EMOCRATIC people naive
enough to believe that Nazism
died a sudden death on V-Day,
may get a rude awakening one of
these days. Nazism is not dead,
even if Hitler, Goering and Goeb-
pels are. It has only changed its
habitat. :

The London Daily Telegraph,
strident voice of British Toryism,

sympathies

only becausepe
the Tories lack
the power necessary for that pur-
pose.

That paper reported, in a very
sympathetic vein, that four Nazi
generals, von Rundstedt, von
Brauchitsch, von Mannstein and
Strauss, claim to have been
given the third degree by British
authorities while in prison.

The Telegraph’s correspondent
in the British zone in Germany,
writes about these scoundrelly
Hitlerites being held “under a

rather theatrical restraint in Ger-
many,” and that, “the unexplain-
ed detention of these officers, still _
ignorant of their future, lends un-
fortunate color’ to the reports
that they would be tried as war
criminals,

"THE ,BOSSES just didn’t (and

don’t) like May Day. They
just wouldn’t (and don’t) accept
the fact that it was born in
America instead of “Moscow”.
The bosses just don’t like labor
unity and solidarity, either na-
tional or international. So, with
the aid of labor
fakens and
phoneys in the
old Gompers-
school-tie boys

governments, a day to be set
aside—the first Monday in Sep-
tember, for the observance of the
dignity, existance (7), contribu-
tion and so forth, of labor.

Up until the early thirties Labor
Day was mostly, the bosses’ day.
Parades were held which were
little. more than dressed-up ad-
vertising stunts to display the
wares the boss had to sell. Labor
got the “credit” of having pro-
duced these wares, but that was
all. The boss put on the show.
The labor fakers led the parades
and extolled the “orderly pro-

5

To cap this disgraceful piece of
“objective” writing, the Tele-
graph’s military correspondent,
Lt.-Gen. H. G. Martin, follows
with his contribution. He asks,
“What crimes are these old, and
apparently honorable, profession-
al soldiers supposed to have com-
mitted—other, of course, than the
sin of winning battles? Surely it
is time to make an end of these
dreary inquisitions.” With the
last sentence of this we are in
perfect accord—provided it is the
end justified by their crimes.

Just who are these “honorable
old professional soldiers’ about
whom the Daily Telegraph and its
fascist - minded correspondents
are so concerned?

They were Nazis, all of themt
If at any time they disagreed
with Hitler, it was not on grounds
of Hitler’s politica] program, but
purely on military grounds, The
Canadian Press dispatch writer
apparently desires to muster a
little support for them by telling
us that von Rundstedt was twice
purged by Hitler. If any one of
them was ever removed from of-
fice and supplanted by others, it
was solely because they failed to
accomplish the military objec-
tives Hitler had set them, as was
Brauchitsch for failing to take
Moscow (and that was not his
fault, Hitler should have blamed
the Red Army and the Soviet
workers for that).

Von Brauchitsch, commander-

* in-chief of all the Getman armies

and von Rundstedt occupied lead-
ing roles in the rape of Poland

gress” of labor. toy
But, as the Walrus said, “times
have changed”. The conditions
which gaye birth to Labor Day
have changed. Labor does not
now go cap-in-hand, or don its
parade finery to pay tribute to
capitalist stupidities, mismanage-
ment, exploitation and chaos.
During the past decade or more
Canadian labor has won a place
in the scheme of things. It has
stepped forward as the greatest
single force for democracy and
peace. In this changing situation
it was inevitable that Labor Day
should also be stripped of its

- bourgeois-cradle rags, and take on

the honest garb of the working-
class in the all-important struggle

for progress, economic security
and peace.
e

HAT yard-stick do we use for

gauging these observations?
Take a look at the International
Woodworkers of America in ne-
gotiations this week. Ten or
twelve years ago the boss loggers
maintained a blacklist of union
men and an elaborate union es-
pionage system; they would like
to revive it again. If a union man
opened his mouth to protest, a
grievance he was promptly fired
and barred from finding another
job. This week in Vancouver
the IWA publicly exposed all the

~

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<a

“Mueller,

NULLA
and the atrocities on the Polish
people in 1939, In 1940 again, they
both served as “running dogs” for
Hitler, as our Chinese friends
would call them, in the destruc-
tion of France and the enslave-
ment of the French people. Then
von Brauchitsch turned his al-
leged military genius on the So-
viet Union and met his Waterloo.

Von: Mannstein’s fame was es-
tablished in the Ukraine and the
Crimea where he was responsible
for that horror pit outside of
Kiev where thousands of civilian

workers were buried, many of
them still alive.

_ Rundstedt’s fame begins when
he, as chief of staff to General
invaded Saxonyy and
Thuringia in 1923, to smash the
Socialist governments set up there
by these two states, on the orders
of the Social Democrats in power
in Berlin.

This scoundrel wrote in the
Volkischer Beobachter, official
Nazi organ, on Memorial Day,
1940,—the day when the Germans
honor their dead—‘Certainly we
think earnestly of the dead, but
we do not mourn.”

