“If y'all can’t swallow it—feel free to debate it,”
—SANE World Newsletter

Nobel Prize for Sholokhov

Famed Soviet author Mikhail
Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel
Prize for literature on October
15, Sholokhov is best known for
his “And Quiet Flows the Don,”’
When the news reached him of
‘the award, he was busy working
On his latest book, ‘*They Fought
for their Country,”

: “Naturally I am pleased with
the award,” he said, “but please
Understand me correctly; itis not

A group of politicians

Dismay upon his face,

This a damn disgrace!

Mr. Favreau spoke up

Visiting with Hal,

‘Long distance calling

I guess I’m getting old.

Soaking up the sun,

Lucien to Lester

Were meeting in Montreal Forum
But there was a long delay
As they didn’t have a quorum.

Lester B. was in the cha'r,

Where in hell is everybody?

I called this meeting a week ago,
Everybody was notified
And hardly anyone is here,
I am simply mortified.”

In a voice so smooth and nice,
“Lucienne will be here in a littie while,
He’s just gone out to flood the ice.”

‘Raymond is in New York

Rounding up some campaign funds
From our old seafaring pal.

“The rest of the boys can’t make it,

I think they’re going insane,

They just keep mumbling to themselves
“Nielsen is running again.”

‘IT asked Dr. La Marsh

To check their mental stance,

She just shook her head and muttered,
“Poor boys don’t have a chance.”

Just then the phone rang,

May I speak to my friend Lester,”
In a voice interrupted by a sneeze!

“I’m sorry Les, I won't be back
I have developed a terrible cold,
F’ooding rinks is not for me,

I am down in Laredo, Texas,

See you in about twenty years,
Right now I have to run.”

the self-satisfaction of an indiv-'

idual and a professional author
whose work has won high inter-
national gratitude,

“It is rather a feeling of joy
that I’m helping in some degree
to spread the fame of my coun-
try, of the Communist Party of
which I’ve been a member for
over half my life, and of Soviet
literature,”

and please

—E. J. McAter,
Courtesy, News of the North

Bladen Report

What’s wrong with it?

By ALF STENBERG

“rhe long heralded Bladen Re-
port on the Financing of
Higher Education is a dud.

Its shortcomings come into
even sharper relief when viewed
against the background of the
announcement, made the previous
day, by the Newfoundland govern-
ment that by next year all under-
graduate tuition fees would be
abolished in that province and that
students would eventually re-
ceive salaries of $50 to $100 per
month,

In the most important area of
undergraduate student finances,
the Bladen report is entirely in-
adequate, It advocates increased
‘taid’? to students, but through
the form of bursaries with the
continued odium of the means
test.

And instead of support for
moves to abolish tuition fees, the
report calls on government to
“resist public pressure” in this
direction, Where student organi-
zations have called for the demo-
cratization of the universities
through the formula of “universal
accessability,” the Bladen Com-
mission demands the mainten-
ance of the tuition barrier.

Considering ‘the composition
of the Commission, little more
could be expected, The Bladen
Commission’s proposals in no
way represent the views or in-
terests of the academic staff,
the students or the general pub-
jic, The Commission could not
present an all-rounded view of

the problem for it was made up
of and represents only university
administrations,

The Communist Party is ofthe
opinion that all financial and
social barriers to higher edu-
cation must be removed. The
elimination of the tuition barrier
is a concrete first step which can

Alf Stenberg is the
national students sec-
retary of the Com-
munist Party of Can-
ada.

be taken NOW, Such a move
would cost about $50 million,
This is less than three percent
of what the federal government
spends on the military each year.

This step would be followed
by introduction of financial sup-
port through the form of salaries
to all students who meet the
minimum academic require-
ments of the universities,

Such steps would create great
difficulties for our universities,
We have entirely inadequate staff
and facilities to meet the needs of
our present enrollment, much
less the influx that such a pro-
gram would produce,

The Bladen report recom-
mends that the federal govern-
ment increase its per capita
operational grant for universities
by 150 percent; it recommends
that a $5 per capita grant for cap-
ital construction be implemented;
it proposes that substantial fin-
ancial support be extended to
graduate students,

But even such recommenda-
tions must be viewed as a min-
imum initial step, Whatisneeded
is a comprehensive, long term
government plan to systemat-
ically overcome the crisis and
meet the growing needs for highly
educated people in Canadian so-
ciety. The problem is complex
and the expenditures required
will be considerable, but this is
a measure of the extent of the
crisis and not an argument for
inaction,

But even these steps will not
ensure “universal accessa-.
bility.” Beyond them lies the’
whole area of the financial and
social barriers which prevent
many public and high school stu-
dents from even considering uni-
versity as a possibility.

The minuscule measures ad-
vanced by the’ old parties indi-
cate that they do not even take
the problem seriously, Pearson .
suggests a 50 percent increase in
federal operating grants and has
reincarnated his 1963 election
plank calling for $10 million in
federal bursaries, but with the
addition of the hated means test,

Diefenbaker has taken up the
Bladen proposition of increasing
the operational grant by 150 per-
cent, but stops there, Neither
of the honorable gentlemen has
deigned to even consider the abo-
lition of tuition fees or to meet
the other problems of higher edu-
cation, undoubtedly taking the
Bladen Commission’s advice *to
resist public pressure,”

%.

SEAN CONNERY, in a different role than ‘Agent the film shows men clambering the punishment mound,

007” is shown (right) in © The Hil’.” Above scene from __seen in the background.

‘The Hill’; a movie experience

«The Hill,” a British movie
soon to be shown in these parts,
was reviewed recently in the
British Daily Worker by Nina
Hibbin. In her review she des-
cribes the film as “gripping”
and says that “from the opening
shot, it gets you in the pit of the
stomach; and it doesn’t let up
until the end,” she says.

It succeeds because it is funda-
mentally true, It not only shows
the intense and bitter agony of
man; but also man’s resilience
and his. capacity to fight back,

The Hill is a vast pyramid of
sand, A stark symbol of futile
suffering, It stands in the cen-

tre of a huge punishment yard of
a North African detention camp
in World War I,

The prisoners, in full kit, are
made to march up and down it
at the double until they drop;
and then they are revived with
buckets of water thrown at them
by a “fainting party” — and
marched up again, In the court-
yard, in the cells and on the
Hill, the men are treated worse

than animals by brutal officers.

How do you fight back in a
situation like this? Not every-
one can, of course, The film
shows how some men do each in
terms of his own character,

The brawny Scottish ex—RSM~
(Sean Connery), stripped for
having refused to obey a blind
order that would have got all his
men killed, fights with the dis-
cipline and toughness of his own
experience, The burly Jamaican,
taunted because of the color of
his skin, fights with the natural
vigor and spontaneity of a man
radiantly sound in mindand limb,

The irony of the ending — vic-
tory snatched from the men by
the passion of their own uncon-
trollable reactions — weakens
the point but does not spoil the
film, It remains a stark, bold,
agonizing and proudly human cin-
ema experience,

October 29, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9