Returning to Greece, news dis- patches show that a new gov- A Jewish are British the hose; third, tear gas. men? de ere Manhandling, hoses, tear gas...! nticipating some difficulty in herding three shiploads of refugees back into the concentration camps where ons of their people have been brutally murdered, British *Hficials are perfecting some not-so-new methods. The three principal methods which the British have. an- nounced will be used in sequence for the subduing of the 4,400 Jewish refugees from the refugee ship Exodus 1947, who being forcibly taken to a German prison camp on three ships. Some sadistic civil servant must have worked this out with ; greatest of care: First, manhandling; second, the ship’s he }V@ Wonder what the childrer will get. Which method will © best for subduing them? And the women? And the old Perhaps our civil servant has worked out this in some ey too. Civil servants are such meticulous people. ; Manhandling, ship’s hoses and tear gas . . +! : WV —S ce A Getting ‘Rooked’ Editor, Pacific Tribune: HA have been visiting your city at for two weeks now a ae come upon a situation ae I think you should know tas * The first and main ob- oe to a tourist thoroughly ees a visit in this lovely ae S-the ‘racket’ that is being : Maree by landlords. After an * Sive search for a place to ;.’ ™Y wife, two children and finally in desperation took two Nee Poorly-furnished rooms in haq + 2nd rooming house. We to pay $18 a week (plus ne for the privilege of sleep- ome Couches that must have © out of th between sh e ark, betwe' ae that were not changed © moment we entered the until we left. There was water at any time and t facilities on the floor ™MS were on. : 0oms No hot Ro toile ur roo p : . bint landlady hastened to as- appro Us that the prices were - ved by the Rental. Admin- °r, but I was just incensed eas YAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1947 strat This 1 Wwute enough by the time my two — weeks were up in that dump, to - go to the Administrator’s office where I found the rooms were not registered at all. avnether: the worthy administrator will do anything about the matter or not remains to be seen although he did assure us it would be looked into. < Yes, Vancouver is a lovely place and the people are friendly but if this city expects tourists to come once and return again something will have to be done about the ‘racket’ in housing. Tourists are being ‘rooked’! NICK WORONIUK. Breton, Alta. The Finest Cause nea Birchard, : Pacific Tribune: . Replying to yours of August 25 requesting name me as a sponsor for the celebration which you are or- Your Deoarfinent al you Plame. permission to ernment is being cooked up not at the Greek polls or parliament but in the conference room of the U.S. Embassy. There an anti- Communist liberal, Themistocles Sophoulis, promises to carry out U.S. aims if entrusted with the prime ministership. Royalist can- didate Constantin Tsaldaris, with the backing of America’s ambas- sador Lincoln McVeagh, says Sophoulis must come in as his lieutenant to help do the same ‘job. Here too, the U.S. has not condemned political arrests and killings, though it was quick to protest such reported actions by governments outside the U.S, sphere. : The only lesson officially drawn from the failures of the Truman doctrine is that neither Chinese nor Greek rulers know how to act with US. efficiency, and must therefore be subjected to more U.S. supervision. No U.S. statement has said the Chi- nese and Greek peoples are themselves qualified to super- vise, or change, their own gov- ernments if they choose. Naturally this distresses the great majority of the inhabitants of these unhappy lands, who are no more communist than they are royalist or fascist but would rather cooperate with Commun- ists than with Chiang or King ‘Paul. During the war they look- ed on America as an ally against bondage. For the last two years they have seen America only through its support of the guns and prisons used to subdue them. Late as it is, it is good to see Wedemeyer and Griswold recog- nizing the facts, or some of them. But the American people must still make their own gov- ernment act on that recognition. . There is no other way to make millions all over the world look to this country once more as a force for freedom. ganizing to honor Ol’ Bill’s 50- years service in the labor move- ment. I can assure you I feel it a great honor to have been named as one of the sponsors and I feel sure that there are thousands of workers on this North American continent who will unanimously join me in saying, here is a man who has undoubtedly lived in words and deeds strictly in ac- cordance with Lenin’s prescrip- tion, I quote: “Man’s dearest possession is life and it is given to him to _live but once. He must live so as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be scared by the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live that dying he can say, ‘all my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world—the fight for the liberation of mankind’.” Will do my level best to help. Fratefnally yours, ‘ FRANK ALLEN. Gibsons “Landing, B.C. : ® not be allowed to happen again. EENAAUEGETTTOTESHUHTHAEANLEREOESEUI PASH RSEUTSEEI ASHE Short Jabs wmaby Ol” Bill N THE picture, ‘The Nuremberg Trials,’ which will be shown at the State Theatre during the coming week, you will see what happened to some of the war-mongers. You will see not only what happened to . : them, but also what happened to some of ‘Nuremberg Trials’ their victims. History used to be recorded in charac- ters that might be read. Sometimes they were printed on paper or vellum; sometimes they were chiselled on stone. Today we have