of

By JOHN WEIR

OCCASIONALLY the apologists for the ‘“‘good old days” of capi-
talism in countries where that system is no more, get slapped down
but good. It did my heart good to read Mrs. Eleanora Wallis of To-
ronto giving it to a couple of mourners for the China of the Chiang
Kai-shek times in a letter printed in the Globe and Mail. Here it is:

“I was born in Shanghai, went to school and lived there during
the Japanese occupation. All in all, I lived in Shanghai for 23 years.

“It is my opinion that the two ex-residents of Shanghai, M. H.
Brown and Walter J. Mayer, refuse to face facts. Your Peking cor-
respondent, in his article dated Sept. 15, was being kind when he
quoted the sign on a Shanghai Park reading No Chinese and Dogs
Permitted. I went daily for years to that park and the sign read No
Dogs and Chinese Permitted. The dogs came first! I was. taken to
that park by my Chinese amah (Chinese accompanying foreigners
were allowed). On numerous occasions, as a child, I questioned
the reason for the sign.

“Other childhood recollections include: Walking past numerous
leper-beggars, dying opium addicts and tiny Chinese orphans slow-
ly going blind due to doing intricate embroidery work (for foreign
consumption only) taught by missionaries, while having their pagan
souls saved.

“‘*Your correspondent’s description of Shanghai as a city of
mindless pleasure and abject misery’ is a shock’ (quotation from
Mr. Brown’s letter). I think it is a shock because it is perfectly
true. I also think it is a shock when ex-Shanghai residents refer
to the good old days. It was good for all the foreigners, but very
few Chinese.

“In any case, the opinions on China of Mr. Brown, Mr. Mayer.
and the undersigned are quite irrelevant. The important opinion is
that of the Chinese people.”

HOW TO BEAT the high cost of living? The American UE News
figures it can be done if you give up meat, fish, fruit, vegetables,
milk and bread.

DALTON CAMP told a trial in Moncton, where big capitalist
Irving is charged with creating a monopoly of the press after buy-
ing the fifth daily newspaper in the province, that “the principle of
free ownership has to be inviolate if there is to be a free press.”

“Free” ownership of the media today means monopoly owner-
ship. And if you don’t like it, all you have to do is just invest a
few million dollars and start a daily paper of your own... It’s a
free country—if you have the millions.

i

*

THE TRIBUNE is the only free press, run to serve the public
and not profit, and owned by its readers, whose contributions alone
keep it going.

“THE BARB” is the pen-name of the writer of “Crib Time,” a
column in Common Cause, the paper of the Australian miners,
from whom we often crib a comment or borrow an idea. Turning
serious in a recent issue he wrote:

“Someone asked me why I always write against free enterprise.
I said because I had seen many children who had never had new
shoes and relied on charity for second hand ones.

“Because in the two big wars millions of human beings were
murdered to keep the profit system going.

“Because right now men, women and children, beasts and vegeta-
tion are being destroyed in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

“Because Indians were being slaughtered in Brazil and Argen-
tina.

“Because students were shot in America for protesting against
war, hunger and discrimination.

“Because miners were killed: in the scramble for profit.

“Briefly, I write against the obsolete capitalistic rule you are
pleased to call free enterprise because it is the world’s greatest
Murder Incorporated.” :

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“Sorry, | just gave at the supermarket.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1972—PAGE 8

By LENORE WEISS

Locked behind bars for fight-
ing the people’s cause, the minds
of revolutionaries have never
been chained. Historically, pri-
sons have produced valuable
literature written by those lead-
ers who refused to be isolated
from the struggle outside. This
includes a book of poetry by
Humberto Pagan, recently writ-
ten in Ottawa prison.

Humberto Pagan fled Puerto
Rico last fall after being framed
on a charge of killing an anti-
riot police commander during
student protests at the Univer-
sity of Puerto Rico in the Spring
of 1971. Last August, shortly
after he entered Canada, he was
arrested for illegal entry.

In December of that year
Canadian authorities ordered his
deportation. Pagan said he had
fled from Puerto Rico because
he. was threatened by terrorist
groups.

Last May, at U.S. request,
Canadian authorities took his
case to an immigration hearing
and instituted extradiction hear-
ings, later overruled in an Ot-
tawa court.

The poems, mostly untitled,
are the product of Pagan’s 12-
month term behind bars. The
booklet contains eight poems,
published by his defense com-
mittee. They are snatches, dan-
gerous fistfuls, aimed at the
heart of U.S. imperialism.

Pagan writes. ““The love poem
they asked of me / I cannot say
nor write. / It is being written
by a valiant people / who try
and conspire.”

