eee NG the last few years of his life our late beloved comrade A. E. Smith wrote a great deal of biographical mater- ial for the Canadian Tribune, which was, in fact, the roughing out part of a major work upon which he was engaged during that period; namely, his autobiography.

Into his autobiography he put |

an enormous amount of labor and love. The work was well advanc. ed when A. E. was stricken with the illness which granted him only four more months of life. All the energy he had went into his efforts to complete the baok. When the end came he left a very extensive manuscript, com- pleted, but including consid- erable material of a purely family character and some repeti- tion. :

At the death of his mother, comrade Maude Smith, Stewart ' took his father’s manuscript and eliminated both the repetitious chapters and the intimate family references without touching the remainder of his father’s. text. The book is published now by ag Books under the title:

All My Life.

It is a heart-warming book, a

joy and an inspiration to read. It is the thrilling story of how an extremely gifted and able man became a great man. It could “bave been entitled “One Man’s Search for Truth’. It is a story of struggle and adventure through which the comrade that we knew and admired abandon. ed material security and found himself.

In their context and their in- _ tegral relationship to his family and his life, A. E. describes how

he arrived at the decisions by _

which he shaped. his path to- wards the light. How he arrived

at each major decision by which —

- he moved step by step towards - what seemed then to be the final » decision, sacrifice of his comfort- able and secure place in bour- gevis society, with its assurance of advance to a high place in the church, to take his place in - the struggle for social justice.

Let he who is a Christian and - eoncerned for the future of man. ‘kind read these pages—if he is ‘frank with himself, his _ verdict upon the Rev. A. E. Smith will be, “Would that the church 2 would produce more and ever more of such men.” Whether or not they agreed with his politics, churchmen will be compelled to

' pay tribute to the single-minded

unflinching allegiance to

_ truth in the, search for social

_ juStice which led A. E. Smith step by step to Christian social- ism, to social democracy, and ul- timately to ‘communism. —

and

Churchmen who have not thought the may not agree with his asser- tion that, today, Communists are

: g through the struggles it should be the mission of the

“church to press but they will be

compelled to respect the integ.

problem. through -

One man’s searc: for truth

A review of the late A. E. Smith’s aviobiography by TIM BUCK

_ tity which brought him through

inner struggles and _ turbulent

public activites, to the position,

in which he declared: “... the proudest thing that I can say is I am a Communist’.”

eo |

In describing the experiences and events through which his realization of the over-riding im- portance of the struggle for so- cial justice crystallized, comrade Smith described also some criti- cal periods in the history of the church and a great many crucial events and developments in the Canadian labor movement dur. ing the last thirty years of his life,

From the very beginning of the book, which describes his first somewhat lugubrious at- tempt to preach a sermon, to the

end which describes his exper-

iences in Bulgaria, the Soviet Union and Spain, the book is written in first person. Anyone who knew A. E. well will al- © most hear him speaking the words he reads, ~

To quote only one. sala chosen because I have heard him speak these words from more than one platform, listen to the _powerful voice of A. E.

Smith giving his eye-witness ac.’

count of the second trial of An- nie Buller at Estevan in 1931.

“It is morning. The solemn

judge is on his-seat. The offi-

cers of the court are all in.

place. The RCMP give their color to the crowded room. The judge informs the prisoner that she may now make her

address tp the jury. It is the

moment, Everybody is tense

. She takes a look at the people. They are her people. Silence grips the whole com- pany. Not an eye is winked. Her personality, tensed by the ordeal: through which she is now called upon to pass, her clarion tones of voice, her firm

confidence, the courage of her - bearing, hold the eyes of all |

upon her. Her words are blows. Turning suddenly to a miner she darts this question: ‘Did you know Nick Narvan? > Where is he now?’ The Crown protests. The judge raps and calls for ‘order’. The miner ex. ‘claims: ‘He is dead!” The ground covered in this book is so wide and varied ‘that it is impossible to give a bal- anced picture of it through quo- tations in a brief review such as this. If space permitted I would illustrate the A. E. Smith story by quotations from his book. I would start with his chapter entitled “I was there when the West was born”, and his first

_ shocking experience of seeing a

farmer’s entire ‘crop destroyed — and the farmer ruined by an August frost in 1891.

I would follow that by refer- - ences to ‘illustrate A.E.’s person-_ i al knowledge of capitalist poli.

ties and politicians in Manitoba — at the turn of the century, in- cluding Clifford Sifton and Ar-

\

thur Meighen who played an oc- casional game of tennis on the parsonage court at Portage la Prairie. In those days, wrote A, E. Smith, “I did all I could to help the Liberals.”

But he was begining to learn, already, that “there are farmers )\ who farm the land\and thére are those who farm the farmers. These -latter have Bape much wealth.”

It was in 1899, while ra charge — of the Methodist church at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, (then really a frontier town), that A. E. Smith first realized the imperative necessity for a critical search for the truth — at all times and upon all ques- tions.

A paper that he presenter at. the district meeting of the “Methodist church during that period concluded with the fol. lowing revealing sentences: es

“Allegiance to truth does not require that anything be taken for granted; it does not ide- mand that any finality be es- tablished as to the inspiration |

or authority of the Bible. The

Bible must be treated like any

other writing.

originator of truth and jus- tice.”

A. E. comments upon that pas- sage in his autobiography. BAA was searching for the truth.” In: Nelson, B.C., whence he moved shortly afterward, the truth im. pelled him to stand up spontan- eously in the police court and intervene in defence of the el- -ementary civil rights of some men on trial. 4

It is a striking coincidence that this, the first major action to take him outside the strict limits of his pastorate, was in defence of municipal employees who were being persecuted for strike activities.

