~ 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. ]

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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