Dulles’ es refuted by French

As the Pacific Tribune revealed last t
Nam is a “prestige” struggle for the French coloni
Navarre Plan. How the struggle is being used by
Ment in the war was shown when a spokesman
Secretary of States Dulles’ claim that a Chinese genera

Bien Phu.

battle at Dien Bien Phu (above) in northern Viet
aa dee forces to conceal the failure of the vaunted
the United States to push its allies:closer to involve-
for the French High Command at Saigon refuted U.S.
| was serving with Vietnamese forces at Dien

Popular demonstrations continue
in Guiana as British jail Jagan

Dr. Cheddi Jagan, legally elected premier of British Guiana and

Party, this week was sentenced to six months’

rgetown.
being
s ne of Dr. Jagan added
an € tension in this British col-
— - Last week, huge cheering
Owds followed Dr. Jagan, his wife
’net Jagan, and eight other mem-
— of the People’s Progressive
hail when they were released on
ie after their first arrest. A few
“a ts later police raided PPP head-
eae and arrrested Dr. Jagan
sain, as well as five others.
a oe Jagan was first arrested on
a of disobeying an order
ae € governor forbidding him
. “Save Georgetown. ‘The other
a Were charged with holding a
ape €st demonstration against the
me Dr. Jagan, who left the
- i
dentist carry out his work as a
Workers on several sugar estates
ne in protest at the arrests. |
Towds assembled at the court
pole the hearings began, and
- ce arrested 16 people, charging
Aban With disorderly conduct.
hy ut 4,000 assembled outside PPP
€adquarters,
ba ae Westmaas, Martin Carter,
oe € other six People’s Progres-
reste members who were 2r-
Chars th Mrs. Jagan were also
sed with singing in their cell
the yo the night in jail awaiting
le hearing.
€ other nine pleaded not guilty
acess released on bail. The
ing was fixed for April 24.

Dockers brand
arms ship hot

Doe SYDNEY
ed Hee, of Sydney have “declar-
treigh oe the 7,000-ton British
Austr ais Radnor which is loading
Sa an arms for the French
Meng, War” in Indochina and the
8 €S government has called in
. to load the vessel.
Talian dockers called on the Aust-
terfer S0vernment to refuse to in-
nee the Indochina war.
2Dpo Ting peacetime we are firmly
Sed to handling weapons of
‘State

and
h

ction,” they declared in a
ayent issued later.

View, this shipment as
eetempt by our Me reraient for
tone endly and peaceful rela-
uc ae have been seeking with
“We Sian neighbors.

to int urge the government not
ether pone in foreign disputes,

Supply °Y Participation or by the

eee of equipment to aid foreign
Ts in their battles.”

© loading of the cargo, which

Was
ment Tt of an Australian govern-
age of arms to the French in

Was han? 2nnounced last month,
fing supervised by the RAAF.

\

Dr. Jagan was arrested on April 3 at Mah
Served with the governor’s order restricting

his movements.

GEORGETOWN
leader of the People’s Progressive

imprisonment for violating an order forbidding him to leave

aicony, a village 40 miles from Georgetown, two days after

A teargas attack — the first ever
in British Guiana — was used to
break up crowds near the office
of the People’s Progressive party.

Police closed the party offices,
but they reopened. The printers of
Thunderer, the party’s newspaper,
were also raided. : ;

Buxton village council, which
recently elected PPP members to

office, has passed a resolution call-
ing for the recall of Governor Sir
Alfred Savage and withdrawal of
British troops.

The resolution demands demo-
cratic self-government and acus-
es the police of beating up scores
of men and women and using
highhanded measures against the
people of British Guiana.

Coventry .ends
Civil Defense

‘

LONDON

Coventry—Britain’s worst-blitzed city—is to abandon Civil Defense.
Its city council decided last week that the H-bomb has made Civil De-
fense a waste of time and public money.

The Labor-controlled council decided by 32 votes to 13 to take
steps to disband the local Civil Defenst committee.

Labor Councillor E. McGarry
said in the debate: “It is a pro-
test that is self-evident. Coven-
try, possibly more than any other
city or county in the country,
has suffered frém the horrors of
war.” The matter was above

party politics, he said.

‘Alderman S. Stringer, Labor
leader of the council, said the move
aimed to strengthen the hands of
statesmen in their attempts to out-
law the H-bomb.

Tory members of the council op-
posed the motion.

In the House of Commons Tory
MPs immediately put down .ques-
tions about the decision to provide
the cabinet an excuse to warn other
cities which might want to follow
Coventry’s example.

The cabinet told Home Secre-
tary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe to
prepare his warning and to threat-
en other councils that if they fol-
lowed Coventry the government
would step in. :

Under the 1948 Civil Defense
Act, the home secretary can take
over any town’s Civil Defense and
charge the expenses to the coun-
cil —- or hand over its Civil De-

fense to another council or to the
regional authorities.

This week, in the House, Home
Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe
censured Coventry City Council for
its action and said it should “con-
tinue resolutely” in preparations
against atomic war.

_ The Churchill government sees
in the Coventry decision a threat to
its support of the U.S. H-bomb
strategy and to its: anti-Soviet for-
eign policy.

If other councils follow the ex-
ample, this would create great dif-
ficulties for the government; it
might lead to the demand that U.S.
airmen now in this country should
be sent packing and the airfields
they occupy returned to Britain.

