The late Ernest Bevin in a huddle with former U:. S. Secretary of - State James Byrnes. GUIDE TO GOOD READING—2 GUIDE TO GOOD READING—1 Smuts legend fostered to hide role as ‘handyman of empire’ AT THE HEIGHT of the Sec- ond World War, when the fortunes of the Allies were at their lowest ebb, the British government car- ried out a move which was to serve imperialism far beyond the immediate requirement to boost failing morale. Jan Christian Smuts, the Boer general who had gain the first big successes for Britain in the war in German Southwest and East Africa, was summoned to London and invited to sit on the British war cabinet. This was the beginning of the leant bares anti- socialism of Ernest Bevin, ‘self-made man _, ; FANCIS WILLIAMS has blown the gaff on the late Ernest Bevin and the present leaders of the British Labor party. Williams is a former editor of ‘the London Daily Herald and was public relations adviser to Clement Attlee when he was prime minister. He was intimate with Bevin for Some 25 years; and is still in the ‘confidence of Attlee. | He is certainly to be taken ‘sett ‘ously when he speaks of his hero. “We must therefore take due no- ice of a claim that Williams ‘makes for him. That claim is that ‘Bevin should have the credit for ‘the formation of the present anti- Soviet grouping of the Western “powers. -. In Ernest Bevin (Hutchinson) Williams says that at one time the U.S. whose policy still had a flavor of Roosevelt, was more inclined ‘than Bevin* to be friendly to the Soviet Union. But Bevin waited “for the right moment.” He judged that this moment "had arrived in Greece in Fehru- ary 1947. For two years Britain had been upholding the gang of - fascist adventurers who “govern- ed” the country from Athens but were then being pressed by the Greek liberation forces. : On February 24, Bevin instruct- ed the British ‘ambassador in Washington to tell the U.S. ad- ministration that Britain could not afford any longer to support Greece and Turkey. The USS. must take over. “Bevin’s act,’ says Williams, “Jed directly to the enunciation of the ‘Truman Doctrine’ .” the doctrine that, in effect, led to the pening of the American counter- liberation offensive in Europe. More, according to Williams, ‘Bevin “held on to his initiative” and “began the work of building - the structure of Western unity.” He signed treaties with France, Holland, Belgium and Luxem- _ bourg. Eventually, in 1949, Bevin ~ signed the North.Atlantic Treaty in Washington. ; Williams is, in fact, claiming - too much for Bevin. There is plenty of eyidence that Bevin was “not the only begetter of these anti-Soviet treaties. The Ameri- eans did something, too. But the main point is correct enough. The anti-Soviet policy _ which is ruining Britain today was the policy of Bevin and Attlee, | or rather a Churchill policy taken up by Bevin and Attlee. Although it represents a surrender to the U.S., Bevin needed little encour- agement or bullying from Wash- ington. Sask t ® * * WHY DID Bevin — who was supposed to be a_ socialist—line up with predatory and essential- ly fascist American politicians against the Soviet Union, the first socialist state in the world? Williams shows this too. Bevin was an imperialist. He swallow- ed whole the Tory policy that Communism was a threat to “Brit- ain.” . He did not distinguish be- tween the Britain of the trade im Bethune featured in New Frontiers DR. NORMAN Bethune is fea- tured in the Fall 1952 issue of New Frontiers, national quarterly published in Toronto. A_ cover drawing- of Dr. Bethune, a review of his biography The Scalpel. the Sword, and the text of his cele- brated short story “Wounds” ap- pears in the number. There is also Nora Rodd’s ac- count of her -journey through North China and North Korea: “We Stand on Guard” and report- age by Frank Arnold of an anti- war delegation to Ottawa. Richard Cotes’ 125-year old peace banner, “Children of Peace,” in the Sharon Temple near Newmarket, Ontario, is re- produced. Cotes was a supporter of William Lyon Mackenzie. Single copies of the magazine at 40 cents are available here at the People’s Cooperative Book- ore, 337 West Pender. niin unionists ‘and common _ people generally, and the Britain of the. “Empire builders” and the _ City of London. Communism, socialism and the existence of fhe working-class and popular movements in the colo- nies do indeed threaten the in- terests of the City of London. But so does the existence of the labor movement at home. Bevin never understood that the British ~ people are the natural allies of the liberation movements in the Empire. In fact, Bevin was not a social- ist at all. As Williams shows, his lifelong political hero was _ the Edwardian Liberal Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman. In his last years he grew very close to Attlee, having come to the - conclusion that Attlee was “the Campbell-Bannerman of the -Labor party.” “From — Bevin,” says Williams, “there could be few higher tributes.” * Attlee, in a foreword, repays: the compliment — characteristic: ally. Bevin, he says, “found it difficult to meet on friendly terms a man like M. Molotoy, who had . been guilty of Bret. cruelty to many innocent beings.” — He does not attempt to substan- tiate this baseless libel: but Wil- liams makes valiant attempts to cover the great cruelty that Bevin and Attlee certainly did inflict on many innocent Jews and ‘Arabs through their Palestine policy. And one could add to the score their policy in Malaya and Africa, and, in subservience to America, in Korea. a Kies ms Nae BEVIN WAS not a socialist. That was clear when he grasped the Marshall Plan “like a lifeline” instead of trying to elaborate a British socialist party: to save the country’s economy. But he was not a non-socialist. He was an anti-socialist. The fact that he did not understand social- ism did not mean that he could _ not oppose it when he came heed against it. -His aggressive cqaietatiahten? was not the result of political class-consciousness. It was the showing-off of a self-made man who wished to demonstrate that he was as good as, or better than, his “betters.” True he was called “Ernie.” He took it as a tribute from “my people.” But if his people ob- jected to his policy or the unde- mocratic way his union was man- aged they soon became his enem- ies. In fact you were all right with Ernie so long as you admired him and let him have his own way— or so