vice-president, Electrical Workers, the Lenkurt Electric Co, LBJ Peace in Vietnam, EDITORIAL Not behind bars n behalf of its staff, readers and supporters, the Pacific Tribune extends Yuletide greetings to B.C,’s four imprisoned trade union leaders, To E.P, “ Paddy’’ Neale, Secretary, Vancouver and District Labor Council; Tom Clark, Local 1-217, International Woodworkers of America, Jeff Power, president, Marine Workers Union, and Art O’Keeffe, ex-business agent, International Brotherhood of They sit in prison, separated from their families and their fellow unionists because they dared to oppose exparte court injunctions, designed to club their fellow unionists into sub- mission to the will of an arrogant profit-grasping cartel — Their struggle has very much to do with the winning of **Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men”, mounted against them and the cause they represent is the very anthesis of that imperishable hope, Their continued imprisonment is an outrage against the conscience of organized labor, an insult to its very existence, We wish them a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and demand that they be allowed to celebrate it with their families and in the full freedom of honored citizens — not behind bars in a mockery of Justice, Make it permanent he Christmas truce in Vietnam is not to the liking of the Pentagon war hawks, They are deadly afraid that world opinion demanding a halt to the killing, that the truce may become permanent, They want no * Peace on Earth” except on their own terms — the U.S, “ueber alles”, As the unholy trinity, Johnson, Rusk and McNamara have already declared, they “don’t want half a war”, With the Christmas spirit once again in the air, we may expect to read any day of U.S, bombers dropping toys along with their napalm-bombs for Vietnamese children, and for older Vietnamese peasants bombed out of their poor homes, a souvenir card accompanying the heavier bombs, depicting in the role of a second coming of Christ to ‘‘save” Vietnam — and the world from “communism”, The world’s people, and particularly the so-called Christian world has a sacred obligation this Christmastide — to see to it through their governments and multiple organizations — that the Christmas truce in Vietnam becomes a permanent — irrevocable step towards “Peace on Earth” — by enforcing because the injustice and Tom | Mc EWEN n our changing world even the business of lying changes, There used to be an old cliche to the effect that “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” longer holds good, Now the fig- ures can be made to lie, there- by enabling the liar to affect an air of veracity. In the October edition of Demo- cratic German Report, editor John Peet displays some fine ex- amples of the art, some of these culled from U,S. publications, Since the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is probably one of the most highly lied about ~ (with statistics) countries in the Socialist world, editor Peet’s views on the subject of statistics should be of interest to Can- adians, also subjected hourly toa“ very heavy diet of prefabricated statistics. *The art of lying with statis- Sies.* writes. Peet, “is a very widespread occupation, and un- less you happen to have gone into the subject rather thoroughly, you are very liable to be caught out, That no There are a multitude of ways of going about it. “An advertiser may proclaim “40 percent more doctors recom- mend Blank’s toothpaste,’ which means precisely nothing, since the figure is unattached and un- explained, and might well just mean 40 percent more doctors recommend Blank’s toothpaste rather than not cleaning your teeth at all, **A slightly more subtle method, which may be objectively truthful, is to start from an un- realistic base line: ‘Ruritania’s production of mousetraps has quadrupled in the- past year’ sounds quite impressive until you learn that Ruritania never made . mousetraps before, but has just hoisted production from one single mousetrap to the giddy figure of four. “But of course much the simplest way to lie withstatistics is just to invent them, and rely on the fact that the poor listener or reader has not got the facilities for checking the figures, Protest vote registered in B.C. civic elections Voters in 137 B.C, cities, towns, districts and villages last Saturday expressed their desire for a change by returning one new person to public office for every four incumbents, In many places votes for labor and pro- gressive candidates ran _ high,’ showing the need for wider parti- cipation of these forces in future civic elections, In North Vancouver District, veteran School Board trustee Dorothy Lynas, a leading figure in the progressive movement onthe North Shore, was re-elected in second place, polling 2,704 votes, She was about 650 votes ahead of the closest runner-up, Mrs. Lynas, who has served nine years on the School Boerd, has championed many progres- sive issues in her municipality, She made the cutback in school construction and action. on kindergartens the two central issues in her campaign, Her re-election near the top of the slate is a tribute to her many years of active community lead- ership, In Port Alberni, where there were three councillors to be elected, George McKnight, pop- ular labor and community leader, received 993 votes, Forty-seven votes separated him from the winner of the third seat for council, James Dalton, who polled 1,040, Electrician Herbert Welch was elected School Trustee with 832 votes, In Surrey, where retired rail- way unionist Harry Ball ran for council and community leader Robert McLaren for School Trustee, Ball polled 1,448 votes and McLaren 2,392, McLaren was runner-up for election, run- ning in fifth place with four to be elected. An outstanding example of this blatant way of going about things turned up recently in a syndi- cated leading article which was apparently printed in many small-town papers in the United States. My clipping comes from the Johnson City Press Chronicle in Tennessee, dated September 14th, and states: ‘‘East Germany has population woes in reverse, , .its birth rate of 2.5 per 1000 population as against 21 per 1000 in the United States, is one of the world’s lowest, . .The clear indication is that many East Germans are not enthusiastic about bringing child- ren into the world of misery in which they live, «