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1948 - year for decision

ce year 1948 dawned upon a troubled world.
The Four Freedoms of the United Nations
Charter, upon which untold millions have pinned
their hopes, have become subject to the sole
interpretation of Wall Street.

During the Xmas season the hopes of the
people for universal peace has again found mani-
fest expression, but deep in their hearts is the
growing fear, engendered by the full-scale wars
now raging in Greece, Indonesia, China and
Palestine, that these are but the prelude to an-
other world holocaust.

Behind these provoked wars upon peoples
struggling to establish their own form of govern-
ment and way of life, stands the sinister force
of U.S. imperialism, placing its dollars and re-
sources at the service of reaction, and holding in
reserve its monopoly of atomic destruction—in-
tent upon destroying where it cannot rule. Free-
dom from fear? All the resources of this evil
power are engaged in the propagation of Fear.
Fear has become one of the key weapons in its
‘cold war’ against progress.

Freedom from want? With a supreme hyp-
ocrasy the spokesmen for reaction pretend to

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concern themselves with the hunger of Europe
and Asia. They have mastered the art of utiliz-
ing hunger as a political weapon to mold gov-
ernments to their will, or failing that seek their
destruction with the same weapon.

The peoples of China, Greece, Indonesia—
of all of Europe and Asia, torn by the ravages of
war, need our food, our help and our friendship.
Our Kings, Bevins and Trumans read them
plausible homilies on ‘democracy’—and send
them guns! Even in the midst of a super-abun-
dance of food, we here in Canada are subjected
to “austerity,” not to feed others, but to swell
the coffers of the profiteers. Freedom from want!
What a sublime ideal .. . and what a tragedy.

Freedom of speech, of conscience? In the
‘democratic’ Greece of Bevin and Truman, trade
unionists are shot for protesting slave labor and
starvation wages. The unAmerican Activities
committee and the Taschereau-Kelloch-RCMP-
Gouzenko report constitute the new ‘freedom’ of
though manuals for the ‘patriotism’ of the Mar-
shall Plan era.

1948 dawns on a troubled world, but the
common people of our country, allied with their
kind in other lands, striving for the great new

world we fought for can make it a year of great
decision. May 1948 be the year of decision by
and for the common people.

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Free enterprise

ME. Caille, member of the Paris Municipal

Council and ardent supporter of General
Charles de Gaulle’s ‘Reassemblement du Peuple
Francais’ rose in the chamber to champion the
cause of “free enterprise” at a recent session of
the Council. According to an Associated Press
_ dispatch, Mme. Caille wants to “restore the
French capital’s brothels,” and moved accord-
‘ ingly—to make prostitution a legitimate busi-
ness!

Fourteen months ago, on the motion of a
Communist member of the Paris Council, 178
legalized brothels were outlawed, not only be-
cause they were a social menace, but also be-
cause the underworld of ‘free enterprenneurs’
who live by prostitution, were by the same token,
guilty of close colloboration with the Germans
during the nazi occupation of France. Among the
proprietors and habitues of the Paris brothels,
the nazis found a ready-made army of degener-
ates who were as adept at spying on Resistance
forces as they were in common prostitution.

Mme. Caille and her de Gaullist and RPF
supporters want this Communist outlawing of
prostitution ended—under the pretext of safe-
guarding the ‘health’ of Paris? Since “free enter-
prise” is the nub of the Marshall Plan to ‘save’
France, it can be assumed that Mme. Caille is
doing her bit to “combat communist influences”

As we see it.

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S each New Year stepped

jauntily upon the stage
of time, it was customary in
Scottish towns and hamlets
for the old folks to chat over
the events of past years while
having their ‘wee drappie’ of un-

adulterated mountain dew. Per-
haps the immortal Burns best
summed up the results of such
confabs in his touching words to
a little field mouse: “Still thou
are blessed compared with me;
the present‘ only toucheth thee.
‘But oh, I backward cast my e‘e
on prospects drear, and for-
ward, tho I canna see, I guess
and fear.,,

As we herald the birth of 1948
(which some, bright lads have
already dubbed the ‘year of de-
cision’) perhaps it wouldn’t be a

_ bad idea in these days of Mar-

shall-Abbott planners, to take
a look at the past . .. in search
of some gauge for future pros-
pects!

When things were going. to the
dogs in the late 20’s and early
30’s the power-that-be called in

_ the lords of the press for urgent

conference. “Gentlemen,” said
our all-wise statesmen, “this
cannot go on. You must do some-
thing to take the people’s minds
off their stomachs.” They may
have used a shade more polish-
ed language, but that was the
gist of their exhortations upon
the manufacturers of ‘public
opinion.’

The presses got rolling. A
mighty avalanche of mass psy-
chology was let loose, geared to
an optimistic slogan ... “pros-
perity is just around the corner.”
Editorial pages were open to the
most corny of ‘economists’ who
specialized on subjects ranging
from how a thrifty housewife ba-
lances her family budget on
three dollars a week, to the high

nutritive quality of beans .

minus the pork of course, One
even quoted an article from the
old ‘Liberator’ entitled “Segundo
Frijoles,” which is Mexican for,
second-hand beans, washed from
the excretion of poverty-stricken
Mexican peons, to be used again
—to impress upon Canadians
how fortunate we were to have
them first-hand!

