LT VTL : | Hygiene NEWS ITEM: The U.S. has ordered 400,000 plastic ‘corpse bags” for use by its army in South Vietnam. Defeat in the paddyfields Luckily Yields to chemicalization; With pampered G.I.s wanting modern final rites, And prospects of escalation Demand that Washington raise its sights. With the production of corpses mounting, Simplified disposal aids accounting; Bulky coffins take up too much space. The appeal to American genius is not in vain, Even the problem of piecemeal repatriation Death now comes wrapped in cellophane. of South Vietnam —Peking Review Comparisons Walter Wiggins, Vancouver, B.C, writes; Some of the remarks in the final instalment of Bruce Hutchison’s series. of articles Strike me as being somewhat one- Sided. On the question of agri- culture in socialist countries he gives as the source of his facts the United States government. One may, perhaps, be excused for thinking there might be some bias there, At any rate, when we turn to figures provided bySoviet authorities we find a very dif- ferent ‘picture, For example, in the May 1965 issue of World Marxist Review, an article by Sergei Trapeznikov States that “in comparison with pre-war (2nd world war) pro- duction of marketable grain near- ly doubled, meat production doubled, output of milk and wool increased 2,5 fold. ..., the cotton crop doubled and output of sugar beet trebled,” It may be quite true that farm- ers in the U.S.A, andCanadapro- duce much more efficiently than the farmers of any socialist coun- try just now. But there are about — One hundred other capitalist countries in the world Mr, Hutchison chose to ignore, prob- ably because. comparison with them would make Soviet agricul- ture look very good indeed, There is a reference in Mr. Hutchison’s article to the nine- teen-thirties that stirred some memories in this ex-prairie farmer’s mind, That was the time our famous wheat pools went into the red, when we in large num- bers adopted the Bennett buggy in place of the automobile, when grain growers were dunned by railway companies for the unpaid balance of the freight bill on grain shipped and sold for less than the transportation costs, That was Capitalist farming too, Bruce. For that matter, thousands of Canadian farmers are on their last financial legs at this moment, with no decent prospect for the future, ; Comparisons are odious, but Since you use them to show one Side, why not the other side as well? In 1949 mainland China, India and Pakistan were about equally poor. Need I mention that observers and tourists to- day do not include Communist - China among those countries where your appeal for aid and birth control applies? Where did India and Pakistan miss out? The public should know a lot more about that business while we go all-out to help the hapless vic- tims of some one’s blunders, (Editor’s note: Mr, Wiggins’ letter was originally addressed to the Vancouver Sun.) Sex and society Charles de la poer Gough, Vancouver, writes: It was with the utmost incredulity when I read in one of our local papers that homosexuality was now legal in Great Britain with consenting parties in private, This was passed by the Mother of Parlia- ments and the House of Lords with Archbishops and Bishops and not one word of protest from those theologican members of the House of Lords. Holy script states that such an act is an “abomination unto the Lord.” Mondo Nuovo, Rome Oa EER TTT TTT i U.S. trade unionists speak out against Vietnam policy More than 1,200 persons met at a Trade Unionists for Peace rally in New York last Tuesday night to open a drive to bring thousands of New York union members into the March 26 Fifth Avenue peace parade, It was the -largest such trade union rally since escala- ‘tion of the Vietnam war began, “This is the time for trade unionists to stand up and be counted, This is the timeto speak up for peace,” said Abe Feinglass, head of the Fur and Leather Divi- sion of the Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen’s Union as he received a standing ovation from the large audience, Feinglass was critical of the AFL-CIO’s top leadership for having no discussion in union We all know that this prac- tice of homosexuality has been going on since the rise and fall of the Grecian and Roman Em- pires and it was such acts coupled with sexual orgies that brought those empires to disaster. Now the shortest lived empire in his- tory (two to three generations) is now down to a second class nation probably due to the same evils, No longer is it necessary for students in their public schools to practise this in the darkness of their school dormitories or by taking a pal to a dry ditch bottom in the centre of some forest, It is now legal in a third rate hotel room, Speaking of theologians, I re- member quite vividly ofa lecture given by the Chaplain General, Bishop Taylor on boardS,S, Plas- sey en-route for India, June 1900, The subject was V.D, (in those days incurable) and he finished his lecture with this statement, “if the climatic conditions bring on a sexual urge, take your pal out for a walk in the jungle, in- stead of going to the cantonment brothel,’’ Few people today remember the tragic circumstances of one of the world’s