Wise to ‘Province’ Editor, Pacific Tribune: The Vancouver Daily Province Must be feeling the effects of the strike as I notice that they are sending their scab sheet out to many people around here (and I suppose many other Places) as a ‘sample copy’ for two weeks or so, and then fol- low up with a letter asking the addressees to subscribe to. it. Appears they are getting des- berate in trying to build up cir- Culation, but the people out in this country are not impressed, ‘knowing that the men -who _ built the paper up have been lockeg out, while imported scabs Produce the Province. * With best wishes to them and to the Pacific Tribune. ‘0. H. BRUNING. Swift Current, Sask. Union lifeguards Editor, Pacific Tribune: As president of Civic Em- Ployees Union, Local 28 (TLC) I wish to register an emphatic Protest against the reported Stand of the Vancouver Parks Board with respect to meeting the wage demands of the gov- Their threat to employ unor- ganized women, rather than pay a fair wage to union men, would indicate that they have forgot- ten that they are an elected body, and that a big percentage of Vancouver’s voters are union men and friends of labor. Local 28 has the bargaining rights for the outside staff of the Parks Board, and will soon be discussing the question of 2 new agreement for, 1948. With the cost of living rising sharp- ly every day, it is not difficult te forecast that civic workers will soon be asking for more wages, or else accept hunger end poverty. Perhaps the Parks Board will then try.and replace “ good union men. wtih house- wives looking for part-time work, at depression wages? According to the press, the Parks Board has voted to bar the press from all committee hearings, because they object to the type of publicity they have been. receiving. Perhaps’ they want to keep it a secret that they would like to hire unorgan- ized girls in place of union men? I was pleased to note that at least two parks commission- ers, Webster and Alsbury, had enough decency and gumption to vote against their colleagues. ernment certified lifeguards Being teachers by profession, (AFL), they are good union men. “I fled to Canada” \ HEN several _thous- and Polish veterans of the Anders fascist ‘army Were brought to Canada over he protests of organized labor, Bovernment spokesmen: were loud in their ‘explanations’ that all such immigrants were being thoroughly ‘screened,’ and that entry into Canada. When Ludger Dionne, Quebec Textile sweat-boss began his own immigration scheme by import- Ing several score of Polish girls into Canada to lower the wage Standards of his already miser- _ Ably paid French-Canadian wor- kers, we were again assured by Official Ottawa that all these new immigrants were duly Screened’ and politically disin- fected, ‘ In face of the nationwide CMA 7s against the living stan- 8rds of ‘the Canadian workers, paralleled by governmental sup- Pression of political rights, labor fic 800d cause to be a bit skep- we. of this ‘screening’ process, i. ch permits fascist elements = Pass through its political Ve, but sees to it that thoss ig Progressive _anti-fascist Saag are rejected as ‘undesir- ee Story of how a female ye Vera Potkonjak from the UBoslavia of Michailovich got ee Canada could possibly be i aS explained by the official ®eners at Ottawa. Irked by ®n article in the Yugoslav pro- prays, Paper ‘Novosti,’ this ine type of immigrant” wrote _ 88 follows: “Bloodthirsty Croatians — in N ae you wrote an article ut the murder of Chetnik, YAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1947 Haven for Nazi killers no nazis would be permitted | Srbina Dangica. Damn _ your bloodthirsty mothers. You didn’t write about the massacre which you committed against Serbians in 1941 and today. Why don’t you write about that, you vam- pires? I revenged and I will do. it again. I slaughtered Croa- tian children as if they were chickens . . . I did this from 1941 to 1945 and then I filed to Canada alive .. .” hat is not the whole of this female fury’s letter but it is enough to raise two questions which Canadians should concern themselves with; one, how did Vera Potkonjack, self-confessed nazi and baby-killer get into Canada, and two, how many of her kind have passed a ‘screen- ing,’ designed to keep avowed anti-fascists out of Canada and permit her foul breed to enter? The United Committee of Can-. adian Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes have protested her presence in Canada, as they have of ‘Dr. Mladen Giunio-Zorkin (two years a captain in the fascist forces of the Croatian quisling Ante Pavelich), now acting as secretary of the Croa- tian Peasant Society in America, an organization designed to stir up disunity among the Yugoslav people in the U.S. and Canada, and organize opposition and pro- vocation against the government -of the Republic of Yugoslavia. - It is high time that English- speaking Canada began to take an interest in immigration poli- cies which permits nazi killers” to enter Canada and allows them to boast of their murders without interference. Ottawa needs a new immigration ‘screen.’ As for R. Rowe Holland and his talk about plums for col- lege boys, some one ought to pass this message on to him: In this day and age, even college boys bargain collectively. EDWIN LARSON. Vancouver, B.C. Role of ‘free’ press Editor, Pacific Tribune: Many lies and distortions of the truth have been dished up to us by the daily press about the fickleness, obstinacy, and everything else that is bad of our ally Russia. One of the most recent of these is the failure of the ne- gotiations between the USSR and Britain for the interchange of wheat and lumber, farm and steel goods. The ‘responsibility’ for the break in these negotia- tions has again been neatly placed on the shoulders of Rus- sia by our ‘free press,’ We have been told that the price of Russia’s wheat was too high, so Britain could not pay the ‘exorbitant’ price demanded, therefore negotiations were bro- ken off. In the ‘Moscow News’ of July 30 appears a full account of the matter, and according to which, the above explanation, given us by the commercial press, is completely false. It appears that the price of wheat was mutually agreed upon, ‘and that this price was considerably lower than wheat recently bought from Argentina . .. and less than the prevail- ing Canadian market price. The real reason for the failure of the negotiations was that Britain re- fused to reduce the onerous terms of the British credits granted to Russia, August 16, 1941, stipulated under agree- ment. Thus we have a sample of the lies and distortions being hand- ed out to us by the press and radio, mainly for the purpose of raising a solid wall of prejudice and suspicion. against our one- time ally. It is but one small feature of the picture being drawn in Bevin’s foreign policy, which again is but a part of the larger picture of U.S. world domination, a la the Truman- Marshall plan. A. CHEVERTON. White Rock. Atomaniacs rebuffed Editor, ‘Pacific Tribune: Did all, of you lovers of jus- tice. and freedom hear what Togliatti, leader of 6,000,000 Italian Communists told old Money "Bags Atom Bomb over the radio last Sunday? He told the world that Italian birthright, sovereignty and honor will not be traded for a mess of U.S. pottage. The Italian peo- ple will starve before they will accept aid on the degrading basis that they must conform, first, to the capitalistic war- raongering credo of Truman and Marshall. Old Money Bags will meet with many a rebuff and many an insult from free people, be- fore he is able to buy the tor- tured soul of Europe for a crust .of bread. BERT HUFFMAN. Newton Station. WHEN the Vancouver Labor Council passed a motion at their last meeting, demanding that the city should can the ex-Mountie man-catcher, Col. Hill, as secret adviser to Police Chief Mulligan, they meant even better than they knew. Si-ce the motion was passed the Police Commission has met and A good motion ! reversed one of the decisions made on'a report and recommendation of Col. HiB, supported by McGeer. That decision was the one that abolished the harbor police patrol. Hill’s contention was that the returns for mo-ey spent on the four-man patrol did not justify the expenditure. This is the skin-flint, petty bourgeois way of estimating the value of anything; what does it cost in money, not what are the serviees worth in the well-being of the citizens. The foolishness of this way of looking at things was demon- strated to the Police Commission at their meeting held after the Vancouver Labor Council’s motion was adopted. Harold _Jonés, president of the Vancouver Tug Boat Co., placed before that body a mass of evidence sufficient to convince them that the police boat was a very excellent deterrent to crime. He was amazed to learn that the boat had been taken off duty because of the cost. : Hill, at the meeting of the Commission, read extracts from the log of the boat, some of which showed that several lives had been Saved.this year by the crew, adding, “when you compare thr cost of operating the boat with what it accomplished, I do rot think the cost, $1040 a month, was warranted.” (Hill, himself, costs the city $425 a month.)