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x EDITORIAL PAGE

Peaceful coexistence and trade is the answer

iy :
pk ISH Prime Minister Harold
Acmillan’s current visit to the
+ ti ° . 5
confer with President Eisen-

OW
: *t and Secretary of State John
ter Dulles

oy presages a new search

feet unity” in the’ so-
dal € world; for a new Mar-
eat ei to head off the twin
Ci ee deepening economic
tn ian Socialist trade competi-

€ world’s markets. Thus

ihe
“aie can be said to have com-
tts full cycle.

wee years ago on March 5,
bam ‘ston Churchill made his
thin 7) Fulton, Missouri speech

ie the cold war against
Loe, ast world, and first and

0s P :
the t against our wartime ally,

Ussp.

es « *P tech projected two main
‘ole a dlicy, The United States’
that ee of the A-bomb, at
*On-con : nas to be used to force
Us di °rming states to submit to
a. And the Marshall
Vag Suld Supply aid to all “back-
th eitalist countries, provided
Hyg: ae teady to dance to the

H
ty t Wall Street dollar hand-

att Truman, then U.S. presi-
dees Churchill’s cold war ap-
Mite jy, the U.S. Marshall Plan
fy Untly: “ . . . the wellbeing
hy ree world rests upon the
le, *! the U.S. as a counter-
Gna Russia.” With this policy
Mey, Went right down the line,
thin Vding the first “spy scare”
 _ °Pened the propaganda bat-
Be. demolish the substantial
dui Ml the USSR had earned

© war years.

vy .. Ulminati i i
a ation of this policy
bese O with its heavy war
‘nde ae member nations which
€d the normal domestic

economy of each in greater or lesser
degree, at the same time curtailing
the export markets of all at the dic-
tate of U.S. imperialism.

ee ia th

Soviet Premier N. S. Krushchev
has emphasized time and again the
consistent peace policy-of the Soviet
Union and the need for a policy of
peaceful coexistence between capi-
talist and socialist states; a policy
based upon good neighborly rela-
tions, mutual trade, and friendly
competition between nations and
peoples.

Despite the cold war threats and
provocations .of the imperialist
powers, and particularly the U.S.
and Britain, this policy has already
resulted in an extensive world mar-
ket between socialist states in the

exchange of commodities and mu-
tual industrial aid without any poli-
tical strings attached.

The Western powers on the other

hand, held in pawn by U.S. dollars
and anti-Soviet hysteria and torn
by imperialist rivalries and_pres-
sures, find themselves sinking stead-
ily in the morass of economic crisis
from which they are vainly striving
to extricate themselves by intensi-
fying the very policies that have
brought them to this crisis.
“There are still too many arti-
ficial barriers to the free flow of
money and trade in the free world,”
says Prime Minister Macmillan. On
his present visit to the U.S., Mac-

millan has outlined his proposals
for a new Marshall Plan, a new
“economic entity” of capitalist
states, banded together to take in
each other’s washing, and to exclude
the socialist half of the world from
this new supermarket setup.

tt OF ie 83

Unfortunately for Macmillan

and the other imperialist architects
of a new Marshall Plan, the in-
herent contradictions and rivalries

of capitalist economy cannot be
waived. Each of the “free world”
powers wants to produce as much
as possible, to sell as much as pos-
sible, and to buy as little as possible,
in order that the trade balances
will always be “favorable.”

In the process each has accumu-
lated -in greater or lesser measure
an “over-production” of goods its
growing army of unemployed work-
ers lacks the means to buy, while
the “free” world Macmillan wants
to weld into an economic unit be-
comes inexorably smaller.

The one hopeful feature in Mac-
millan’s visit to Eisenhower is that
he comes this time thinking (even
if unrealistically) about trade in-
stead of H-bombs. For the common
people at least, that is all to the
good.

cific Tribune

mete MUtual 5-5288
Mean for _ rom McEWEN
ng Editor — HAL GRIFFIN

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ITH all due modesty, I just
W can resist getting into the
current controversy raging
around Sir Jacob  Epstein’s
“Christ” and the proposal that
Vancouver purchase this sculp-
tural masterpiece (tagged at
$20,000) and erect it in one of our
beautiful parks, as recommended
by a committee of our Commu-
nity Arts Council.

Many of our best holier-than-
thou citizens are already “deep-
ly shocked” by Epstein’s “Christ”
and have labelled it a “Franken-
stein,’ a “mockery,’ a “horror”
unfit to be seen in “any Christ-
ian community” or city park.

Perhaps (and I say it cauti-
ously), the genius of Epstein in
carving his “Christ” in stone,
was inspired by the _ practice
rather than the preaching of
Christianity per se.

Perhaps too, it was this dis-
turbing thought which sent the
Vancouver Sun’s most holy of
Holy Willies into one of his
numerous eccelestical tailspins in
which, having disposed of Ep-
stein’s fitness to portray any
symbol of Christianity, he dis-
misses his “Christ” as “this gro-

tesque symbol of a profane
dream.” In this Holy. Willie’s
ramblings one is reminded of
the Pharisees of old who noisily
shouted “Away with Him.”

But please, lest anyone think
our Vancouver Holy Willie is an
anti-Semiite because of his cas-
tigation of Epstein’s “religious”
failings, he falls back on that
hackneyed cliche of the worst
anti-Semities, “Why, some of my
best friends are Jews” .. . so
much so that he is often con-
sidered “over zealous” in such
friendships.

bes wt be

In this massive chiselled stone
“Christ” the genius of Epstein
has captured many devine emo-
tions; a majestic power and dig-
nity, infinite patience, sadness,
suffering, pity, forgiveness, and
yes, the hard lines of a deep
scorn. Perhaps it is this last
which moves our Holy Willie
“art” connisseurs to scream
“blasphemy” and proclam_ the
statue unfit to be seen in our
“Christian community.”

It must be a _ comforting
thought to all those “good”
Christians who plot and profit
from nuclear war against hu-
manity, who “bless” the H-bombs
and all such engines of mass an-
nihilation and destruction; who
offer “devout thanks” for bounti-
ful harvests, but prefer to see
them rot rather than appease
the world’s hunger — if the
hungry won’t conform to a dollar
way of life.

Comforting indeed to exploit
and profit from the labors and

miseries of others and yet to
go about their daily profit-hunt-
ing. with the caricature of a
benign diety of their own mak-
ing in their hearts, instead of
the challenging “horror” of Ep-
stein’s “Christ,” syymbolizing the

measure — in practice—of their
own “Christianity.”
bes tt m

My own opinion is that the
\Viancouver Community Arts
Council has made an appropriate
choice in its recommended pur-
chase of the statue, both as a
work of art, and as a timely
symbol of this era of nuclear
madness. If it isn’t a thing of
beauty, love and peace, the fault
must be sought elsewhere than
in Epstein’s “religion” or his
genius.

Two years ago I visited the
Temple of the Thousand Bud-
dhas in China. On the face of
each Buddha the artist had carv-
ed the lineaments of a distinc-
tive human emotion; on one love,
another hate, and still others
bestiality, ignorance, honesty,
hypocrisy; one thousand emo-
tions, each sharply etched on
the face of a Buddha. There the
Holy. Willies and the canting
Philistines and exploiters might
easily recognize themselves. Per-
hap Epstein’s “Christ” set in a
quiet nook in beautiful Stanley
Park could’ perform a like
“miracle.”

Ecci Homo Behold the
Man, carved in stone by a great

artist in protest against H-bomb
“Christianity.”

June 13, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5