ANCOUVER MAN RECALLS

By CHARLES
la poer GOUGH

/ Was Noy, 6th, 1912 when I
Staggered to my room in the
Oe Hotel, Pimlico, London,
& with malaria and ague.
a only arrived two days be=

honths course on one of our
' guns,) :

Ouldn’t place my key in the
Ole When a kindly voice said
dgin English, “Me tie?” This
the start of a friendship
Nhas lasted over 53 years
One of the greatest char-
it has been my pleasure
‘©W—Ho Chi Minh, who had
d his ship in Tilbury Docks
Was now a lowly dishwasher
learby hotel, ed

English was atrocious but
’Mazing thing was that his
English was perfect and
already sent in articles
Poems which had been pub-
in London periodicals, We
®he thing in common and
Was we both spoke French.

Was in England for the sole
Se of receiving an educa
€conomics, In my spare
a Coached him in conver-
i English. He was a great
oe of Napoleon and I noticed
ol Was wading through Ab-
fe of Napoleon,” a pon-
book of over two thousand

Months later I returned to

®Pore, India and I’ve never

Since but over the years

Ve kept up correspondence

ach other and from his

: Ts, which [have edited,

is article at a most
Tune time: t

> President of North Viet-

(J

Viet execution

ao”
“

|. Week a radio broadcast
‘qd the “carlight” execution
Moting of three Vietnamese
alleged to be “Vietcong
izers” by U.S, troops,
dane? was committed in

K of night to avoid being
aphed by newsmen.

af Royle of Nanaimo marks
Tocity with the following
es:

ETNAMESE EXECUTION

them at night,
be Their faces

know again the light,
© velvet secret places
light, let them go,

ped Shame with night
fe in its glare,
‘Ne truth in death,

from India, Home to take a.

he following article was written for the PT by Charles de
oer Gough, who was a feature writer for Vancouver Times
th folded recently. Mr. Gough, who is now 82 and retired
Yancouver, met Ho Chi Minh years ago and has retained
act with him by letter. Mr. Gough here relates his impres-
is and some views expressed by the North Vietnamese pre-
, Which Mr. Gough has translated.

nam is now in his seventy-sixth
year and the goatbearded leader
is not only the oldest but one of
the canniest of Communist lead-
ers, In 1920 he went to Moscow
where he studied Communist
ideology. :

Today he lives modestly in a
small house in the grounds of
the ex-French Governor Gener-
al’s residence, As a guerrilla
leader, he played an active part
in kicking out the Japanese in
Vietnam in 1945, He persuaded
the French to push out the Chi-
nese Nationalists a year later.
Then the French found them-
selves on the receiving end of
Ho Chi Minh’s sandal,

After eight years fighting, they
left a half a million French com-
rades to fertilize the paddy fields
of Vietnam, and he expressed
his opinion that the U.S.A., with
their inexperienced youngsters,

Moscow Music

Hall coming

The widely acclaimed Mos-
cow Music Hall is coming to
North America for the first
time and will appear in Van-
couver’s PNE Agradome be=-
tween October 19-24,

The show will include 50
performers from the Soviet
Union in an exciting and color-
ful two and a half hour variety

_show. Altogether there are 12
variety acts, including six
lavish production numbers,
The show is accompanied bya
40-piece orchestra, §

Tickets are now on Sale at
the Vancouver Ticket Centre
and at all Eaton’s stores,

Beer baron plot

JAKE BELL, GARDEN BAY,
B.C. writes: Heard a fellow in a
coffee shop up here giving out
with’ some “news.” He works for
a renovating company in Van-
couver. He claimed that his com-"
pany has been renovating jobs on
beer parlors and in all six con
tracts the time limitis six weeks,
Any time over that needed to do
the job by the contractors will
be penalized at the rate of $75

-per day.

Seems the beer baron dispen-
sers are in agreement that for
six weeks at least nothing will
be done to end the strike, Also
when they are ready to negoti-
ate, they will do so on the con-
ditions that the Liquor Board
lays down as regards an upping
in the price of beer; large glasses
to 25 cents, the smaller glasses
15 cents,

There are also rumors of no
bartenders, just one head waiter
and automatic push-button beer

~ taps that will fill the glasses to

perfection, each filling his own
glass, Maybe someone should
get in touch with these renovat-
ing crews and do alittle scouting.

knew Ho Chi Minh

would leave behind twice that
amount to further fertilize the
paddy fields, He went on further
to state that he would not nego-
tiate whilst one American sol-
dier (or invader as he put it)
remained in-Vietnam,

He said the United States has
no right to invade independent
countries and dictate what poli-
cies they should be governed
under with their “This far andno
further.”

”

Communism is here to stay
and my country is 100% Com-
munistic,. They should learn to
live with Communism and not bat
their heads against a brick wall.
Better they should clean up their
own cesspools of infamy, pover-
ty, graft, greed, racial hatred
and corruption in general.

