Review

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EDITORIAL PAGE

TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor — RITA WHYTE, Business Manager.

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Comment

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———

| Tom
McEwen

(Porty years this week, on August
<u » 1914, the

World War spat their deadly defiance
% civilized behaviour, and 12,887,000
-4ng men of many nations died a
“lolent

Countless thousands died to “save” their
if tive “Fatherlands” and ‘“Mother-
ee from something or other. Count-
S38 other thousands died for a greater
Deutschland uber Alles,” headed up by
mad Prussian ‘Kaiser. ae
. It was the first great crisis of world
2Nerialism—struggling to the death for
__jebensraum,” living space, spheres of
*Ploitation, profits. John Bull already
having ‘hogged most of the colonial ter-
‘tory coveted by Kaiser Bill, let out a
'tluous bellow against the “rape of
“<or little Belgium,” and the saturnalia
blood Was on upon a scale hitherto
jhimagined. August 4, 1914 was the
Sluning of the end of a_ social
sider which can only. survive on pillage,
“struction, and mass killing!
ji Month earlier, in July of 1914, the
tiblomatic circles of British and French
<Xverialism, with their colleagues in the
.<témy” camp had planned the bump-
28 off of an Austrian Archduke at Sara-
eyo to provide the incident essential
_,) Setting the fires of war alight. dt
7 be noted in passing that such “in-
(idents” stint play an important part in
- tech

niques of present day warmons-

» With the Archduke neatly laid out on
the. Morgue slab and public hysteria
“Waised to a fine pitch, the war cartels,
Nonopolists, profiteers and other species
po ebitalists who fatten on war, consum-
Tated their opportunity to make their

nN lives. “We must avenge the rape
Poor little Belgium” they had their
d t press shout, and who could remain
: or apathetic to such a moral

of

Cause?
tpouch statistics are sometimes difficult

pod authority that in Canada alone, for
me thousands Canadian dead in the
th, World War, we achieved not less
2 seventy-three new millionaires —
“td a lot more who did’ not quite come
bh to that impressive figure in their
"20d money take. ee:

4 fet, Britain the boys of the old school
she did even better, with official statistics
;,-"ing profits and dividends increas-
‘be by three and four hundred percent
a Ween the years 1914-1920. The British
ovement cartel of Vickers dished out
b *r four million pounds in dividends
“aveen i915 and 1919.

aor the men who marched and fought
a died in 1914-18 it was indeed a
og Way To Tipperary,” much longer
Rati
eves in on the profitable enterprise
erchandizing in death and destruc-
Raj, While they shouted “Hang the
th ‘Ser” they gave their full attention to
; fe More profitable business of how to
aad more profits from the so-called
“Yop and to preparing the harvest
y, the Second World War.

‘tetuy year, and Canada’s heroic dead
ee Memory is marked by cenotaphs,
late to their sons who died 25 years
ea And if the anniversary of Aug-
Me 4, 1914, means anything, it must
ee that those who conspired for two
"ld wars must be stripped of the
€r te foment the atomic holocaust
& third world war.

his crime the people can stop.

of
T

guns of the First:

death between 1914 and 1918.

‘ ing in profits equal to their killing of —

dig up but it is recorded -on fairly.

those others who camped in the
®n’s stock exchanges and got them-

“W..° Salute the veterans of the First:
erta War on this anniversary of that .

eR

5 KENYA MALAYA
COLONIAL ; COST - ia cost a = 4
OFFICFFA, KILLEO EE KILLED eee:

, < é : eenpene ptane

“Do realize what Eden‘s done? He's left us the only people in the
a world fighting wars today!”

LPP’s appeal to the CCF

N appeal made by the Labor
A Progressive party to the CCF
national convention which met last
weekend in Pol ee we receiv-

ublicity in the daily press, -
peas unlikely that the -CCF
leadership will encourage rank-
and-file discussiort on the LPP’s
Open Letter.

If the CCF is seriously inter:
ested in strengthening the unity of
the Canadian working people in
order to stop the present drift to
national disaster and compel the
government to change the course
of its policy, however, CCF mem-
bers-must debate the proposals put
forward by the LPP. an

The democratic gree a

esent government policies an
hanes around which people's
unity can be achieved, are outlin-
ed this way by the LPP:

1) The restoration of Cana:
dian independence of action in all
spheres — political, economic and
one end to the Hes war’:
a foreign policy of peace:
ee with the socialist
states, the outlawing of the H }
bomb, opposition to the rearma-
ment of Germany and_ Japan,

ace in Korea and Indochina,

‘the recognition of People’s China,

and a reexamination of Canada’s
membership in the North Atlantic.
Treaty Organization. . Our coun’
try can be secure only if all coun-
tries are secute to conduct their

‘own affairs free from outside in-

tervention. ’ tt
3) New economic policies of

trade with the world and an end
to the ban on trade with the

socialist states. A shift to greater
trade with the British Common-
wealth countries, accepting
pounds sterling for our. exports,
and away from dependence on the
USS., the development of manu
facturing in Canada and the end-

‘ing of the policy of shipping our

unprocessed natural resources to
the U.S. at the expense of Cana-
dian industrial growth. The im-
mediate construction of an all
Canadian St. Lawrence Seaway
and a publicly owned trans-Can-
ada natural gas pipeline on Cana-
dian territory.

