Madman’s policy ARLY in April the Pacific Tribune reported m—that James V. Forrestal, ex-U.S. secretary of defense, and leading advocate of the use of the atom bomb in Wall street’s war schemes to “stop _ Communism,” had gone stark raving mad. The PT was the only paper in B.C. to carry the report, believing that when an atom-maniac is officially re- garded as insane, the fact is news—to people deeply interested in peace. _ The monopoly press maintained a profound silence, obviously under ‘‘advice” from Washington through Ottawa that publicity would be embarrass- ing. can imagine just what our “‘free press” would have done with such a story (then and now) had it been a high Soviet official rather than a king- pin in the Wall street war conspiracy,. Forrestal’s insanity case was a secret guarded by official Washington. It would indeed have been embarrassing to have it widely known that the man who had been largely responsible for shaping U.S. cold” and “hot” war strategy, was a madman, a victim of his own propaganda. /n fact, it might even have caused those who signed the North Atlantic Pact to pause. Last Sunday, Forrestal plunged to his death from the 16th floor of the naval medical center at ‘Bethsheda, Md., where he had been under observ- ation and guard since April 2. The event dispels all doubt -as to his insanity. question it poses, however, still remains to be answered: Shall U.S. “cold war” policies, con- ceived by a madman, continue to express U.S. dom- estic and foreign policy? It is also obvious that Forrestal’s madness, stem- ming from his anti-Communist obsession, has bitten deep into the body politic of the Yankee “‘way of life.”” A letter received this week by Vancouver Board of Trade from a prospective woman tourist in Port- land, Ore., expresses fears about visiting Canada, which, according to U.S radio programs, “is over-run with Communists.” She wants to know if it ‘‘is safe” for an American tourist to visit Canada. © To many, at first glance, this may appear funny. It would be—were it not for the fact that the anti- Communism which finally drove Forrestal crazy, ending his sorry career in a suicide leap, is not con- fined to official Washington circles and top U.S. brass, but has now even hit the tourist trade. Forrest- al’s madness is seen in the daily witch-hunting, war hysteria and terror, which American reaction has | unloosed upon every section of the American people. One can feel a great pity for this poor woman in Portland who would like to visit our country, but first requires assurances that it is quite ‘‘safe’’. It is reported that just before his death For- restal was reading, fittingly, “Chorus from Ajax’’, by - Sophocles, the classic Greek poet who also wrote, “Tf I am Sophocles, I am not mad; and if I am- mad, I am not Sophocles.”’ His suicide leap settled that question— but the damage he did to world peace and good fellowship still remains to be re- paired. : We think Canada is quite safe for those who come among us with friendship and good will. We are not so sure it is as yet safe from the atom- maniacs of the Forrestal breed who seek to make Canada a pawn on the chessboard of Yankee im- perialism. ' A vote for the candidates of peace on June 27 will make Canada much safer for the commoa “people of both countries. : | T does not take a political wiseacre to see that M. J. Coldwell is in an outspoken coal- ition with the Liberals, Oh, no! He would not admit that. Officially, the CCF is opposed to - “coalitions,” but unofficially? That’s a horse of another color. St. Laurent is a “‘gentleman,”’ a ‘“‘man of honor and integrity,” says the CCF leader. St. Laurent retums the compliment, and calls the CCF “Liberals in a hurry.” it comes to Communists—well, the CCF big brass let go with all barrels. - The other night, A. R. Mosher, presiden of the Canadian Congress of Labor, took up eight minutes of a national CBC hook-up to blast at “Communism.’”” Anything against the Liberals who are marshalling RCMP and CN police to smash the CSU? Not a word! Unofficial coalition Such is the “political arm of labor’’—in reality, the labor political arm of big business! Thousands of CCF voters can be brought to ~see the hollow mockery and outright hypocrisy of the CCF leaders like these. ¢ = That sections of the CCF membership are upset and perturbed and ready to fight for a true labor program is to be seen in the events in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. And there are