~ Review

EDITORIAL PAGE

TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor — RITA WHYTE,, Business Manager.

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World's eyes are on Berlin

HIS week the whole world

looks .hopefully towards the
Big Four Foreign Ministers Con-
ference in Berlin.

Despite certain disquieting fac-
tors, already obvious from the pre-
conference strategy talks of Dul-
les, Eden and Bidault, which
would indicate that their policies
at the conference are already cut
and dried, the very fact of the
conference itself is a mighty vic-
tory for the growing peace forces
throughout the world.

Without that multi - million
voice of peoples everywhere de-
manding top level talks on peace
between the Western powers and
the Soviet Union, it is hardly like
ly such a conference would have
taken place at this time.

The Berlin Conference has a
mandate from the world’s peoples
to seek and to find ways to last-
ing peace; to end the nightmare
of fears, tensions, and threats of
atomic war, which the atomaniacs
of Wall Street and their Western
sattelites usually put forward as
their plan for “‘peace.’’ That
kind of big stick “‘peace’’ has

brought every country shackled ,

to it by dollar chains to a sorry
pass.

aE HEA

Tom |
McEwen}

ret HES Free Way of Life” or “Why We
Should Triple PT Circulation” would
make a good title for the following story.

The last Christmas carol had hardly
ended when the U.S. Immigration began
a deportation “hearing” against a citizen
uamed Edgar Muhlhauser of San Fran-
cisco. Muhlhauser had heen held in an
immigration detention cage since Nov-
ember 1953 because he couldn’t raise
$5,000 bail.

The “crime” charged against Muhl-
hauser is truly a horrible one. It appears
that away back in 1941, just 13 years ago,
Muhlhauser had sold a subscription (or
subscriptions) to “unsuspecting” Ameri-
can citizens for the Daily People’s World.
‘Under the Smith-McCarran thought-con-
trol act, passed ten years later, Muhl-
hauser’s action can be construed as
“threatening” the very pillars of Mc-
‘Carthyised society.

The key state witness in this unparal-

leled “crime” against the “peace, order _

and good government” of Dulles, Mc-
Carthy and company was a John J. Hill,
secretary of Local 1089, Cigar and Liquor
“Clerks Union (AFL). Hill testified that
Muhlhauser had “solicited” a sub for the
Daily People’s World from him in 1941.

Just like that. It could be that Hill
thinks the AFL stands for the “Associat-
ed Forgers and Liars” rather than a
trade union? At the time of writing the
U.S. Immigration hearing was going into
an extra-legal huddle to determine the
political color of the Daily People’s
World. Since any of McCarthy’s “courts”
have no difficulty proving white is black

selling his
month sojourn in the Land of the Soviets-

The Berlin Conference, at the
crossroads of human destiny, can-
not solve overnight all the evil
aftermath ‘of suicidal war-making
policies, spearheaded by the crim-
inal men of Wall Street, but
harkening to the voice of millions
of peoples in Europe and Asia,
it can make an auspicious begin-
ning.

What is required for success
ful talks towards lasting peace is
an atmosphere of reason and

compromise — in place of the.

Dulles ‘“‘chip-on-the-shoulder’’ and
atom-bomb-in-the*pocket attitude
— and a growing and continued
mass pressure of the common
people to assure that their hopes
and desires for peace will gain
added strength from this historic
conference.

Kurt Meyer
House lold

he slayint
mas te of

\
=
to

ros!

ct z
from imprisonmens. ]

“|

Meyer must not be freed to repeat crimes

Te debate in parliament this week on

the impending release of the Nazi
killer Kurt Meyer will at least produce
something which wasn’t intended — a
surge of revulsion in the minds of all
decent Canadians at the readiness of the
St. Laurent government to free this cold-
bloooded murderer of Canadian POWs.

A study of Hansard of two years ago,

when Meyer was transferred from a Can-.

adian to a West German prison, makes

—or red, it looks like auf weidersehn for
the arch-criminal Muhlhauser!

The moral of this “crime” applied to

British Columbia is simple: triple the
readers of the Pacific Tribune, as the
one sure way to keep the foul disease
of McCarthyism from sneaking across
the border.

H
Another gem of yellow press “injur-

ed innocence” came to our attention in

an editorial in the San Francisco Chron-
icle which a good friend sent us. It ap-
pears that a large group of highly re-
spectable Japanese lawyers has prepared
an extensive file for damage suits on

behalf of the survivors of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki. ; :

* This action the editorial calls “absurd”
and “preposterous,” at the same time
regarding it as “alarming and potentially
dangerous as a weapon of Communist
propaganda . . . not unlike the germ
warfare charges.” Of course, the editor
feels a bit relieved that the germ charges
were “utterly discredited,” but finds
some difficulty “discrediting” the atomic
murder of two great cities.