Certainly he had no idea eh that he would eventually make defence of the civil rights of the victims of the class war his life’s work. But, and this was prob- ably more important than A.E. realized, it was through his spon- taneous intervention to protect the civil rights of those muni. cipal employees that he made his first acquaintanceship with Marxism in the person of our great comrade, Jack Johnstone, who was later to become famous in the United States as a mem- ber of the leadership of the Communist Party of the U.S.A.

The Rev. A. E.' Smith wasn’t fully aware of it at the time but there is no doubt that his “search for truth” and his ex- perience in Nelson were: decisive in the development of an atti- tude toward social problems. which impelled him to turn down an invitation to stand as the “fusion” candidate representing Liberal-Conservative “Union” in the federal constituency of Bran. ‘don, in the wartime election sg © 1917; z

A. E. acneenee the cident i the following words:

It is not the «-

_A. E. SMITH

“A prominent business man of Brandon’ called on. me one day in my church study. He was a well-known Conserva- tive. I received him with some expression of surprise.

“‘T have a special reason for calling on you _ today, Smith,’ he said. He then told me that he represented a group of business men in his

. party. They had been discuss- ing what was to be done at this critical hour. They had agreed to visit me to propose

that I should allow myself to-

be nominated: as the federal candidate for Brandon. I list. ened politely. He was practi- ‘cally offering me a sure seat in ‘parliament. I told him I did not think I would make the kind of candidate his group wanted.”

From those days onward A.E.'s inner conflict and the social

challenge of the world sharpen=-

ed rapidly. “I had become quite unorthodox in my religious be- liefs,” he wrote. “To me the gos- pel of Jesus was the proclama.

tion of a new social order of

human society.” : The war, the Russian Revolu-

tion, the. Winnipeg General Strike, those stupendous events were the background against

which A. E. Smith, J. S. Woods- worth, the Rev. Ben Spence, Dr.

‘Salem Bland and other forward-.

looking members of the Method- ist Church of Canada aspired to

bring about “the reformed — church” which would take its place in the great historical

struggle for a new, a just apclal order. gee

AE. siuentibus the high Boned with which he and the members

named above fought in the Gen. eral Conference of the church at |

Hamilton in 1918, to change the phrase “amelioration of poverty among the people” in the main zepolution of the conference, to “abolition of poverty,” and how

jubilant they were when their “amendment was adopted and,

more, the conference went on

record in favor of the principle ©

of “production for use instead of for profit.” ; /

The gratification wasn’t limit- ed to delegates in the conference. The writer of this review was

one of, many thousands of work-.

ers who were encouraged by it

to believe for a while that at great.

least one of Canada's

Mr. °

churches was going to take its Stand with the working class.

But, conference resolutions not.

withstanding, then, as now, pow- — L the church prevented any actual par--

ticipation in activities that might ‘—

erful influences within

8ive offense to the rich and pow-

erful. The Rev. A. KE, Smith learned that and- the, discovery created one of the crises of his life.

Having caught the vision of

socialism, having recognized the path that “allegiance to truth”

marked out as the path to which >

his conscience directed him, A.E. came up against the question of whether his conscience would permit him to continue with be church. :

His decision, not arrived at easily, but made firmly and given unequivocally, was NO! He an- nounced his decision in the ser- mon which he advised his con- gregation was to be his last,

It was_poetic justice in a dra-

matic sequel that, a year after- ‘wards when he was in Calgary

exploring the possibilities of es-

tablishing a Labor Church there, |

_.& provincial general election was

called in Manitoba and the La- bor party in Brandon called

“upon A. E, Smith to come and

contest Brandon for labor—he went and he won. @

Winning an election seemed at first to be the culmination of 'A.EV’s evolution. He discovered very quickly, however, that it. was the opening of a new stage, the stage in which he explored

_ the illusions and the deceptions

of social democracy.

Following as it does right on the heels of his penetrating de- scription of the stirring events of the General Strike, in which > he was an ‘active participant,

\

A.E.’s description of the exper- —

iences through which he finally —

“decided that he must take his_

place in the Communist party, is moving. }

“Cofnmunism challenged my mind and spirit, ” he wrote. asserted and revealed man’s in-

, dividual worth. It was the basic

truth of personal initiative, Out- side of Communist society, it seemed to me, there could never ‘be realized the full development of man’s superior qualities — of character My - caravan was now at another of ‘those points | where the road divides capt January, 1925, Maude and I ap-

plied to be received as members :

of the Communist. party of. Can- ada.” And he adds: _ “It was not a hurried deck:

. sion, It was based upon firm -. and deep and studied convic- tion that in Communism we

had found the basic movement which would Steadily grow in- to the agency by which the workers would achieve the re- lease of mankind from _ econ- omic ‘from ignorance and disease — the broad movement which would eventually bring ‘forth the true nature and spirit of man in a Classless society of firm, conscious brotherhood all over’ the earth.”

The rest of the book describes

the twenty strenuous, exacting

and fruitful years that A.E. de- arpor ;

voted to the movement. Because of his role in the ean: adian Labor Defence ‘League, this part of the book is also vir- tually a history of the CLDL. It is more than just a history of labor defence, however, because A. E. Smith was more than — general secretary of the CLDL. His. description of his verbal | battles. with R. B, Bennett, Can- ada's- truculent | Beg minister

mice:

[ (Goncluded on next page)

PACIFIO TRIBUNE—DECEMBER 28, ‘1919-PAGE .

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