undoubtedly many of the same mind in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. CCF voters who want a fighting program, not a coalition with the CSU_ strikebreakers, should vote LPP in those constituencies where there are LPP candidates; elsewhere, they should press their’ own candidates to break with the Coldwell-Lewis-Mosher line of tying the labor movement to big business. TOM McEWEN As We See It — } The crisis grows wie provincial and federal election campaigns running simultaneously in B.C., Tory, Lib- eral and hybrid Coalition politicos are prone to get their “better trade” planks a trifle mixed. In the east Prime Minister St. Laurent keeps assuring his audiences that Canada “‘is just at the opening of a great new era of expansion,” and that the present trade outlook “‘is far brighter than it was at the end of the war.” And anyway, says: the PM, in a gentlemanly slap at the Tories, “don’t forget what happened to trade in the thirties when a Conservative government was in power.” In B.C. his followers strum on the same key, but in the Coalition, where the unholy bonds of poli- tical matrimony have deposited Liberal and Tory in the same bed, “‘optimism” and the glories of “free enterprise’” are tendered to the electorate in lieu of facts on adverse trade balances—or what to do about it. ‘. The latest Dominion Bureau of Statistics trade report shows Canada with an adverse trade balance of some $16 millions for the last month. In trade with Britain Canada’s credit balance dropped in March fram.some $37 million to $11 millions, and for the first quarter of 1949, as compared with a year ago, from $115 millions to $63 millions. Translated into simple language, these figures spell acute economic crisis for the Canadian people. The Tories, of course, charge that the flam-— boyant statements of St. Laurent, Howe, Abbott, “have no relation to fact””—and then tell the elector- ate what a glorious job they will make of it, if and when elected! Shades of ‘Iron Heel’’ Bennett, his “Ottawa agreement’ and his ‘“‘blasting’’ operations into the world’s markets, which transformed Canada — into one huge relief camp! Harold Wilson, president of the British Board of Trade, now touring Canada, puts the question posed by Britain’s lack of dollars very neatly .. . if somewhat cramping to the vote-catching optimism of the politicians. Says Wilson: “We export to Canada 35 percent of what we import. To increase that proportion to 100 percent. is the reason for my mission here.’ Wilson makes it painfully clear that much as Britain would like our salmon, lumber, bacon and eggs, all Britain’s “‘free’”’ dollars, earned in exports to Canada, are tabbed for purchase of a minimum requirement of Canadian wheat. That is a nut the politicians, on the eve of an election, hesitate to attempt to crack. Tory or Lib- eral, they have a solution, of course, but it is not deemed a good vote-catcher. The ‘‘free enterprisers”’ call it “cutting production costs,” which means cut- ting wages and Canadian living standards. So the politicians fiddle while Canadian trade strangles in the grip of the Marshall planners. Barter? Perish the thought, say the fat boys of St. James and Bay Streets, and the politicians murmur a devout “Amen.” : Only the LPP raises the issue of Barter with Britain and other European nations, as a means of _ breaking the log jam and releasing both Canada and her neighbors (whose trade we must have to ‘sur-— vive), from the usurious grip of Wall Street imperial- ism, : HE average worker can’ readily understand the daily squawks of big business on the subject of Communism. After all, a gangs that has been sitting on top of the pile for a few hundred years waxing fat and rich from the exploitation of their fellow humans: hates like hell to be pushed off. What the average working man ha? some difficulty in understanding is how they find workers—and 80 called workers’ representatives—to repeat these squawks. “i If space permitted, we could write a lengthy historical dissertation on this interesting subject. For the moment We must content ourselves with more recent phen onema. Be During recent weeks the B.C. Federation of Trade and Industry, one of the “political ar of the Chamber of Commerce. has been run an extensive advertising campaign on the glori d of “free enterprise” (capitalist exploitation), and the horrors of “socialism” as seen by these cros® eyed historians, iy In one of their current advertisments we leat? that William