THE ADVOGATE

Wovember =

THE ADVOCATE

(Formerly The People’s Advocate)

Published Weekly by the Advocate Publishing Association, Room 20
163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C. Phone TRinity 2019,

EDITOR - HAL GRIFFIN
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Vancouver, B.C., Friday, November 3, 1939

British Columbia Wants
No “Hepburnism”

STENSIBLY in order to aid the prosecution of a “war to
destroy Hitlerism,” Premier Hepburn of Ontario has an-
*nounced that his government will suspend all municipal elec-
tions for two years or “for the duration of the war if that be
longer”; and in a supplementary statement Ontario’s minister
of municipal affairs, Eric Cross, explained the value of this
decision by stating “it would effect important municipal sav-
ings” by eliminating the costs of elections from municipal
budgets.

Premier Hepburn’s decision is a monstrous and shameless
attempt to deprive the people of Canada’s most populous prov-
ince of their most vital democratic rights. If it is allowed to
stand unchallenged it represents a threat to the liberties of all
Canadians, it is one more proof of the fact that the closest ene-
mies of our freedom and democratic rights are in our own
country and here, at home, is where we must defeat them.

Consider for a moment the logic of the Ontario premier’s
decision. If it is justifiable to cancel all municipal elections in
war time in order to save election costs, then it is but a short
step to arrive at the conclusion that no elections in peace time
would still “effect municipal savings.”

The plain truth is that the abolition of elections will not
save the taxpayers money, but will provide the widest encour-
agement to graft, corruption and profiteering in contracts by
municipal bodies whose tenure will depend not on the opinions
of their constituents, but on the whims of Premier Hepburn.

Further, if savings can be effected by abolishing the muni-
cipal franchise, then how long will it take Premier Hepburn
to announce that still greater savings can be made by elimimat-
ing provincial elections? Im view of the fate of Premier Du-
plessis of padlock law notoriety in Quebec it would be but
logical to assume that Duplessis’ erstwhile axis partner in
Ontario will become more and more anxious to prevent funds
from being spent on provincial elections as his own tenure of
office approaches its.normal end.

Just as Quebec’s padlock law, as long as it remains, repre-
sents a threat to the democratic rights of Canadians in all
provinces, so also Hepburn’s “no elections” edict, if it is not
withdrawn by a wave of popular protest, is not merely a pro-
vincial matier but a national danger. :

We welcome the statement of the Hon. A. Wells Gray, pro-
vincial minister of municipal affairs, that BC does not propose
to abandon or postpone municipal elections. —

We want no Hepburnism in BC.

But we are not merely citizens of BC—we are citizens of
Canada. Therefore we absolutely oppose Hepburnism not only
in BC but in any part of Canada. :

Freedom of Conscience--
A Democratic Principle

|e seventy-five ministers of the United Church who signed
and issued from Toronto a “witness against war’ state-
ment in which they declared that “we find ourselves, not with-
out pain and regret unable to approve of this war,” have be-
come the center of a public discussion which, although it finds
almost no expression in the commercial press, is very wide-
spread in the homes of our people.

Although the sub-executive of the Church condemned their
action after Ontario’s Attorney-General Conant had publicly
threatened their arrest and prosecution under the Defense of
Canada Act, the general opinion on the streets and in the
homes of the people, from churchgoers and non-churchgoers
alike was one of great admiration and respect for these minis-
ters who stood by their principles. Undoubtedly it was the
pressure of this public opinion that caused Conant to announce
within a few days that ‘prosecution might unduly magnify the
incident.”

The ministers’ declaration of principle was based on pacifist
and sincerely religious grounds. They expressed their dis-
approval of “this or any other war,” and took their stand upon
the declaration of the general council of the United Church,
adopted in 1938, which said that ‘““war is contrary to the mind.
of Christ.” But the jingoist pseudo-patriots who rushed in to
erucify them denounced them not for their pacifist opposition
to war in general but for their courageous and frank condem-
nation of the present war in particular. In effect, those who
condemned them declared it is permissible to deplore war in
general on pacifist srounds during peace time, but to stick by
your principles and oppose this war now it is here, is treason.