He was not thinking, however,
of the 30,000,000 of dead, murder-
ed in the slaughter pens of Maid-
enek, Osweicim, Berkenau, Buch-
enwald and Dachau. Nor did any
of these “honorable professional
soldiers” ever offer a word of pro-
test against the Nazi murder pro-
gram while they were bullying
Europe, but now when threatened
with their deserts, they squeal as

bullies always do.

sorry; contemptible, despicable
union-spying trickery of the boss
loggers, and the representatives
of these gentlemen, in spite of
their battery of trick lawyers,
had to sit and take it! They
couldn’t reply. Their Gouzenko
had gone “on a fishing trip’—to
Saskatchewan of all places?

In their fight for union se-
curity the IWA and its repre-
sentative on the Conciliation
Board have rendered a great
service to labor by this timely
expose,

Or take a look at the Mill-Mine
union. Twelve years ago it was
as much as a union man’s life
was worth to show his face in
Trail, Kimberley, Sudbury, or
other Canadian hard-rock mining
centers. Now collective agree-
ments exist—not “given” by the
bosses as Labor Day was, but
wrested from them in a long,
bitter and consistent struggle
which has seen the imprisonment,
deportation and killing of hun-
dreds of hard-rock union men.

The epic of the Canadian Sea-
men’s Union on the Great Lakes
illustrates the advance in the sig-
nificance of Labor Day. The
Trades and Labor Congress lead-
ership regards the CSU as. one
involying the security of all un-

‘ions. The phoney Frank Hall

gang, with government and ship-
owner backing, would throw the’
seamen to the wolves—and open
the door for the destruction of all
unions. That attitude expresses

_the boss-inspired origin of Labor

Day. The defense and support of
the CSU struggle by thousands of
AFL and CCL-CIO trade union-
ists expresses the transformation.
of Labor Day from a bosses’ day
to a workers’ day. We still have
an abundance of phoneys and
labor fakers, but the Labor move-
ment progresses despite these in-
ternal boils on its neck;

Roads scandal

T° the average citizen roads are public utilities maintained
at his expense for his convenience. To the politicos. of
the old-line capitalist parties, whether Liberal, Tory, or a
mish-mash of both, roads are top-drawer politics designed
to facilitate the party in power staying there.
Up-country, whenever the cyclical program of “road
work” gets under way, it is regarded as a sure sign that an
election is in the offing. Such. “work” usually does no more
than widen the well-blazed trail to the public treasury, and
in return for fat contracts and generous hand-outs to con-
tractors and others, votes for. the party machine are rolled
up. _
This brand of political graft in road construction and
1 is one of the main reasons roads in British
to citizens as well as tourists,
and why our province has fewer miles of roads to show for
the money expended than any other comparable province.
The recent announcement of Public Works Minister
E. C. Carson that the Coalition government has taken over
the uncompleted contract on the construction of the “John |
Hart” highway. iuto the Peace River, raises anew the con-
tinuing issue of governmental mismanagement in B.C. road
construction. A government that lets out contracts for
political purposes and then finds itself confronted with the
necessity of “taking over” an unfinished job deserves the
strongest public condemnation. ,
The example of the “completion” of the Hope-Princeton
highway is a case in point. Here is a project from which
contractors have pocketed fat returns for the past 20 years
‘or so—and still there is no road upon which even a jeep can
travel with reasonable safety. Now the John Hart Highway
is “hoped to be completed in 1949,” with the original con-
tractor on a preconceived “sit-down” and Carson looking
around for another political beneficiary upon whom to bestow
a contract. e
The public is entitled to more explanations than Carson
has given on this latest road-building fiasco. If B.C. is ever
to have roads worthy of the economic resources and scenic
beauty of our province, road-building will have to become
an exclusive government-operated enterprise, under the
direction of competent management in the public works
department. That excludes the Coalition setup with its
bi-partisan concept of road construction as a permanent

prop to political tenure.
a Z| on Bee Je
o

maintenance
Columbia remain a nightmare

wees
oF;
Lede ovr 5 2
eae ay teits ge ME
pay

#

a

“He didn’t say pretty please.”

Looking backward

(From the files of the People’s Advocate, September 2, 1938)
’ —VERNON, B.C:
a Charges made by Godfrey Isaacs, Oyama grower, of the existence
British Columbia of a fruit and vegetable marketing com!
pring sharply to the fore the miserable returns obtained by thé
majority of Okanagan growers for their fruit. :
Fruit Board png t the ee ania eae sae tne
a e average return to
ae 40 cents a box. baie aia
or apples that sold on tle prairies at prices ranging
$1.68: to BLBi-a. box, te Krower: tithe Okanagan xecelyed feo’ oe
to 50: cents, with the average return as shown by board figures. _
Growers here are unanimously of the opinion that operators of
the combine have affected their returns to a considerable degree:
(At Victoria this week, the provincial government, throug!
Attorney-General Gordon Wismer, asked Isaacs for details of bi®
clarges that a combine, operating through Western Grocers, Ltd
of Winnipeg, and Dominion Fruit Ltd., controlled fruit and vege
marketing in: B.C. and the prairie provinces.)

PAULFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 3, 1948—PAGE *

’ .

from