The law of ‘supply and de-
mand’ was soft-pedalled in those
days, because,
despite the
tricky algebra
of the ‘econo-
mists’, they
found great
difficulty in ex-
plaining away
the existance
of mountains —
of food which —
dotted the|
wastelands of
hunger and
want.

The ‘prosper- Tom McEwen
ity’ spree gath-
ered momentum. Able assistants
were called in. A Monsieur’ Cuie
Was brought to North America
to expound on the more intricate
complexes of human deception.
While he toyed with his pate-de-
foi-gras, M. Cuie deprecated the
imaginary impulses which
prompted common people witn
the notion that they _Were en-
titled to eat. The ‘Cuie Cure’
was tossed into the ‘prosperity-
around-the-corner’ binge. Poverty
was merely “a state of mina,”
having nothing to do with star-
vation wages, mass unemploy-
ment or hunger. “What the peo-
ple need,’ murmured M. Cute,
as he pecked delicately at breast
of pheasant in the salubrious
Chateau Laurier, was “un grande
optimisme.”

e
NANCIAL and industrial mo-

guls poured in millions of
Gollars in the promotion of a

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FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 1948

By Tom McEwen

‘great evangel’ via the sawdust
trail to speed the mass hypno-
tism along. Billy Sunday hit the
big circus top with the message
of ‘universal salvation’, yelped in
the lurid language of the bull-
ring. “Why, you low-down, whin-
ing, snivelling vest-pocket christ-
ians—you think you are hungry,
you think you are hard up, you
think you are getting a raw
deal? Why, you lecherous whis-
ky-imbibing adulterous double-
crossing make-believe christians,
you are prosperous—Prosperous
—PROSPEROUS!

Then came the voluptuous cur-
vacious Aimee McPherson, ca-
joling and luring the financial
tycoons to part with their long-
green for an angelic smile or
other blesings, the while she
put the masses to sleep on an
empty stomack and befuddled
head. “It costs a lot of money,”
said the Fords, Morgans, Holts
and Meighans, “but it is worth
every cent.”

Amid all this din of ‘prosper-
ity’ we had the ‘Dawes Plan’
through , which ‘Hell’n-Maria
Dawes’ as the pre-Marshall cus-
todian of U.S. imperialism was
going to “make Germany pay”
for World War I. The ‘Dawes
Plan’ went kaput in a spiral of
astronomical figures, to be sup-
planted by the ‘Young Plan’. It
went the way of all capitalist
‘planning,’ but not before it be-
came necessary to have a suit-
case handy to hold the change
from a two-dollar purchase in
the Second Reich,

Those were the days when
Hoover proposed to ‘save civiliz-
ation’ by using hunger as a poli-
tical weapon abroad, while pro-
moting the sale of apples at
home to safeguard American
prosperity, just as a Taft rises
today to promote ‘prosperity’ by
eating less and producing more!

As 1948 toddles onto the stage
of history with its Marshall-
Abbott “plan” for belt-tightening,
more production, less wages, and
the promise of “long-range pros-
perity,’—if only the world can
be saved from communism, it is
well to recall some of these great
‘statesmenlike’ solutions of past
years.

1948 can be a year of great

Gecision. All that is needed is a’

united decision of the people
to have done with this type of
‘statesmanship,’ which couldn’t
be palmed off an a mule, but is
considered legal tender for good
government.

which obstruct the sacred rights of ‘free enter-
prise’,

“, . . poor dear, he ante been himself since that. Effie Jones
campaign for low fares.”

°

War, not peace

OMETIMES, headlines, because they must be brief, tell more of
the truth than the longer stories below them, stories in which
the sharp edge of truth can be blunted by many words.

The Cristmas Eve eadlines said: POPE WARNS OF WAR. Not
AGAINST war, but OF war. Some headlines, with even Sree
brevity, said: POPE’S WAR WARNING.

These headlines expressed the essence of the thing. The Vatican's
pronouncement, unfortunately, was not a peace message; it was a
war message. The message breathed the spirit of war. It used
words to attain the same ends for which the Marshall Plan will use
crass, material dollars. :

The message was a political pronunciamento, and in its despera-

tion employed harsher words than the Vatican has dared use since

the termination of the war. The message, for example, applied the
terms “deserter and traitor’ to the millions of Italian Catholics who
have supported and are supporting the alliance of Socialist and
Communist parties,

The millions of people of all faiths, over all the davis who are
hoping and striving for peace and freedom, will find small comfort
in the Pope’s message. Instead of comfort, they will find the real-
ization that the vast power of the Vatican has been tossed into the
political and material scale of such un-Christian temples as the
banks of Wall Street. :

* Rt AK:

The dulecet tones of Truman’s ‘food conservation’ speech had
hardly died down before 99 prominent citizens, many of them top-
ranking military and government officials were cited as grain and
other food commodity speculators. Playing the market (with inside
dope) and making a killing. All strictly ‘legal’ . . . and profitable,
as the daily score board ef our own Winnipeg Grain Exchange
will show. But it does put a bit of a crimp in the president’s pathos
of Europe’s hunger.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4

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