Y the time this appears in

print one of the two months
of the press drive will be gone.
We. have raised more than half
the quota for our column and if
we were just like ordinary people
we would be feeling quite chesty.
But we aspire to surpass ordin-
ary people: we are not satisfied
just to accom-
plish things
but criticize
ourselves as to
why we did
not do better.

The first tet-
ters received
in response to
the appeal in
this column
came from
three old la-
dies — and I

ov Bill mean ladies—
old age pen-
sioners. Two of them sent in

one dollar bills and the other two
dollars. That is to say, two of
them sent in one-fortieth of their
monthly income and the other
one-twentieth. If everyone re-
sponded in the same measure how
easy it would be to raise $15,000.

Unfortunately such is not the
case. From the reports on another
page you will see that there are
many laggards. Somebody has to
make up for their failings and
why shouldn’t we accept our share
of that job. I believe we can do

Tom McEwen

©

AST week Vancouver Liber-
als nominated Ralph O. Camp-

ney, KC, party standard bearer.

for Vancouver-Center federal con-
stituency, now vacant as a result
of the _Hon. Ian MacKenzie's
elevation to the Senate.

The nomin-
ating speeches
differed little
from scores of
similar Tory
or Liberal
Pew the
ings where
the manly (or
womanly) - vir-
tues of the
candidates are

extolled in a
spate of pre-

Tom McEwen
election oratory.

But there were other speeches
at this Liberal nominating conven-
tion which did radically differ
from the general run-of-the-mill
product. The Rt. Hon, James Lor-
rimer Ilsley, minister of justice in
the King government, came all
the way from Ottawa to attend
this Liberal rally. He did not
speak on the housing shortage,
or prices, or the Abbott “austerity”
plan. Nor did he say anything
anent the glowing promises made
by his party chiefs in 1945—and
forgotten in 1948. According to.
lsley, Canada's economic troubles
did not stem from its being tied
to the political fortunes of Wall
Street, but because Canada is
“menaced” by Communism?

Ilsley took time out to brand

four times as much in the second

month as we did in the first,
meaning of course, that we raise
our sights and instead of aiming
at $200, we try for $500.

There are lets of ways to raise
money. One woman in Grand
Forks has sent me a braided rug
she herself made. It must have
taken months of her spare time.

_ It will be raffled for what it will

bring.

Another, who was a waitress in
a Cumberland hotel when she was
younger and refused to feed the
murderer of Ginger Goodwin, so
that he had to get out of Cum-
berland to eat, is putting on a
card party in her home. And there
are lots of other ways.

I have only mentioned women
friends so far and maybe Fel Ash-
ton will be jealous but I know
she will get over it if we make
that $500. But the men have done
nobly too with their donations.
Just a little more effort then and
the $500 will be exceeded.

e

A FRIEND of mine remarked

the other day that Bob Mor-
rison is an intellectual prostitute.
I must disagree. When John Swin-
ton coined that historic phrase he
was the editor of a leading New
York paper.

He spoke at a press dinner in
that city, describing the methods
of distorting and falsifying news
commonly practised by editors

all members of the Labor - Pro-
gressive Party and other unspeci-
fied “fellow-travellers” in the
CCF as “disloyal.” “All their loyal-
ties,” the minister is quoted as
saying, “are to a‘ foreign power,
and not to Canada.”

It is now considered “good” poli-
tics by certain stalwarts of the
old-line Tory and Liberal parties
to cover up their braken promises
and sins of omission with the rau-
cous crv of “Communism.”

The complete files of the Roy-
al Canadian Mounted Police are
available to the minister at any
time—in fact they are under
his control. In those files (and
there are plenty of forged docu-
ments drawn up by hired stools
and provocateurs) there are
two things he cannot find. He
cannot find a single vestige of
proof which would stand up in
a Canadian court, showing, that
Canadian communists “are loyal
to a foreign power.” Nor could
he find a single document in
these files which would prove
that Canadian communists seek
to “overthrow constituted au-
thority by violence.” Such proof
just cannot be produced by an
eminently efficient RCMP, be-
cause such proof is non-exist-
ent. Therefore the statements
attributed to Canada’s minister
of justice are “without any foun-

dation in fact,” as the legal ©

gentlemen say.”

Ah yes, someone says in de-
fense of Ilsley’s statements, but
have you forgotten Fred Rose and
the espionage cases? No, we

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Published Weekly at 650 Howe street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857; Business, MA. 5288

Tom McEwen

SEEM AN REN specs Swiss Editor

Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50; 6 Months, $1.35.
Printed by Union Printers Ltd., 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.

and newsmen, concluding with the
phrase, “We are intellectual pros-
titutes.”

No one has yet produced any
evidence to show that Bob Morri-
son is an intellectual.

@

Losic as taught in the schools

is a peculiar thing if we are
to draw our conclusions from the
statements of the products of
these schools. If the life of society
today was not dominated by these
“logicians,” their assertions could
lend only to” the world’s merri-
ment, but since they are amongst
the rulers, farce
tragedy.