The editor’s “solution” to this new
problem is typical. He demands in true
Dulles style that the Japanese govern.
ment “discover whom these lawyers re-
present, and what is their motive?” The

answer to that one shouldn’t put too

much strain on editors of that calibre.

We often get a bang out of some of
these “intrepid” hacks of the sewer press
who pay a visit to the Soviet Union for
a few weeks, then come back and do a
series of “first-hand” articles or write a
book on what they saw and experienced
in their jaunt behind their “Iron Cur-
tain]

At the moment, a lad named Clark is
doing a run-off on his month in the
USSR for the Vancouver Sun. Another
lad who is making a goodly bit of dough
“experiences” of a e-

is one William L. Ryan. And there is a

-whole battalion of these hired muck-

rakers doing a well-paid stint posing as

ACE

disturbing reading. The “pledges” given
at that time by high government officials
that Meyer would not be released with-
out consultation and approval of the
Canadian government, were apparently
little better than empty words. Now
Defense Minister Brooke Claxton says
any further discussion on this matter. in
the House of Commons would “not be in
accord with practice or the public inter-
est.” \t

“analysts,” “experts” and what not for
the press of eastern Canada.

Much of the tripe they write follows
a well-trod theme; they were at “liberty”
to move around as much as they liked,
but of course there were always “secret
police” in the background somewhere.

With very few exceptions, each of these

“Tron Curtain” scavengers sees the So-
viet people as “furtive,” “sullen,” “sus-
picious,” “secretive.” This sad state of
affairs is presumed to stimulate the hope-
ful thought that the Soviet people are

-intensely dissatisfied with their govern-

ment and their “way-of-life,” and any
day we can expect to see them toss out

_their “totalitarian” government and go

back to the good old dog-éat-dog free-
enterprise system. of capitalist exploita-
tion and‘super-profits! \

Wha
high Soviet living costs and~ the low
standard of life of the people. The peo-
ple are “shabbily dressed” and shopping
is just simply terrible; nothing to buy,
and an awful price if they do buy some-
thing. Column upon column of this

brand of literary hash, designed in the-

main to take the attention of those of us
living in capitalism’s “free world” off
our own economic and social problems!

When they do see features of Soviet
economic, social and cultural life which
excel the “West” by a mile and which
they cannot hide, they conclude that such
progressive advances are mainly “propa-
ganda for foreign consumption.” One
of these hacks, writing on the great care
taken of Soviet children, unsurpassed
anywhere in the world, reluctantly ad-
mitted that it was so, then came up with
the bright face-saver that in “return”
for this care the Soviet children had to
consent to become “little robots.”

Looks like a “damned if you do, damn-
ed if you don’t” style of analysis. How-
ever it is good these “interpid” hacks
go behind their hate curtain once in a
while to have a brief look. The few
truths they write will stand confirmed
by history, and the same inexorable
force will ultimately spotlight their
voluminous falsehoods.

fantasies those lads write on

/

Asa convicted killer of defenseless
Canadian POWs, Kurt Meyer should have
received the death penalty; reprieved
from that just punishment, he should
have been put behind bars to assure that

he would never again commit the same
Nazi crimes. Instead, the Canadian peo-
ple see their government “cooperating”
with other sinister forces for the rein-
statement of a murderer.

Forty years ago

(From the files of the B.C. Federationist,
: January 30, 1914) :

Fifteen hundred delegates attending
the international convention of the
United Mine Workers of America at In-
dianapolis unanimously endorsed support
of the 21-month-old Vancouver Island
coal strike and protested the long prison
sentences imposed on strikers as “gross
injustice.”

In Vancouver, the B.C. Miners Libera’
tion League reiterated its demand for
release of all imprisoned strikers and re-
ported that 10,000 copies of its news-
paper, The Liberator, had been distribut-
ed, : spe

Fifteen years ago

(From the files of the People’s Advocate,
. January 27, 1939)

The famous New York stage produc-
tion, Pins and Needles, staged by the
International Ladies Garment Workers
Union, was playing to packed houses in
Montreal despite efforts of Adrien Ar-
cand’s fascists to disrupt performances.
The production also ran into difficulties
with Quebec censors, who wanted to de-
lete the sketches “Mussolini Handicap”
and “Four Little Angels of Peace” but
later moderated their demands.

_ Ten years ago

(From the files of The People,
January 29, 1944)
A benefit fund appeal was launched

‘for Arthur Evans, nationally known lead-

er of the 1935 On-To-Ottawa Trek, who
lay critically injured in Vancouver Gen-
eral Hospital after being knocked down
by an auto while alighting from a street-
car. Sponsor of the fund was William
“OY Bill” Bennett, veteran labor journal-
ist.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 29, 1954 — PAGE 5