I have seen the German po-
lice records of some of the refu-
gees whom I helped in 1933.

Fraulein X, who was so red that
she worked for the Fabian So-
ciety before being naturalized,
was accused of Marxist activities.

The main business of the Ges-
tapo was to deal with German
communism, Today, M.I.5 (Bri-
tish Intelligence) seems to be
largely occupied with British

positions where they have ac-
cess to secret documents.

I wonder how soon I shall be
removed from the two commit-
tees of which I am a member,
and on both of which I have ac-
cess to secret documents.

This will not hurt me. It will
hurt some other men, mostly
members of the working class,
who are exposed to certain dan-
gers from which I do what I
can to protect them.

If they are sacked, the effic-
iency of various services will be
little less healthy than they are.

Communists and sympathizers in —

PROF. J. B. S.

.

ago, quite a number would be
dead. :

There are plenty of other peo-
ple in similar positions who hold

views near enough to my own .

for M.1.5 to see little difference,
and who are doing work much
more useful to the state.

If they are sacked, the effic-
jiency of various services will be
diminished,

Besides them, thousands of
other people will do their best
to keep out of any work which
could possibly be secret, because,
though they are not Communists,
they do not want their private
lives investigated.

JF M.I5 really want to stop the
leakage of secrets, they had
better try a different Ine.
There are a number of gentle
men of unimpeachable “loyalty”
who like to be thought import-
ant and manage to do so by let-
ting out information.
Thus I knew abvuut radar long
before it was used on any scale,
and some time before the bomb-

ae

= NY tl} wy

Hh!

ronsenrttftnsretlt Uicasrnsentaneancuall

- This week's features

@ Blueprint for the police state
Report on the LaCroix: Bill... page 5
-@ The nation’s business
Report from Parliament Hill... page 7
@ Hollywood's ‘Supercolossal’ stinker
Report on ‘The iron Curtain’. page 8
@ Stand together for the decency of life
Sean O’Casey’s plea to women_______--- page 9

AAA, = LRN

HALDANE

T 1s unpleasant for a man like myself, who voted for Labor at the general election, to
have to acknowledge that Churchill was quite. right when, in one of his speeches, he
said that if Attlee were returned to power he would set up a Gestapo.
For that is what the recent order regarding civil servants who are alleged to be Com-
munists, or near Communists, amounts to.
if I had been sacked five years

”
ing of Hiroshima I knew that
artificial’ radioactive elements
were in mass production, though
< did not know whether it was
for bombs or poisons.

One of the babblers is a well-
known Tory.

On another occasion I found a
paper headed “Cabinet. Top Sec-
ret” lying on a table. It was per-
haps desirable that I _ should
know that a certain installation
‘was planned, There was no pos-
sible need to tell me where it
‘was to be situated.

This, however, may have been
an attempt to frame me.

. During the war Harry Pollitt
once asked me if I was on sec-
ret work. I said I was. “Then
don’t tell me about it,” was his

answer. In fact, Communists and .

those who are near to them
keep their mouths a good deal
tighter shut than other people in
similar positions, if only because
_they realize that any ungarded
word may be used as an excuse
to sack them or send them to
\prison.

There is only one _ situation

“Nothing left but th

HOULD war with Russia come, a mili
3 state in which strikes would be treason-
able and civil rights abolished, is foreseen by

Business Week, top level ‘American capi

journal, in its current issue.

Gearing together of Canadian and Ameri-
can foreign and domestic policy for war
in the recent foreign policy statement made
as was described
Minister
would produce a similar state

against the Soviet Union,
by. External Affairs
Laurent,
affairs in this country

The shooting war
Week in three stages:
attack on Russia;

continental warfare

_ Business Week forecasts the follow
polic state, fascist measures in America:

.

in the event of war,

is seen by Business
Heavy atomic bomb
full mobilization of the
North American war economy; total inter-

where a Communist might be be

likely -to disclose a secret. That
would be if he or she got know-
Jedge of aggression planned
against a harmless people such
as, for example, the Czechs,

But any peace-loving man or
woman with a conscience might
do the same thing. So if our
government is planning anything
of this kind, they would be well
advised to get rid of anyone sus-

pected of a well-developed moral
sense,

A purge of Quakers and Me-
thodists, for example, might be
a good plan,

(\F course the country is told
that we act under the or-
ders of Moscow. I served for two
years on the executive commit-
tee of our party. During this
time we had conversations with
comrades from many countries,
including British Dominions and
colonies and European coun-
tries
We had no caqntact8 with com-
rades from the Soviet Union.

When I point this fact out
I am told that doubtless Stalin
transmits orders direct to Harry
Pollitt. ®

If he does, then I can only
say that Harry sometimes found
himself in. a minority on the
executive, and if he had secret
orders from Stalin, he had to
disobey them. :

The plain fact is that we Com-
munists admire and respect the
Soviet Union almost as much as
the foreign secretary of our
government respects the United
States.

We naturally take the opinions
of its leaders seriously, the more
so because they have achieved
socialism and we have not.

But they do not give us orders,
The only body of men’ and wo-
men in Britain who receive or-
ders from the head of a foreign
State are the Roman Catholics.

Their orders, contained in the
Encyclical “Quadragesimo Anno,”
which you can, buy for sixpence,
are to work for fascism.

But though I am an anti-fas-

tary —Dictation

talist

ing. All sorts
would become
well-intentionel

Louis -St,

reasonable agita
oft »”
of ;

“The

but the whip.”

‘State is not a’ pleasant proces?

e whip’

to every person as to wheré
0 do, what to
uld be outlawed and the ad
8 treated as treason. ;
ts would take an awful beat:
of ordinary innocent activitie®

to work, what t
—Strikes co
vocacy of strike
—"Civil righ

Criticism of government Op
e hard to distin I
tion—and so would be ¢

ations would b

pressure on prices would be f ‘

tastic.” The taxation on incomes would be
far tae rie of anything hitherto. ; ;
_ ~O Im materials, in manpower
money, another war would add up ss a police
a ‘d Ou can do it with discipline
vards. All the candy has been passet tha
ME now. This. time there would be nothing 1@°

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 14, 1948—PAGE ‘

cist, I do not Suggest that Catho-
lic civil servants should be sack-
ed, for the very good reason
that, asy the Pope regretfully ad-
mits, very large numbers of Ca- .
tholics do not carry out his in-
structions,

e@
] have no doubt there'are So-
viet spies in London, as there’
are British spies in Moscow.

There may well be some in the
War Office.

If so, I assume that they pre-
tend to be Conservative, or very
right-wing Labor, as British spies — 1
in Moscow may pretend to be
Communists.

I should be useless as a Sovi-
et spy. If any information to
which i had access were known a
to have got out I should be un- _
der immediate

suspicion,

So would other Communists
who are trusted with secrets.

On the other hand, the sug-
gestion that I, or people lke mé,
are spies is excellent political
propaganda,

It will not merely help to get
the Marshall Plan accepted. It
will help Cripps in his “Christ-
jan” crusade against high wages. ;

It will, however, in the long
run, have an opposite effect.

A good many people who were
brought up, as I was, in the
old Liberal tradition, will find
out, as I did, that freedom is
pretty heavily rationed even i?
a relatively free capitalist state
such as Britain,

Of those who have been sack
ed as Communists, without being
party members, a number will
decide to join us.

So, I think, will a number of
left- wing Labor men and Wo
men who will at last see throug)
the claims of the Labor Party
leaders that they stand for. lib-
erty, as the rank-and-file do.

Nevertheless,’ the transforma
tion of Britain into a police

to watch.

get paid.

Suspect. Even useful

ish