- He ‘tried to belittle this life-saving service when asked by Mr. Jones, “How much is a life worth?” by answering that he had not investigated whether the crew alone had been responsible for these rescues. And not a word about the value of the boat as 2 deterrent to crime. That is another measure of the dwarfish social stature of the man. Dictator McGeer foisted this alleged expert on the citizens of Vancouver—hand him back to McGeer without loss of time. ~ ‘HE Vancouver Sun attempts to be humorous at times, not in the funnies, but in the editorial columns. In an editorial op September 12 last, the headline read, “Wuxtra! Stalin Sneezes:* That was the humor. No reader could possibly find any connection "between that head and the comment Phony democracy ! that followed. The editorial writer probably sat back in his swivel chair and indulged in a good belly-laugh at the idea of sending his readers on a false scent, like Mulligan’s police hunting for a bank robber in the wilds of Surrey. The comment deals with the action of the city fathers of the Holy City of Toronto, in refusing permits to place street coraer boxes at suitable stands for the sale of the Daily Tribune. “The Sun makes its peculiar brand of Hberalism an alibi for an attack on the Daily Tribune which it labels, a “miserable sheet” an@ “a conspiratoriat Communist organ.” : : This liberalism is embodied in the key sentence of the editoriad which reads, “The Canadian concept of democracy is based on ex- posure rather than suppression of its enemies.” ‘Phat concept ig all right but it is utter hypocrisy for the Sun to claim any credit — for practising it. ‘ The fact that employees who voice any opinion in the course of their trade union activity that is not strictly in conformity with the profit-making policies of the Sun madagement will be bounced, is sufficient proof of that. The case of the artist, Fraser Wilson, fired about three months ago is a case in point. oe There may, too, be an element of jealousy in the of the opinion-monger who expresses the Sun's attitude in its to the discrimination against the Daily Tribu-e, which he will never “achieve a circulation of 150,000 in Toronto or any ot Canadian city, with or without the aid of street corner tion boxes.” : : He may have been reading of the vast circulation of the Com- munist papers in countries where “free enterprise” and the Q making that goes with it, has been curbed and newspapers » create public opinion are published entirely, or almost entirely,, legitimate organizations of the people. “L'Humanite,” for instance, organ of the. Communist Party of France, has a daily circulation verging on a million, over 890,000. In Czechoslovakia, “Rude Prava,” organ of the Communist Party in that country, although not so widely read, has the largest daily circulation of any paper in the country. It is the same with the Communist Party paper in Yugoslavia, “Borba.” These are not countries with Communist governments and suffer from the addea handicap of havicg several languages to overcome. ae Or the Sun scribe may even have been reading about news- papers in the land where Socialist does prevail and the Commun- ists are in power, the Soviet Union. He may have read of the of- ficial organ of the Communists there, where there is no profit in by the newspaper business, “Pravda” with its daily circulatio; of | 2,000,000 copies which are read by many more millions of readers. In these countries, little “miserable sheets” like the Sun, haven’t a chance in the world. . Of course there is a reason for that. The brand of d the Sun touts for has been trimmed to a fare-ye-well—and true democracy has taken its place. YEADING about the failure of the government to make good its promise of an increase to the old-age pensioners reminds me of another government promise which some of the readers of this column may also remember. After the first world war the British ae miners made preparations to strike for Piecrust promises ! wage increases and to better the mis- erable conditions they had accepted during the war. There was not a dissentient in their ranks. The © * Tory government, fearing the might of the miners, appointed a Royal Commission to investigate conditions in the whole industry. That was in 1919, and the Commission was known as the Commission. 2 : In an interim report soon afterwards the Commission recom- c mended wage increases, the 7-hour day, restriction of prices and eZ some system of nationalization. The governme-t accepted the pro- posals in a statement signed by the prime minister, Bonar Law. But as soon as the miners called off their’ strike preparations, Lloyd George announced in the House of Commons that Sankey’s proposals for public ownership would not be accepted by the government. ‘ These Liberal and Tory government promises are of the pie- crust kind. ; 2 PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5 ‘ oe ¥