Public opinion generally evidently refuses to accept the
straitjackets that the Conants seek to impose upon the right
of people to express their opinions freely to their fellow
citizens. =

True patriotism implies love of one’s country and disinter-
ested and unselfish seryice on behalf of the people. A person
who considers the continuation of the present war as harmful
to the interests of the Canadian people is acting as a true patriot
in publicly informing his countrymen of his views, in order
that they might act upon them or reject them of their own
free will. a ;

Those who call the present war a crusade for religious lib-
erty might well indeed be asked why those who oppose it on
religious grounds are being hounded and persecuted for their
VIEWS.

OMMENTATORS are filling the daily press with specula-
C tion and prophecy which they receive on ‘the highest
authority’ one day and deny on equally high authority the
next. According to our own calculations, if the daily press
is to be believed, the Soviet Union will be building some 5000
warships in the next few weeks in order to accommodate all
the ports she is reported to have demanded. Thus far, Switzer-
land and Bolivia are about the only countries on which the
Soviet Union is not reported to have made demands for ports.

* +
Labor Minister George S. Pearson has announced his in-
tention of prosecuting ‘impartially’ both employers and em-
ployees who break the Labor Conciliation and Arbitration Act.
But don’t leave it to George.

EDITORIAL REVIEW

HIS WEEK the Chamber-

lain government issued a
White Paper setting forth in
some detail the terroristic
methods used by the Ger-
man ruling class, through the
Nazi dictatorship, to  main-
tain itself in power and, un-
suceessfully, to crush all op-
position.

In the files of this paper,
dating back to 1933, may be
found all of the facts adduced
by the Chamberlain govern-
ment in its attempt to justify
continuation of the war. At
a time when certain spokes-
men for British imperialism
chose to ignore these facts and
even admitted to some ad-
miration for Nazi methods,
such papers as the Advocate
were bringing them to public
attention. .

Thousands of the finest and
best sons of the German
working class have been con-
signed to a living hell in Nazi
concentration camps. Many
have been murdered in them.
Those who still live, the bit-
terest opponents of the Nazi
regime, are there yet, Catho-
lics and Jews, Social-Demo-
crats and Communists. And
the most effective reply to
those who falsely contend, in
order to make an attack on
the Communist party the first
step in. a drive to destroy all
democratie rights, that
Nazism and Communism are
one and the same is the fact
that it is the Communist
party of Germany which now,
as before, is uniting and lead-
ing the German people in
their struggle against the
Nazi regime.

In its recently issued mani-
festo, the Communist party of
Germany declared:

“At the moment of the outbreak
of this war, which can only be
ended by the strength of the
Masses of the people of our coun-
try and the solidarity of the in-
ternational labor movement, and
which must bring the destruction
and eradication of the imperial-
ist warmakers ... for the Social-
Democrats and Gommunists in
Germany there arises out of this
Situation the necessity, on the
basis of the experiences of the
struggle for the prevention of war
and the successful cooperation of
tne opponents of Hitler, to
* rengthen unity, to expand it
and, in the difficult conditions of

2 war, to make all preparations
for the carrying through of the
people’s revolution.

“They place their hopes neither
on the bayonets of Chamberlain
and Daladier, nor on a ‘liberal
wing’ of the German bourgeoisie,
but solely on the united force of
our people, on the solidarity and
the struggle of the international
working class and on the aid of

the great and powerful Soviet
Union.”

The terror directed against
the German working class by
the Nazi regime, the constant
narrowing of mass support
for the Nazi regime among
the people, the disillusion-
ment of ever-growing sections
of the people and, finally, the
contradictions in which Ger-
man fascism finds itself en-
meshed, have created the pre-
conditions for overthrow of
the Nazi regime.

By HAL GRIFFIN

HEN, one is constrained to
ask, why this war for ‘de-
struction of Hitlerism’? Or is
this vague general definition
of war aims only the mask
hiding imperialist aims?

The commercial press has
welcomed issuance of the
White Paper. This, it ex-
claims in chorus, is what we
are fighting. It prefers to
pass over with little or no
comment the fact that scarce-
ly more than a year ago and
in the name of ‘peace,’ the
people of Czechoslovakia
were handed over to the hor=
rors it now condemns by the
same British government
which now declares itself to
be fighting to end these hor=
rors.

