Comment.

Nuclear arms again

On CE again nuclear arms are
in the news for Canada.

It was announced in Parliament
this week by Defence Minister
Paul Hellyer that the storage of
nuclear arms on Canadian soil will
start during the month of Novem-
ber.

Hetold theCommons Defence
Committee that warheads will be
_ available for the Bomarcs at North
Bay, Ont., in November and the
other bases in December.

Thus, despite the fact that the
sentiment in the country is over-
whelmingly against these weapons,
the minority Liberal government
is determined to push through
with this suicidal policy.

What’s worse — no one in Can-
ada, outside the government,
knows under what terms these ©

_ U.S. horror weapons are being
stored in Canada, or what commit-
ment the Liberal government
made to the U.S. in its secret pact.

Only last week a military expert
told the Commons Defence Com-
mittee that nuclear weapons add
absolutely nothing to Canada’s de-
fence and that we should re-
negotiate a non-nuclear role for
Canada.

Despite expert advice, despite
popular opposition, and despite
the fact that Parliament has never
yet had a majority vote of MP’s
favoring nuclear arms, the minor-
ity Liberal government presses
ahead with its so-called “defence”
policy, based on turning over the
major role to the U.S. through its

control of nuclear arms.

This week the Minister of De-
fence also announced that $33
million of the taxpayers money
would be spent to buy three Obe-

wcticaianaisll

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few days make it more necessary
than ever that every peace-loving

ron type submarines from Britain.
Apparently some of the money
saved by scrapping the useless
frigate program is to be squander-
ed searching for “defence’’ when
there is no defence for a small na-
tion in the nuclear age, outside of
peace.

The money being squandered in
this way could much better be
used to start building a Canadian
merchant fleet to provide jobs for

thousands of workers and expand

Canada’s trade. Such a course
would strengthen the search for
peace, which is our only hope for
survival.

The announcements of the last

Canadian speak out now against
this madness before it is too late.
A good place to start would be to

take part in the Remembrance

Day demonstrations being staged

by the peace organizations.

Canada’s big chance

HERE is a booming market
open in the European socialist
countries and the United States is
not getting its share of the busi-
ness. This was the gist of a speéch

delivered by U.S. Secretary of.

Commerce Luther H. Hodges be-
fore businessman in Houston,
Texas, last week.

Calling for a re-examination of
bars to East-West trade, Hodges
pointed out that it was time the
U.S. took a candid look at the
changes taking place in Europe.

Admitting failure of the policy
of restricting exports of strategic
items to the socialist countries,
Hodges said that today there are
so many sources of supply for
modern industrial equipment that
one country, the U.S., cannot pre-
vent the socialist countries from
obtaining many of the things it
wants to develop its economy.

He expressed deep concern that
while the U.S. continues to main-
tain its restrictions, its NATO:
allies are grabbing the major
portion of the market in the
socialist countries.

He told the Houston Sales As-
sociation that the European social-
ist countries last year bought near-
ly $4.5 billion worth of goods from’
“non-Communists™ countries, but
the U.S. share was only $125 mil-
lion, less than three per cent of the
total.

“About half—$2.2 billion -were
shipments from Japan and our
NATO allies,” he said, adding that
West Germany’s sales totalled
$719 million, Britain's $369 mil-
lion, France’s $267 million, Italy's
$240 million and Japan’s $166
million.

Hodges also made it clear that

the Soviet Union and other social-

ist countries are not only in the’
market for grains. He said that
most of the sales have includ-
ed very large orders for chemicals,
machinery, transport equipment,

and manufactured goods.

The PT is pleased that there is
a growing awareness on this con-
tinent of the vast market in the
socialist countries and of the need
for expanded trade. Such develop-
ment would indeed be welcomed as
a big contribution towards easing
tensions and strengthening peace-

ful co-existence.

At the same time there is a
golden opportunity for Canada in

this situation.

Canadian Communists have for
many years spoken about this vast
market and pointed to the advan-
tages for Canada of expanded

East-West trade.

Last week the Soviet ambassa-
dor to Canada, Ivan Shpedko, in
a speech in Toronto called for
more trade between our two coun-
tries. Canada should lose no time
taking advantage of the break -
through it has already made with
its wheat deal, and take up the job
of a many-sided expansion of our

trade.

