OL’ BILL SHORT JABS HE death of Ian Mackenzie caused the local newspapers to pass up the cold war on the Soviet Union for at least one issue.’ The usual sycophantic drivel was indulged in, of course, particularly in the or- gans of Liberal tint which get their share of the pork barrel by way of government printing at election time. To those of us who ‘yemember Mackenzie’s part in the political history of this province the fulsome adulation they spread on their pages might have been amusing but it wasn’t. It was just sickening. We were told that “veterans mourn a fighting friend.” Well, as one old-timer says, “That’s not the way I heerd it, Johnnie.’ Some veterans who benefitted through his efforts because they were of the same political stripe may have mourned but among the mass of veterans we heard more brickbats than bouquets thrown at him. Mackenzie is lauded as a soldier and a scholar and, as the: Vancouver Sun claims, a statesman. With the first two of these accomplishments, for what they are worth, we have no quarrel, but the claim that he was a statesman is so much nonsense. The Bren gun case, which was responsible for his being put on the shelf in the Senate is proof enough of that. He was not a statesman but a little puppy dog to Mackenzie King. To speak of Ian Mackenzie as a statesman ‘re- minds me of a comment Bob Edwards once made in the Calgary Eye-Opener. Edwards was a picturesque figure among Western newspapermen about 40 years ago. He was not only editor of the Eye-Opener but wrote every line of it from the ears to the tail-piece. He hated hypocrisy and snobbery and made it his business to lambast them wherever he found them. Of the two malodorous Western politicians, Clifford and Percy Sifton, I remember him‘ writing once, “There’s one good thing about ' Percy Sifton, he isn’t Clifford Sifton.” He attended the funeral of just such another character as Ian Mackenzie. Afterwards in the Eye- Opener he gave his impression of the mendacious performance. “Any- how,” he wrote, “I learned what a statesman is. A statesman is a dead politician. We need more statesmen.” (I could name a few.) A message from one of the brasshats of the Catholic Church hier- archy in America was published recently in the Wancouver Sun. The gentleman, Monsigneur Donald A. MacLean (the title is one of the feudal relics of rank in the church), was on his way from Australia to San Francisco and took the opportunity to get in an anti-Communist crack while passing through Vancouver, The headline read “Canada warned to fight against Reds.”