Owing to the invasion and in-
discriminate bombing our stand-
ard of living is very poor and
I’ve had to ration food and cloth-
ing and have had to take drastic
action with black marketeers.
There is a shortage of paper and
at present there are only six
publications in the country.

We haven’t T.V. but most fa=
milies have radios so we are not
short of news~ You asked me in
your last letter what our main
industries are: Agriculture (90%)
rice, We have improved our rice
breeding 100% thanks to that
great scientist from your adopt-
ed country, Doctor Dean Law-
rence Kirk of Saskatoon. We
have cement, coal, phosphates
and there’s a pig iron works 60
miles north of Hanoi, The super
phosphate plant and a large chem-
ical works have been built in the
last’ 15 years with Russian and
Chinese aid which totals $1,000,-
000 to date.

Our morale is still very high
although we haven’t much shelter
against the indiscriminate bomb-
ing by the U.S.A, In Hanoi itself
a large new shelter has been built
of concrete. We have had tostart
conscription for the army and
factories. Our army strength at
present is 500,000 regulars and
500,000 irregulars, Two and a
half million of men, women and
children for the factory and
fields.

Since North Vietnam has adopt-
ed Communism under my leader-
ship we have made tremendous
strides. Five year plans are in
operation to develop agriculture
and solve the food problem, to
develop light industry, which in
turn can supply consumer goods,
We see this as the first steps in
building’ heavy industry — the
basis for what I consider an in-
dependent economy, Greater ad=
vance has been made in educa-
tion. Illiteracy has been elim-
inated,

Our one and only policy now
is to work for the re-unification
of North and South Vietnam and to
remould the political and eco-
nomic life of the country on
Communist lines,

Startling
in W.W.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR
by G. Deberin. Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 547 pages. Available at

St., Vancouver, B.C. $2.95.

By BEN SWANKEY
Buss with built in gas
chambers were produced
in German factories belonging
to Ford and General Motors,”

7

“The Vatican had been in-
formed by Germany of its
plans for attacking the Soviet
Union well in advance, and
charged its priests in all coun-
tries to conduct an anti-Soviet
campaign and appeal for active
support of the Nazis,”

A London radio broadcast
on Aug. 19, 1942 “was meant
for the Germans to give them
a chance to ward off the land-
ing of a task force made up
of Canadian divisions” at
Dieppe.

These are some of the
startling charges-made inthis
- comprehensive account of the
Soviet war effort and the big
battles on the eastern front
that shaped the course of the
war,

BOOKS

It is as much apolitical asa
military history covering the
causes, events and results of
the war in the period from the
1930s through to the 1950s,

Reactionary ruling circles
in the U.S, and Britain, it

to build up Hitler Germany in
the pre-war years in the ex-
pectation that Hitler would
turn his armed might only
against the “Bolsheviks.” The
plan backfired because “Ger-
man imperialism had its own
goals . . . it wanted world
hegemony.”

The period known as the
“phoney war” in the first
months of the war when all
‘was quiet on the western front
was, the author asserts, “to
show the German fascists that
they had nothing to fear in the
west and had their hands free
to attack the Soviet Union.”

The second front, which
could have been opened in

Co-op Bookstore, 341 West Pender’

' aS many as possible,”

“eastern front. This refutes the

charges, deliberately helped —

charges
2 book

1942, was deliberately delayed
until the middle of 1944, the
author charges, in the hope
that by then both the Soviet
Union and Germany would
bleed each other to death and
leave U.S, and British inter-
ests to rule the roost.

Senator Harry Trueman,
later to become vice president
and then president of the U.S.,
is quoted as saying in 1941:

“If we see that Germany is
winning the war we ought to
help Russia and if Russia is
winning we ought to help Ger-
many and that way let them kill

While in no way deprecating
the valiant efforts of the people
and armed forces of the west-
ern powers, the author pro-
duces convincing and irrefut-
able evidence to prove that
the bulk of German armed
might was destroyed on the

assiduously - cultivated myth
that ‘‘we” (the western world)
defeated Hitler, with some
help from the Russians,

The author warns the west-~
er powers of the dangers in-
herent in their policies of
again building up West German
militarism, affirms theSoviet
policy of “peaceful coexist-
ence of states with different
systems” and predicts that a
third world war. would result
in the downfall of capitalism,
“the system that procreates
world wars,”

For those who lived through,
as adults, the period of the
Second World War, this book
will bring back many old
memories and throw new light
on events, For those so young
that the Second World War is
just history, this book will
present many aspects not to be
found in history books pro-
duced in the west,

Above all it will help
readers to gain a full appre-
ciation of the major role of
the Soviet Union inthe war and
why the Soviet people, who
suffered so much, want peace
and are determined to do
everything possible to prevent
a third world war,

eee hee
co! OFDO | sce ew Se se:

“It says it’s made radio contact with other electronic brains

and established a union.”

October 1, 1965—PACIFIC

—Wall Street Journal

TRIBUNE—Page 9

a aa:

RE RS RE

sepa:

z