Already in Westhoughtor (Lan-
cashire) Council, one member, Miss
Mary McIntyre has bluntly termed
Civil Defense a waste of time and
money “because there is no de-
fense against the H-bomb” and call-
ed on the council to follow Coven
try’s stand.

“The money spent on Civil De-
fense,” added Miss McIntyre,
“could be put to some better use,
such as the relief of old age pen-

sioners,”

French people speculating on what action Church will take

Fre

Worker-priests defy order to quit

By BARBARA LA BORDE
PARIS

Ever since May 28 last year,
when two worker-priests who had
demonstrated against the arrival
of General Matthew Ridgway to-
gether with their fellow-workers
were arrested and badly beaten up
by the police, the continued ex-
istence of these “worker-priests

has been a burning question in

France. :
It came to a head when official
representatives of the Vatican

down a decision that all

a rae were to cease work-
ing in factories as of March 1, this
Dock in 1942 a seminary was
created here to train priests who
would go out to live with workers.
It had the official sanction of Rome.
It was supposed to be the answer
to the increasing “de-Christianiza-
tion” of the French working ee
“the great scandal of the 20t
aaNet number of Catholics
believed that the only way to bring
the faith to the proletariat was to
live among them, to prove that the
believers were not always on the
side of the rich. Over the years,
there were only 125 worker-priests ;
but their influence became very
el et priests lived and worked
alongside the workers. They hate
fied, unconsciously on their pa i"
one of the essential principles 0
Marxism: their new life created in
them a political and social con-
science. They began to think as
workers think.
Worse yet,
started to act 1
their new ideas.

militant. ?
Henri Barreau, 2 worker-priest,

me one of the full-time secre-

oe oe the Seine region of the

General Confederation of pee

(CGT) and stated that he, a ws -

olic, felt perfectly at ease In the

headquarters of what is ealled a
“Communist-led union.
* *

the worker-priest
n accordance with
They became

During April 1953, 16 worker-

) priests publicly criticized Gaston

Tessier, president of the church-
supported Confederation Francaise
des Travailleurs Chretiens,(CFTC).
For this they were brought to testi-
fy before a closed tribunal on ec-
clesiastic affairs. 5

Then the Vatican decided to in-
tervene. On July 27 Cardinal Piz-
zardo sent all the bishops of France
a confidential message, the order
of the Sacred Roman Congregation,
prohibiting “absolutely, that any
student in the seminaries of
France, without exception, engage
as apprentice in any facory work,
no matter what kind.” ,

In August, great strikes took
place and Catholic workers as well
as these priests participated.

Immediately after the sellout by
the CFTC leaders, who signed an
agreement which broke the ey
five worker-priests from Limoges,
in central France, publicly accused
CFTC of “having betrayed the in-
terests of the workers.” They
praised the “fidelity of the CGT
to the real interests

In February worker-priests

from all over France met in Paris.

letariat.”

The Vatican’s ambassador, Mon-
seigneur Marella, called together
all French bishops and gave or-’
ders: put the worker-priests into
the traditional orders of the
church. There were to be no more
worker-priests.

On November 15, Cardinals Lien-
art, Feltin and Gerlin departed for
Rome to plead, so they said, on be-
half of the’ worker-priests. Upon
their return, a new policy was
adopted.

Priests could work for a limit-)-

ed time, in small shops and not in
the big factories. They would no
longer live among the workers; but
would be attached to some social
community of priests of parish.
They would be chosen in the future
only by the bishop himself, and
would be given special prepara-
tions. They were not, in any case,
to take part in any activity that
would give them responsibilities in
unions or other organizations;
such responsibilities must be left

of the pro- to laymen.

Thes orders evoked much dis-
cussion. Last January, four Domin-
icans, long known for their support
of the worker-priests were replac-
ed.

They were: Father Boisselot, edi-
tor of L’Actualite Religieuse dans
le Monde; Father Chenu who had
written about Christian disunity in
La Vie Intellectuelle; Father Con-
gar for an article in Temoignage
Chretin; and Father Feret, faculty
member of the Catholic Institute
of Paris.

Three Dominican. leaders. in
Paris, Lyon and Toulouse were
also replaced in violation of the
order’s constitution requiring elec-
tion of all dignitaries.

Francois Mauriac, well known
Catholic writer and editor of the
reactionary daily newspaper, Le
Figaro, was moved to write: “The
whole progressive wing of the
Church of France is affected
. . . the Dominican spirit is the
spirit of liberty that is in ithe
core of the Church of France.”
Around the same time, the work-

er-priests made a public statement
signed by 77 of them: :

“We believe that our lives as
workers has not prevented us from
remaining faithful to our faith and
to our vows. . .. We affirm that
our decisions will be taken with
every consideration for existing
working conditions and for the
struggle of workers for their lib-
eration.”

Worker-priests from all over

‘France met in Paris, February 20-

21, and discussed their probable
fate. The sanctions of the church
in case of defiance ‘could be only
surmised. Some thought that, as
in a former case, a priest would
be reduced to the position of a
Catholic layman.

The 60 who had decided to con-
tinue working side by side with
workers planned to keep together,
to hold to their faith, and their
vows. P

The question that has now arous-
ed. all France is:

Are the worker-priests facing
excommunication?

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 16, 1954 — PAGE 3