4) Extension of unemploy-
ment benefits for the whole period
of unemployment and a national
7-hour day’ and 5-day week for
all Canadian wage earners. Na-
tional and provincial emergency
action to provide jobs. ;

5). Stopping the advance of
McCarthyism in Canada by com-
pelling the enactment of a Bill of
Rights, the adoption of a new
made-in-Canada Constitution and
a Canadian flag, and insistence
upon the supremacy of the Par-
liament of Canada.

6) Government action to vast:
ly extend the cultural life of Con-
ada and encourage a democratic
Canadian culture.

‘These are policies,’ said the
LPP, ‘“‘which will be supported
by the vast majority of English
speaking and French-Canadians.
They spring from the vital needs.
and the earnest hopes of the peo-
ple and will take Canada to peace,
independence, democracy<and _ so-
cialism.”’ ot

- Nine years after Hiroshima

INE years ago, on August 6, 1954, the
first atom bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima. 6 ’
Thousands of men and women and
children were roasted alive; others were
left with eyeballs hanging down their

‘cheeks; and thousands died long, agon- .

ized deaths from atomic burns. ;
That is what the Japanese experienc-
ed nine years ago. It is what Canadians

could experience in Vancouver, Edmon-
ton and other cities unless sanity pre-

- vails and the A-bomb and H-bomb are |

banned.

The Geneva agreements have created
favorable conditions for the settlement
of other international questions. First
on the agenda must be stopping the
arms drive and banning atomic weapons.

| Hal
Griffin

QE thing you find in Toronto is that

people are quite conscious of their
new subway, and it was natural that
Tim Buck, on his recent visit to the
Soviet Union, should have taken a more
than ordinary interest in the subways
now under construction or being plan-
ned in several Soviet cities, :

“The growth of Soviet cities since the
war is one reason for the building of
subways. Another is the rapid increase
in surface traffic,,” he told me when I
saw him in Toronto this week.

Greater Moscow, for instance,” now
has a population of some 10 million peo-
ple. Fast electric trains, much alike
those that serve London, bring people
into Moscow from outlying districts over
surface lines and the famous Metro car-
ries them throughout the city.

“Automobile traffic has increased tre-
mendously since I last’ saw Moscow,”
Tim Buck said, pointing out that more
than half the Soviet Union’s automobile
production—new car sales increased by
150 percent last year—now goes to in-
dividual citizens. “Traffic on Moscow
streets is as heavy as it is in Toronto
and Montreal.” —

At least three Soviet cities have sub-
ways under construction or have called
for plans.

Leningrad’s new subway is now well
advanced and citizens are already talk-
ing proudly about “the most beautiful
subway in the world” which will be op-
ened on May Day next year.

The fact that Leningrad is built on a
swamp and is drained by many water-
ways presented the subway engineers
with a difficult construction problem.
They are overcoming it by permanently
freezing the ground through which the
subway passes. . ‘ .

A’start has already been made on con-
struction of a subway for Kiev, the city
which, in Tim Buck’s opinion, rivals
Moscow in beauty, and Rostov has call-
ed on architects to submit’ plans.

, at Og og

_Then we got to talking about our own
cities and how they compare in plan-
ning with Soviet cities, \

_ In Vancouver, we agreed, the new
Granville . Street bridge is something
citizens can well be proud of, but it
relieves rather than solves the traffic
problem. Other new bridges are needed,
across False Creek, across Burrard In-
let, across the Fraser River. And as
the city continues to grow those, too, _
will do no more than keep pace with —
the increasing traffic problem. ;

The B.C. Electric, which has never
been noted for its progressive policies,
recently ruled out a subway for Van-
couver by asserting that subways would
be “obsolete” by the time the city’s pop-
ulation approaches the million mark.

Instead, it spoke grandiosely of heli-

copter services and monorail trains.

But what will Vancouver's traffic
problem be when Greater Vancouver
stretches in a solid network of communi-
ties beyond Haney, Langley and White
Rock, all pouring their thousands of com-
muters into downtown Vancouver?

A subway for Vancouver may not be

practicable’ yet, but the B.C. Electric’s

readiness to dismiss the idea defers the
problem indefinitely and obscures the
fact that the interurban tracks now be-
ing abandoned may be needed, and be-
fore too many years have passed, for

» fast electric surface trains as Part of a

subway-surface train network.

¢ PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 6, 1954 — PAGE 5