Yet, as revealed by the
White Paper, which cites
cases dating back to 1933, the
Chamberlain government was
conversant with all the facts
at the time it made its pact at
Mounich with the Hitler re-
gime. Why were these facts
not published in Sept., 1938,
when a policy of collective se-
curity could have saved
peace? Why are they only
published in Oct., 1939, when
it is necessary to provide a
reason for denying peace de-
mands such as that advanced
by even such men as David
Lloyd George?

c)

B* OTHER spokesmen for

British imperialism this
is presented as a war for the
‘freedom of the German peo-
ple” How much this conten-
tion is at variance with state—
ments carefully advanced by
pro-imperialist French papers
and expressed in press inter-
views in Canada and the
United States by Lord Marley
and Alfred Duff Cooper, the
following quotations show:

Lord Marley, deputy speak-
er of the House of Lords,
opined that there would be a
revolt against the Nazi regime
among conservative Reichs-

“webr elements.

The same hope is voiced by
many reactionary publica-
tions in Paris.

Duff Cooper, in an inter-
view with the New York
Times, also speaks of a right
‘revolution.’

“T think it will be a revolution
from the right, a conservative
revolution. Very likely there will
be a monarchial revival,’ he is
reported as saying, :

Elaborating on the mon-
archial theme, Duff Cooper is
further quoted on the subject
of Austria in the following
words:

“Tt was possible that after a
revolution Catholic Bavaria and
Catholic Austria might become
one state, and Protestant North
Germany another, he added. It
was entirely possible, he believed,
that a monarchial regime might
place Otto von Hapsburge on the
throne. He described the descen-
dant of the Hapsburg emperors
as a ‘very nice young man’.”

This is also the idea indi-
rectly put forward by La
Revue de Paris, writing on
conditions in Austria:

cs the name of Otto often
crops up in the conversations.

- respondent of
' Times (Oct. 25) and passed by the

Doe you know anything about
him?’ people ask ‘One cannot
believe the slanders spread about
him in the papers, but perhaps all
of it is not false? If one could
only write to him and find out
if his policy is a liberal one... -
We absolutely must have a liberal
ruler? = 5 .+ i
Finally there is the following
item written by the Paris cor-
the New York

French censor:

“Reports from: neutral sources
ef a recrudescence of the mon-
archist movement in Germany
. .. Have aroused much interest
in France. it is believed by many
persons’ here that a restoration
of monarchies in Central and
Eastern Europe is the only effec-
tive. alternative to the present
absolutist single party systems
of Chancellor Hitler and Joseph
Stalin. (My emphasis).

“While the French republican
holds close to his ideal of de—
mocracy for his own country, the
experience of these past twenty
years has convinced him that it
is possibly an impracticable ideal
east of the Rhine.”

Such remarks as_ these,
taken in conjunction with the
undenied report in the New
York Daily News, that a
shadow German government
may be formed in London, ex-
pose the hollowness of claims
that this is a war for ‘the lib-
erty of the German people’
and lead only-to the conelu-
sion that imperialist aims are
being followed, that the fight
of the German people for
freedom, for the democratic
right to choose their own gov-
ernment, may not end with
the overthrow of the Hitler
regime. ,

e
UT of the confusion sur-
rounding this war, its
aims and its purposes—a con-
fusion, it must frankly be ad-

mitted, to which this paper

added in its first statements
and articles, by enabling the
conclusion to be drawn that
this contained elements of a
just, anti-fascist war—certain
facts emerge clearly:

1. That under cover of the ‘war
emergency’ reaction in the demo-
cratic countries is redoubling its
drive against the liberties and
rights of the people. This is ex-
emplified by the attack on the
Communist party of France and
the militant French labor move-
ment, which observers have com-
pared to the attack on the Com-
munist party of Germany and the
German labor movement after the
Nazis seized power. It is exempli-
fied by the curtailment of demo-
cratic rights in Britain. In
Canada the War Measures Act is
being used to whittle away demo-
cratic rights and will be used by
reaction to destroy all democracy
—if the people allow it.

2. That the burden of the war
is being placed on the people. In
France the gains labor made
under its People’s Front gevern-
ment are being lost coincident
with the attack on the Commun-
ists. In Britain, soaring prices
bear heaviest on those who can
least afford them. Im Canada, des-
pite the government’s pledges to
curb profiteering, big busimess is
already deriving huge profits
from the war—and.~. denying in-
creased wages to the workers.