a new history recording device which in many ways is an improvement on ink or hieroglyphs—the cellulose film. ‘The Nuremberg Trials’ will help those who see it, to understand the full significance of the documentary film as an adjunct to the apparatus of the historian. ) A reviewer in the News-Herald writes that “the picture is not without a Russian variety of ham.” Such a comment is nonsensical since there is not a moment of acting in the whole hour-and-ten- minutes showing. The hog-jowled Goering certainly is not acting, even as a ham, in the shots that the camera makes of him. The fear that is depicted on his face is not the simulated fear of an actor but the genuine terror of a coward confronted with the threat of physical punishment for his crimes against humanity, Nor is the same fear that shows on the ugly mugs of the once “polished” leaders of the “master race,” the supermen—Hess, von Ribbentrop, Doenitz, Kietel and the rest of their devilish crew—the work of Russian ham actors, it is not mimicry, but the cowardly response of the skulking bully who has met his match. Not one of them showed any of that manliness in bearing which we have seen in real men who were being prosecuted for causes which they were proud to defend. Certainly, not one of them could be likened to Dim- itrov in. the prisoner’s dock jn Leipzig when they were the prosecutors. This is a lesson in history such as has seldom been made available to people who did not play an immediate role in the event it deals pubdate It is the best documentary film yet to come out of the Soviet nion. : The evidence against the criminals in the dock is not only listed in charges and other documents, but is brought out, as the’ charges _ are made by the prosecution, in flash-backs to the horror chambers of Buchenwald, the ovens of Oswiecem, the soap factory at Danzig the mounds of the murdered dead and the many other atrocities by the twentieth century Huns. A comment from a member of the local theatre industry was overheard to the éffect that the picture plays up the Russians and does not give sufficient credit to the British and Americans. This comment expresses an opinion that will no doubt be widespread among Britishers and Americans. We must remember, however, that this picture -was made by the Russians. It is the result of the selecting, cutting and piecing together of thousands of miles of film taken in the courtroom, on the battlefronts where the Red army carried defeat to the Hitler legions and where the Soviet citizenry were massacred by the brutal Nazi hordes. It is quite natural that the Soviet picture makers should ~ use the ruins of Kiev to show the criminal acts of the prisoners rather than the wreckage of Coventry. And is there any city or town in the United States that would have served the purpose that Kiev does here? E British and Americans took part in the trials at Nuremberg. They had their cameras there too. If they have not issued their stories of the trials for the screen, they have their own reasons. They may never do so! The fact that the Soviet judges had to issue a minority judgment might Warmongers still ! place those .who dominate the political life of the countries of the other judges in an invidious position. ‘The Nuremberg Trials’ on the screen today, is a further proof that the Soviet people and their government are ‘in earnest about destroying fascism; for the same reason their army was the first to reach Berlin they made this picture—to help uproot fascism from men’s minds and destroy it forever. In view of many of the things that have occurred in dealing with the defeated Nazis in the occupied zones, British, American and French, it will not be surprising if no story of the Nuremberg trials is ever published for popular showing. “Everyone must see this picturé,” is a favorite blurb of the Holly- wood publicity men. If it is applied to ‘The Nuremberg Trials,’ I will echo the sentiment. I am sure that anyone who sees it will learn enough from jt to make them convinced anti-fascists. This is as necessary today as it was when the fascist wolves were over-running Europe, Asia, Africa and the Seven Seas. All the fascists were not. in the dock at Nuremberg. We still have them amongst us, either in fact or potentially. In the last few days, from the frothy mouths of some leading statesmen in Canada and the United States, the tocsin of the war- mongers has been sounded. W. Averill Harriman, one-time U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, two weeks ago called upon the government of his country for an immediate showdown with Russia. He wants the U.S. to un- limber its store of atom bombs and drop them on the Soviet Union without any waste of time—a_ high caliber war-monger as big as the ones you will see in the dock in “The Nuremberg Trials.” - And among our own “peace-loving big-wigs” we have Senator Farris. He speaks of the Soviet Union as “our enemy” and told a gathering of Washington lawsharks last week that “Russia must be forced to cooperate for peace immediately.” “Russia,” he said, “will - not hesitate to use’ the bomb in a surprise attack.” _ Thus he attributes to the leading peace-loving nation in the world the crime already committed by his ally, the U.S., of using the atom bomb in a surprise attack. Soviet Russia does not need any atom bomb; she has a better secret weapon—the love and admiration of millions of workers now ‘ groaning under capitalist rule. These two war-mongers should have been in the dock at Nurem- berg; and while such people as they are allowed at large such pictures | ‘as ‘The Nuremberg Trials’ will be needed to remind us that it must PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5