greatest author- poet and lecturer who ended his days in abject poverty in Paris ’ after spending a year in prison and in the cold-slimy cell wrote and left us “The Ballad of Read- ing Gaol.” And a few years later that gal- lant solider the first man to rise from the ranks to become aGen- eral Staff Officer on his way home from Egypt shot himself in a Paris hotel. This culmin- ated in that famous poem “The Shot That Was Heard Around the World,” Thank goodness socialism is coming to the fore and monar- chies with their ‘aristocratic parasites are on their way out and nations are educating and preparing their youngsters in science and worthwhile profes- sions that they have no time or inclination to practice homo- sexuality or indulge in sexual orgies and that socialist govern- ments will never legislate such crimes for humanity. ranks on their stand in support of the Vietnam policy. The speak- ers lauded those in the AFL-CIO who are speaking out against U.S. action in Vietnam, * * * Similar conferences aretaking place in many industrial centres in the U.S. Last week 300 union- ists met in Detroit and estab- lished an organization to be known as “Trade Unionists for Peace,” A declaration of policy adopted by the conference, said: “We, as trade unionists deeply worried by the escalated war in Vietnam with its ever-increasing threat of nuclear holocaust, be- lieve it is in the best interests of the labor movement and the people of the world that-organ- ized labor use its strength to bring an end to that war. Beyond this American trade unionists must be concerned with the drift of our foreign policy in general, Another resolution adopted by the Detroit conference said that “The war in Vietnam is thrusting at an ever-accelerating pace to- ward nuclear destruction .. .at stake is nothing less than our survival,” The resolution asks: “How is ‘it that labor above all other seg-. ments of American society is blinded by what is, after all, a not unfamiliar device? Have we already forgotten, for_example, that Secretary of Defence Mc- Namara’s predecessor, as head of the Ford Motor Company, called the unionization of Ford works a Kremlin-managed plot. to take over the U.S.? Yet the South Vietnamese peasants and working people are much farther from Washington than Detroit AE, Sie “And let no one be deluded,” said the conference resolution, “by the ‘Guns and Butter’ slogan, We have already witnessed a sharp cut-back in domestic pro- grams, The War on Povertyis the first casualty of the war in Viet- nam, The failure to repeal the Taft-Harley Law, to raise mini- mum wages, the warning about both increased taxes and a wage freeze—all this serves to forcibly remind us that war means not only that working people do the major part of the dying but also shoulder most of the financial burden,” The Canadian Tribune on March 7th, carried the following editorial comment on the trial of the two Soviet writers: * e The trial and sentence of the two Soviet writers, Andrei Siniavsky and Yuli Daniel, has caused. justifiable anxiety and disquiet among democratic and socialist-minded people, Communist spokesmen in a number of countries as well as newspaper and commentators in different parts of the world have expressed varied and critical opinions about this case, At the outset it should be noted that the two writers were not tried for their political opinions of for being critical of shortcomings which exist in Soviet society, They were charged with smuggling their writings abroad “for the pur- pose of subverting or weaken- tion of Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR which states: “The circulation of slanderous’ concoctions which smear the Soviet state and social system is punish- able by deprivation of liberty for a term ranging from six to seven years.” The peoples of the Soviet Union, who know full well the meaning of anti-Sovietism and of cold war slander and have Trial of two Soviet writers ing Soviet authority” in viola- ° ‘paid a heavy price for it, noted the fact that these two writers had for years concealed their real names, using pen names for clandestine publication of their writings in other coun- tries, They noted, too, that these writers, even while ex- tolling the virtues of their motherland andcriticizing those of their colleagues who in their opinion were not suf- ficiently patriotic, entered il- legally into smuggling ar- rangements with representa- tives of foreign embassies to publish novels containing slanderous concoctions with the intent of besmirching their own country. Nonetheless, it is difficult to understand why this case was not handled in a way that would have made itimpossible for the cold warriors to dis- tort what had really trans- pired and use this occasion for whipping up more anti-Soviet- ism, It is equally difficult to understand the severity of the sentences, The strength of the Soviet Union—and socialist human- ism—will lead the Soviet gov- ernment to. reduce the sen- tences, The writings of two unknown authors cannot un- dermine Soviet society or in- flict serious damage to the high prestige and authority enjoyed by the Soviet Union, March 18, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 7