Here is our chance to break
away from the total dependence
Here is an
opportunity to expand our manu-
facturing industries through trade
with the large and expanding
socialist market. Here is another
argument why Canada needs a

on the U.S. market.

merchant fleet.

If we don’t move quickly, the
U.S. may squeeze us out in the
competition for the socialist mar-

ket.

fic Tribune _

This week’s guest columnist, pinch-
hitting for Tom McEwen who is recuperat-
ing from an operation, is the famous U.S.
writer MICHAEL GOLD. His column,
“Some Aspects of the Morals of Capital
ism,” is here slightly abridged.

@
veryone from fascistic Bircher to
non - violent Ghandist has observed
it and used it almost as acommonplace
in a political debate. I mean the grow-
ing decay in American morals,

The fungus pervades every corner
of American life, from the poisoning
of the people’s food by the great mon-
opolies to the cult of the happy pros-
titute that has begun in the movies.

* * *

The other day I spotted another item:
**The film Irma La Douce is playing at
present in seven theatres in San Fran-
cisco.’’ Irma is the romantic tale of a
beautiful prostitute of Paris. Her pimp
is a cruel man who beats her, but a
romantic cop falls in love with her and
they marry and she has a baby on the
church steps,

A jolly little musical in technicolor,

making the institution of commercial
Sex seem so quaintly amusing, gay, safe
and even saintly, that any young girl
might innocently decide it the best way
to find herself a good husband,

Gigi was another popular film making
prostitution seem respectable. ‘‘Never
on Sunday”’ made it seem very glamor-
ous, a sophomore’s utopia,

But I am not blowing the whistle or
asking for the heavy fist of the stupid
censor to fall. I mention it only as a
yardstick measuring the national
change of morals,

* * *

Also let me refute the typical life of
a slave owner’s class that prostitution,
the selling of womén’s flesh, is anything
but shame and slavery, can hold any
future for its victims but the hospital
and the prison, drugs, alcoholism,
Syphilis and poverty — the death ina
ditch,

The best book I ever read on the
reality of this old institution was *« Yama
— The Pit,” a terrific documentary
novel by Kuprin, a sensitive and em-
inent author of pre - _revolutionary
Russia,

In The Masses of 1917 John Reed
wrote a story ‘‘Daughter ofthe Revolu-'
tion.’’ He tells of an old Paris work-
er, a stern old veteran of the fallen
Commune. While going to work one
morning he is accosted in the fog
by his daughter, who solicits him since
in her poverty she has become another
Paris prostitute.

In 1935, I was a delegate to a world
congress in Paris of writers against
war and fascism, There I met among

‘ism, :

other wonderful figures the legendary
Isaac Babel, stylist so like ourStephen
Crane in feeling. He had fought with
Budyenny’s Cossacks and Ihad long ad-
mired warmly his book, ‘‘Red Cav-
alry.’’

Babel knew Paris and between ses-
Sions he took me around, We walked the
historical streets and talked from the
heart, I found this short sturdy Russian
Jew, in thick glasses, this fighter with
the Cossacks and revolutionary poet,
a humane and poetic companion,

* * *

He hated the inhumanity of capital-
ism and one day took me to the‘*House
of all Nations,’? probably the most
famed bordello of all France. In an
immense cafe, crowded and amid fogs
of tobacco smoke and tinkling glass,
a hundred women paraded among the
tables where men sat drinking, They
were completely nude. Their flesh was
ugly with sores and bruises. It seemed
like a horse fair, It was a brutal blow
to the imagination, :

We hurried out after a few minutes,
we breathed gratefully the pure night —
air. Babel mopped his forehead and

_ Sneered angrily:

‘‘Ah, yes, the daughters of the bur-
geois revolution!’’ Almost the same
phrase used by John Reed in his story
of 1917,

It is a matter of economics, not
morality, No millionaires, but only
the poor are executed for crime in
America—just as no daughter of the
Rockefellers or Kennedys will ever
drift into the vile bordellos of capital-

ee

November 8, 1963—PACIFIC

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és. a ioe 2 Us

TRIBUNE—Page 4

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