Green, president of the America? Federation of Labor (AFL), “...as the spo man for a labor organization of six and 2 half million members . . . Stands foursquare in support of free and_ private enterprise ...and will oppose any attempt to abridge, restrict © interfere with (its) functions.” : é Green is as good as his word in seeing to it that no one or nothing interferes with its “functions,” hence his attempts to dictate to 400,000 members of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada split that body—and if he could, in cahoots with the powerful Sh ping Federation, who are also strong exponents of “free enterpris® destroy the Canadian Seamen’s Union. : It may assist the average worker to grasp the similarity of viel between William Green and the “political arm”’ of the Canadiat Chamber of Commerce, if he keeps in mind that Bill’s take-home P9Y is $25,000 a year—plus expenses. Bill did less than the late Gery McGeer to help organize the CSU, or scores of other AFL unions we could mention. but “Riot Act” Gerry was.a piker compared S) “free enterpriser’ Green in the business of politically knifing strik workers in the back. @ : We The BCFTI also ran a big advertising spread, relaying the vi of CIO president Phillip Murray: “The rights of private property and - free choice of action under a system of private competitive capital must continue to be the foundation of our nation’s peaceful and P perous expanding economy... .” That is quite a mouthful from the head of a trade union organiza tton, which only a few years ago struck terror into the heart the “free enterprise” exploiters—and gave millions of working and women of North America and elsewhere a new hope for emanel pation from the industrial feudalism he now espouses. You remember the magic of the letters “CIO”... breaking down the craft, and political differences by which the “free enterprisers” and their stooges had bedevilled working-class organizations. Now it is bell transformed (if the Murrays have their way), into a pro Cena dishrag for big business. In their advertisement the BCFTI pretends to be hurt because the Millards, Moshers and “Dr.” Conroys kowtow i to CCF “socialism,” rather than adhering to Murray’s choice of Mp a vate competitive capitalism.” j sy With the passing years, Murray’s annual pay envelope approx” f mates that of Green’s—which explains in part his catholic devotio® to “free enterprise’—and his determination to transform the all into an appendage of Yankee imperialism, by excommunicating those unions which do no accept the Marshall-Truman war plan* lock stock and barrel. \ ; ES Like the Wall street “free enterprisers” who have already a nexed Canada for their imperialist war plans against the countrie? and peoples of socialism, Murray lays down dictums for the con) ui Hf of Canadian trade unionists. In the recent CIO executive board ae ing, Murray decreed among other things, that men like Harv’ ‘Murphy, western representative of Mine-Mill, should be throw? o of that union. It is not accidental that the hard-rock mine opet4 i of this province, or their mouthpiece the BCFTI, together with a and all their lesser CCF and Liberal stooges in the Mine-Mill union should think the same way. Murphy’s years of organizational W? in Mine-Mill has put tens of thousands of dollars into the pock of miners and smelter workers, which they wouldn’t have got &*' through the medium of a fighting union and a devoted JeadershiP. : The “free enterprisers” don’t want to let go of their fat Pl tbe by having to grant wage increases ... so, bust the union, and iter leadership that has delivered the goods to the miners, And how | io? to do the job than for the bosses to enlist the aid of the trade ¥ ors bureaucrats, the pseudo-socialists, and the plain run-of-the-mill fak' as It is a sorry pattern, only four years after a world war to 5™” 4 fascism, but there it is. The worker can understand the trickery tio! the squeals of the “free enterprisers,” because their day of explo! is in its last twilight. It is more difficult to understand treaso? labor’s own ranks; treason which seeks to -justify itself with oo Same arguments and the same objectives as the-exploiters of ne to dam up the flood gates of social change and progress with 4 against “Communism.” aay : ; The BCFTI advertisements in B.C. papers lauding Murray i Green should be forwarded to these “free enterprise” tsaTS every AFL and CIO union in B.C.—marked “TREASON.” __ al iy l Wt all