In one poem, Pagan begins in
a disarmingly quiet tone, ‘‘Out
of red clay and thickets / I
emerged / unto an ocean of
bones and daggers.” And he
concludes in lines that are re-
minescent of Claude McKay’s
poem, “If We Must. Die,” “If I
am to die, let it be now, If I
am to fall, I will fall as a soldier,
/ and when the hands of venge-
ance come, / they will find me
smiling, with my clenched fist!”

While a political science stu-
dent at the University of Puerto
Rico, Pagan won two prizes for
essays. This booklet establishes
him as a poet, as well. Pagan,
born in the town of Aguadilla
and one of a family of seven,
has voiced here the aspirations
of the Puerto Rican liberation
movement.

With a clarity of vision, Pagan
writes, ‘“‘The evening / veiled in
its own dreams, / is a grave full
of truths / without a bottom.”

The weakness of these poems
is that they often hang on the
page in separate pieces from a
lack of. strucfure. But as a first
book of poems — love poems to
the liberation struggle and the
individuals who bare their guer-
rilla robes to the morning — it
is a beautiful accomplishment.

—Daily World

OVER-RATED?

The public library in the Met-
ro Toronto borough of North
York recently held a forgive-
ness week, during which those
who had kept books overtime,
were permitted to return them
anonimously without paying a
fine. One of the books returned
was overdue seven years. Its
title? “Three Weeks to a Better
Memory.”

These aren't totem poles but folk wooden sculptures on
the site of Lithuanian village of Ablinga i th
Hitlerite invaders during World War Two. The memoria’ —
complex is the creation of amateur sculptors on the initiat

: of Folk Art society members uniting more than 1,500 amateur
artists and craftsmen. Twenty made 30 sculptures out of the |)
material supplied by the collective farm on whose territory
the new Ablinga has been built. The memorial ensemble i"
Ablinga is the first monumental work by amateur artists 1e°
by the well-known Lithuanian wood-carver Vitautas Majoras

Inscribed on the sculpture shown above are the names Lae
Ablinga inhabitants killed by the fascists.

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burnt down by :

Medicinal plants help|
health care in USSR}

‘Almost half the medicines in
the world are made of plants.
Even the most delicate and in-
tricate synthesis does not pro-
duce the things the.natural drug-
store gives us. In many areas,
especially in densely populated
Europe, there are few medicinal
plants. This is why Soviet and
foreign pharmacologists focus
their attention on the expanses
of Siberia. :

In 1674, soldier Semyon Epi-
shev dispatched to the tsar a
collection of plants from Ya-
kutsk, writing in the accompa-
nying paper: “There are none
of the curative herbs that thrive
in these Siberian parts to be
found in your Russian cities,
Your Majesty.”

Many prominent people show-
ed a high interest for the extre-
mely rich flora of Siberia. Caro-
lus Linnaeus, the great Swedish
botanist raised over 100 of its
species in his garden. The first
chemical analyses of plants
brought from Siberia were made
in famed Lomonosov’s laborato-
ry. They were studied, collected
and raised by exiled Decemb-
rists who used them to cure
their comrades and the local
population. (Decembrists were
young military officers dedicated
to overthrowing the tsar.)

A great deal was done by
scientists in Tomsk. At the close
of last century, Porfiri Krylov
moved to this city in connection
with the inauguration of the first
university in Siberia. He devot-
ed 45 years of his life to study-
ing Siberia’s vegetative resour-
ces, founded a botanical garden,
a medicinal plant nursery and
a herbarium, and wrote the. 12-
volume work The Flora of West-
ern Siberia.

The school of Tomsk botan-
ists, founded by Krylov, helped

%

ath
the Soviet republic to cope wae '
the lack of medicines 1 no
years of Civil War and eco
mic blockade. The point 1S
before the revolution Russ!@
ed to buy almost 90% ©
medicines abroad. And only
species of medicinal plants wi
gathered in Siberia in S™ J
quantities. a

In 1921, on V. I. Lenin's 19
structions, the Council of re
ple’s Commissars passed 4 nd
solution on the collection ai
cultivation of medicinal p!@ int
Organizations were set pei
Novosibirsk to study and g4"” J
such plants. th,

In the years of World. Wa gf
hundreds of hospitals bey? of
the Urals preserved the liv® 44
wounded soldiers and retu™
them to the ranks. It W®
have been impossible to 4° 44
without the natural sibel
drug-store: the enemy ha dil
off the other sources of ™é
cinal raw materials

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Cuba builds

HAVANA (PL) — Cuba
built more in the first.
months of this year than 1?
past previous two years;
cording to a report by
Farah, director of the Na
Building Department. _ F

More than $200 million Wg
of projects were complet€
far this year, including sca
housing, agricultural

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facil

school construction, almost eat
times greater than last 0
and in housing, which
than doubled. Under cons)
tion at present are factor
dams, hospitals, highway?
hotels. a,