long as you were allowing him to think that he was having his own way. He hated Communists because they knew more than he; because they dared to oppose him. He got on well at the British Foreign Office because he shared its Tory outlook and because it could afford to flatter him—and did so. Imagine how he would have stormed at the recent Morecambe conference of the Labor party against the rank-and-file who forc- ed through the resolution deplor- ing “the condemnation of the ris- ings of the oppressed peoples as Soviet-inspired plots. . . .” For here “his people” were re- jecting his policy. He would have called that a stab in the back. He would never have known that it was a sign that the Labor par- ty was beginning to think. For essentially he could not think him- self—he could only plot. —MICHAEL MacALPIN I campaign to sell to the people of Britain and of the: world the leg- ends of Smuts as an_all-wise, far-seeing stateman to whom the Empire could turn in time of trouble. Smuts’ son, J. C. Smuts, in his biography of his father, Jan Christian Smuts (Cassel) admits that “the propaganda value of this former Boer general, now fighting for Britain, was exploit- ed to the full.” (One would hardly expect a son to help debunk his father, and the ’ legend of Smuts’ alleged greatness is naturally faithfully sustained in this book. Even that, ‘however, cannot hide many facts which such eulogy is designed to obscure. * * * BORN: ON A farm in Cape Colony to a Dutch family, Jan Christian Smuts showed an early liking for book knowledge, which was to send him first to Victoria College, Stellenbosch, and then to Cambridge to read law. Returning home to the Cape in 1895, he found J. H. Hofmeyr and Cecil Rhodes busy in building unity between the Cape Dutch and the English settlers prepara- tory to dealing with the Africans unencumbered by any liberal squeamishness from Britain. — He found this movement going well so he threw himself into it with great ardor. He was busy defending Rhodes to his’ fellow Boers at Kimberley at> the mom- | ent when the Jameson Raid was . being planned. Shamed at the raid and the pur- pose it was intended to Serve, Smuts left the Cape for the Trans- vaal Republic. There he was tak- en up by President Paul Kruger who wanted young men such as he for his administrative staff. When the Boer War began, Smuts did not take to the field but ‘remained at his desk in Pretoria until the war entered the guerilla phase. He led the famous march of the Boer commandos 2,000 miles into the Cape Colony from the Transvaal to harry ‘British lines of communication. When the war ended Smuts set out to work in the interests of British imperialism. This led to his estrangement from a large part of Boer support, an estrangement which lasted un- til his death in 1950. Sere IG * SMUTS ALWAYS professed himself a God-fearing man. But he despised what his Bible taught him were some of God’s works. He deeply hated the Indians and the Chinese and was contemptuous of the Africans. His horizons for a great South - Africa stopped abruptly short of welding~ together the two white peoples and thereby building a nation which was “neither Boer nor British, but South African.” Smuts was given to the use of world platforms for proclaiming noble and lofty ideas. But his — conduct repeatedly made it plain that such ideas were for peddling abroad and not for use at home. White workers learned that to their bitter cost when he first as- sumed real power in South Africa just after the Boer War. When 8300 workers marched from Johan- nesburg to Pretoria to demand higher pay for relief unemploy- ment his reply was to call out two British regiments. Again in 1913 during the Great: Strike he had fieldguns trained on -a hall where strikers were _meeting, and deported the leaders. In 1922 he drowned in blood | the strike of the white miners os the Witwatersrand. The exploits of this andjaats of empire,” as. he has been des- cribed ‘during the last 50 years of. his life, no doubt brought joy to. British imperialism. : Against that must be placed the sufferings of the non-European peoples and of the white workers on whose backs the sought to build a state to serve the narrow inter ests of his capitalist masters. —DESMOND ‘BUCKLE ; DELEGATE GIVES IMPRESSIONS No Canadian so revered as Bethune by Chinese NO CANADIAN has even been so recognized and honored outside ‘his own land as Dr. Norman Beth-— une in People’s China. This is what Dr. Dwight L. Johnson, Can- dian delegate to the recent Asian and Pacific Peace Conference, writes in an article newspapers. “As a compatriot of Dr. Nor- man Bethune and one who knew and appreciated his great quali ties of courage and conviction, it gives me great pleasure to find that People’s China ‘has given his memory a place of great honor,” Johnson writes of the great Can- adian surgeon who died while serving with the Chinese Libera- tion Army. “In China, I have read with. much pleasure of the memorial erected to his memory—and of the further honor done him in estab- lishing the Bethune Memorial Medical College. It is probably true to say that no Canadian has even been so recognized and hon- ored outside his own land as Nor- man Bethune in People’s China. “This tribute is after all a liv- ing and growing thing which will flourish ‘and expand as the grad- uates of ‘the college place the in Peking — Hee of their unselfish heryice on the social fabric of the whole country. I visited a village near Peking. It gave me pleasure to inspect the local public health clinic there and to find in ‘charge of it an efficient son of People’s China—a graduate of the. Beth- une Memorial Medical College. “In Canada the day will yet come when the Canadian people will properly recognize Bethune’s unselfish devotion to humanity. This will be reflected in a wave of peaceful friendship toward China and the resumption of official and | cordial good relations between our governments. Until that days — then, and speaking for the thous ands of progressive Canadians, I greet with the most \sincere thanks and appreciation this Chin- ese recognition of one of the great- est sons of Canada.” , Norman Bethune, The Scalpel, The Sword, by Ted Allen andi Sydney Gordon, has just been published. Priced at $5, it is obtainable here at the ‘People’s Cooperative Bookstores — 337 West Pender. A ‘biography of Dr. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 21, 1952 — PAGE 8