Giving evidence in Ottawa be-

fore the commission investigating —

the price of butter, a man named
Aird, president of Dominion Dai-
ries, claimed that the consumers
benefitted through the increase in
the price of butter. The Church
of England déan whom I referred
to in this column two weeks ago

.told us that the more Russia

spreads out the weaker she be-
comes, 5

These remarks remind us of the
chairman of the’ Bank of Eng-
land, Lord Overstone, quoted by
Marx in the third volume of Capi-
tal, who maintained that when
gold was shipped out of the coun-
try, the quantity that remained
increased in value. How do they
get that way?

ni

ee lt

mT

AAUUAUESU EN

haven’t forgotten Fred Rose, and
we have no intention of forget-
ting the espionage cases, nor the
fact that half of those accused al-
ready had been acquitted by the

_courts of Canada.

The only thing the espionage
cases definitely prove to date
is that powerful reactionary
war - mongering elements in
Washington, London and Otta-
wa were conspiring against
their Soviet ally, while the peo-
ple of that nation were stand-
ing with their backs to the ‘Vol-
ga at Stalingrad, demonstrating
‘their loyalty in a death-struggle
against fascism. Recognition
by a section of the Canadian
people of that fact, does not
make them disloyal to Canada.

N this Liberal: nominating
convention the issues facing
the Canadian people—the people
of Vancouver—were ploughed un-
der in an orgy of red-baiting. Key-
noted by Justice Minister Isley, it
was inevitable that noted B.C.
Liberals should follow suit. The
Hon. Gordon S. Wismer, provin-
cial minister of labor, did not
speak of Bill 39, or the iniquitious
three-percent sales tax, or the for-
estry steal carried through by the
Coalition government, or the in-
creased fare gift to the B.C. Elec-
tric monopoly or the $5-million
dollar gift to the oil barons. All
that the Hon. Gordon S. Wismer
could see through the smoke of
Liberal big guns was-the-‘‘danger-
ous march of communism.”

Our concept of loyalty to Can-
ada does not include slavish
agreement with governmental
policies and pronouncements.
On the contrary, we are loyal
to Canada only to the extent
that we can generate awareness
and mass unity of the Canadian
people against the dangerous
policies enunciated by leading
Liberal and Tory spokesmen,
such as were expressed at the
Vancouver - Centre nominating
convention, which can only lead
to economic crisis, widespread
suffering, and global war.

is turned into.

MacDonald blows his top

BA] HEN the Labor-Progressive Party decided to work

for tiie election of a CCF government in the coming
provincial elections, it very obviously found the “Achilles
heel” of the Johnson-Anscomb Coalition.

Just so long as the CCF and LPP ‘were divided at the
polls, to that extent the Tory-Liberal alliance felt reason-
ably “safe”. But since the pattern of electoral unity began
to emerge in the Saanich and Cariboo by-elections, Coal-
ition spokesmen, following the lead of reactionaries every-
where, have broken out in a rash of “red” hysteria.

Mines Minister R. C. MacDonaid in a province-wide
radio broadcast last Monday, threw ministerial integrity,
honesty and truth to the winds in an attack against the
LPP and the CCF. Repeating all the worn canards, which
should have died with Gobbels, MacDonald is quoted as
saying of the LPP: “Their leaders have sworn allegiance
to Moscow. They have been trained to destroy by violence,
by bomb, gun and dynamite, the institutions of this country
and the people who oppose them.”

Through his Chamber-of-Commerce manufactured red
goggles MacDonald sees in LPP support of the CCF at the
“polls a “Red coup,” by first voting the CCF into power and

then ‘‘taking over.” He claims awareness of the reluctance
of top CCF leaders to accept support from the LPP, but
his Coalition conscience tells him that rank-and-file CCF’ers
favor unity at the polls; hence inclusion of the CCF in his
‘hysterical outburst. He deplores the fact that the CCF are
not all like “Mr. Atlee’s socialists in Britain . . . who are
closer to the Conservatives than Socialists as we undestand
these terms in Canada.”

But there are other significant factors behind all this
Chamber-of-Commerce inspired anti-communist balderdash.
At the recent IUMMS district convention MacDonald per-
sonally made a number of praiseworthy promises to the
hard-rock miners—promises that an amended Metalliferous
Mines Act would contain proper safety regulations _to
protect the miners. These promises have been “dyna-
mited” out of the new Mines Act brought down ‘by the
Coalition government.

MacDonald’s anti-LPP, anti-CCF radio smear is design-
ed to obscure the broken pledges and big business control of
Coalition policies,

Contrary to MacDonald and those who “think” like
him, Canadian communists owe no “allegiance to Moscow,”
nor do they advocate “violence” against the institutions or
the people of Canada. The minister’s statements indicate
that truth is not rated very high in Coalition circles.

“Papa, there’s a

man on the radio saying hard work and
thrift is good for people. Does he mean us?”

Looking backward

(From the files of the People’s Advocate, April 2541988)),

Disclosure at the Moscow trials have cause@ acute embarrassment
in the British Foreign Office. Questions in parliament have raised
the matter of the breaking of Britain’s pledge not to interfere in
the internal affairs of the USSR.

Miss Ellen Wilkinson, MP, engaged in a sharp skirmish with
Premier Chamberlain, who denied any British espionage activity on
the part of the highly-placed persons named in the trials. Miss Wil-
kinson countered by asking why so many of these persons had recently
acy lecturing on their connections with the British Intelligence Ser-
vice. ‘ ,

At the Same time difficulties have arisen for Whitehall through
revelations of British activity in trying to break the French-Soviet
Pact through the medium of the men convicted in Moscow.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 2, 1948—PAGE 8