Review

Victory Bond Killing

T= Victory Bond conversion
Scheme, announced last week by
lefenbaker and Fleming in a
Nation.wide CBC sales talk, will
Probably be rated by future
“Onomists as one of the greatest
Mancial swindles of this era.

In this $6'%-billion dollar con-
Yetsion of Second World War
ey Bonds into a new long-
“m (25 years) bond issue paying
et interest rates, the big bank-
8) Mortgage, trust, and similar
_ancial monopolies stand to make
Stand killing. This is already
Bere: by their  high-finance
®Psodies in praise of the Tory
“hVersion scheme.

To the average “man-in-the-

scat (and there are lots of him)

4s nothing in the way of bonds

" Securities to convert, this new

. Path to “prosperity” is
Plciously odoriferous.

oi ously it is good for every-
: _ xcept the Canadian taxpayer
the small V-bond holder.
» it absolves the Tory. govern-
oN nf having to meet the early
ae of Victory Bond issues;

Y, it will provide the banks

Wi other financial buccaneers
. th a new a

irst
Men

nd lucrative source of

ing
Pico. : :
Me in the form of conversion

nay dealers and delivery com-
tome gs end: so on, amounting to
Alt ‘ 00 ‘million dollars or more.
a, Which will be paid by the
Com i to the banks and_ trust
bees: who hold the great

ih Canada’s Victory Bond
is that all. It is estimated
bo uring the lifetime of the new

sue and its higher interest
> the taxpayer will contribute

>

Pacific Tribune

Phone MUtual  5-5288
“ Editor — TOM McEWEN
4ging Editor — HAL GRIFFIN
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tg te

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Roo

an additional $2! billion dollars to
Canada’s financial plunderbund in
increased interest rates, to say
nothing of the millions they will
currently have to cough up for
conversion costs—and prosperity
for the money changers.

Who holds the bulk of the
nations Victory Bond issues is no
longer an academic question. The
banking and trust financial plun-
derbund will be the prime bene-
ficiaries in the Diefenbaker-
Fleming conversion shell game.

More than 30 percent of the
people possess no bonds or secur-
ities whatsoever. Twenty-two per-
cent may have V-bonds up to $250
or so, but less than. 10 percent hold
$500 to $1,000 bonds. Any talk
of the conversion being “‘beneficial”’
is just so much Tory eyewash.

It is the old Tory game of
making sure well ahead of time
that whoever suffers from the
vicissitudes of a bankrupt capitalist
economy, it won’t be the Bankers’
Association, the monopolists, or the
trusts!

* EDITORIAL PAGE

Middle East Crisis

HE MIDDLE EAST crisis,
brought about by U.S. and
British military intervention in Le-
banon and Jordan, and carried out
independently of UN opinion,
poses a grave problem for Canada;
to stand forth as a strong and in-
dependent voice for peace and an
end to such shameful aggression,
or to trail along in the despicable
Liberal-Tory role of a willing satel-
lite of John Foster Dulles’ nuclear
policy of “brinkmanship” disaster.
Welcome indeed is the call of Ex-
ternal Affairs Minister Sidney
Smith for “a conference at the
highest level now” within the frame-
work of the UN or outside it, to
avert global nuclear war.

That call is weakened, however,
by the wishy-washy kowtowing to
Washington dictums and Diefen-
baker’s “approval” of U.S. and
British troop concentrations on
Arab territory, more threatening
because of its boasted possession of
nuclear weapons.

It will be too late to try and put
out the fire when U.S. and British
tory arsonists, motivated by their
greed for the oil resources of Arab

countries, have lit a world con-
flagration in the Middle East. Now
is the time for Canada to speak up,
boldly, fearlessly, and indepen-
dently, for peace.

To demand an immediate with-
drawal of all U.S. and British
military forces from Middle East
countries; to recognize the right of
the Arab peoples, and of all subject
colonial peoples to win their own
own forms of government and
institutions, free from outside
aggression or interference.

And last but not least, the ban-
ning of all nuclear weapons and the
promotion of a summit conference
to. replace armed intervention,
aggression and nuclear tensions
with the concept of peaceful
coexistence.

On that road Canada can render
an unmatchable service to man-
kind. On the slippery Dulles path
of massive retaliation” and suicidal
“brinksmanship” only ignominy,
disaster and defeat ‘can follow.

Canada’s voice for peace must
ring out around the world, not in
demagogic tory half-tones, but full-
throated, clear and decisive.

Tom
McEwen

AN the history, the struggles,

the aspirations of a people

be compresed in‘o twelve short
words?

It all depends upon who
writes it, and from which side
of the tracks the writer is on.

During the B.C. centennial
celebrations to date, a few mil-
lion words have been written,
spoken and rehearsed; words
purporting to be history but
which contained very little of
that, and less of the objective
aspirations or past achievements
of the common people.

What the officialdom who run
B.C.’s_ centennial celebrations
seem to have lost in their
anxiety for tourist dollars and
public acclaim, is the fact that
the dynamic of real history is
always sought and always found
by the ordinary people who
build while others bleat.

For instance: at the entrance
of Highgate Cemetery in Lon-
don, England, there stands a
huge red granite mausoleum the
size of a two-car garage, contain-
ing the dust that was once Lord

Strathcona. Very few of the hun-
dreds of daily visitors to historic
Highgate ever pause long
enough to even look at it. They
come in their hundreds from all
lands to seek out another quiet
corner in Highgate ... to stand
a few minutes by the grave of
Karl Marx, architect, designer,
and builder of a new Socialist
world.

Thus in twelve, or one million
words, the history of the Strath-
conas and their kind has little
impress upon the minds of those
whose sweat and blood has gone
into the building of a great
province or nation, mainly be-
cause such “history” is little else
than a wordy veneer to cover
up a social system built upon
exploitation.

Despite all the difficulties
however, the job of writing a
people’s history of B.C.’s centen-
nial has been done; done by a
great Ukrainian Festival cele-
brating the contribution of an
immigrant people in the building
of a great province in a great
land, and restoring to all B.C.
labor the dignity and pride of a
builder, instead of a disinterested
spectator, relegated to the side-
lines by a tourist-dollar centen-
nial officialdom.

Twelve words; the history of
all the builders of B.C, com-
pressed into twelve words in the
stirring theme song Extra Gang,
written by John Weir!

“Lord Strathcona drove one
spike,

All the rest were done- by
Mike.”

That is the history of B.C.’s
miners, loggers, fishermen,
bridge builders, construction
workers; all whose sweat and
toil and lives have gone into the
building of B.C.

Sure some robed cleric may
invoke the “dedication,” some
politician unload his blah about
‘progress’, some exploiter pocket
a fat profit on the productive
labor of the real builder, some
dignatory who never did a use-
ful day’s work in a lifetime cut
the “official opening” ribbon,
but “all the rest was done by
Mike.”

‘Mike” is the builder. the man
who erects the steel, who drives
the mine deep into the earth’s
riches, who fells the big timbers,
and gathers the harvest of the
seas and farmlands. Who does it
all for the pittance of a wage
and a place on the nation’s
breadlines.

The Lord Strathconas may
drive their ceremonial golden
spikes, lay their cornerstones,
hang up their bronze plaques to
perpetuate their “divine” right
to political pelf and profit, but
“Mike” is and will remain, the
builder.

Long before another B.C. cen-
tennial, “Mike” will be building
for himself—and cutting John
Weir’s twelve-word history down
to seven.

July 25, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5