These are red lights pierc-
ing the fog of propaganda. To
ignore them is to make pos-
sible a complete blackout of
democracy in Canada.

THE PEOPLE’S FORUM

Distorted News
Reports Scored

To the Editor:—For some time
past the press has been “whoop-
ing it up’ with all kinds of con-
flicting news, insidious and dis-
torted.

Even the British government
has stated that it has no desire
to contest the territory now un-
der the domain of the Soviet Un-
jon, yet the press represents
Stalin as a bear who had eaten
and cleaned up the bones of the
Polish people.

Even after we received the
news from Moscow assuring us
that the Red army would not as-
sist Hitler, the press made no
effort to correct or repudiate the
warped ideas of its correspond-
ents, and now implies that the
Soviet Union has evil designs on
Turkey, Finland and other coun-
tries.

Today, in Poland, millions of
workers and peasants do not
have to worry. Their means of
existence is safe and they have
escaped from famine, disease and
the other ravages of war by the
action of the Soviet Union.

The fact that the real news be-
hind these reports has been with-

held by the press is one very im-
portant reason why all sincere,
peace-loving people should unite
in support of a publication that
expresses their views and gives
the truth.

That is why I subscribe to the
Advocate and make sure of get-
ting true reports on international
and national affairs.

A G McCaALiLuUM.
Vancouver, BC.

Takes Issue
With MacInnis

To the Editor:—Speaking to 30
or 35 people at Stanley Park CCE
club on Sunday last, Angus Mac-
Innis, MP for Vancotver Hast,
elaborated for an hour on the
decisions taken by the CCE na-
tional council regarding Canada
and the war.

Analyzing the CCE approach
to the problem, MacInnis said
the council was faced with one
of three alternatives: non-partici-
pation, full participation, or lim-
ited participation. Wimited par-
ticipation won the day.

“Man power for the moment is
mot needed, the Canadian goy-
ernment has not intimated plans
to conscript an army, therefore

be it resolved that this national
council of the CCF is opposed to
conscription.”’ Thus, in effect,
said the council.

Economic and moral support
on the part of Canada is endors-
ed, due consideration being taken
of Canada’s “geographic posi-
tion” and her “vast resources” of
raw materials.

Thus ‘limited participation is in
actual fact, support unlimited.

The question of whether the
present war is a just war, a war
of liberation such as the Chinese
are waping against aggressor
Japan, was never posed. if it
was, MacInnis didn’t mention it.
The council was entirely influ-
enced by the fact that Canada
was at war, and the council must
Make the best of it. The fact
that the aiders and abettors of
aggression found themselves face
to face with the aggressor him-
self was never considered, or if it
was, MacInnis didn’t mention it.

It would be better to admit
that the situation was misjudged
back in those September days,
rather than to justify an unten-
able position in October, when
we review the eurtailed liberties
of the peoples.

—Ss. GS.

Vancouver, BC.

VIEWS |

and |

OPINIONS |

Q* THE bright roll

brave men must now |)
inscribed the name of J. LE. é
Telford, mayor WVancouy |
British Columbia. Althoz |)
individuals are being jailed |
Canada for speaking ,
against the insane war wh *
the great majority of the p —
ple do not want, Mayor 7
ford in a public uttera; |
exposed the tragedy for whal |

is — the struggle of imperiali: |
powers for selfish economic ey |)
Millions of Americans, as y
@s Canadians, will applaud ~
courageous assertion that =I

SETI IT

at

@ product of our economic syst |
and that the solution to our pr
lems must be found in pene
working together — not lock +
in bloody combat at the beh, |
of ... Hitler, Daladier and Gh: |
berlain. 4
Today the United States ofA
erica is on the brink of anos
catastrophe. While there is ; |
time, the people must be remin_
ed again and again of the eas
mic causes Of the last world w |
The time to enlist in the siruge
for peace is right now, for 7
morrow we all may be draft
into war. a

—WASHINGTON NEW ~
DEALER.
=

= * EP
| BSS GME SS who to us @
human yultures, must be pi

hibited from operation in oure

tion. Let the sacrifices of ;
our people be equal, let there ae
no unnecessary misery and 5s
row. No stone must be left y~
turned in locating the profits
enemy. He is here among us

The voice of the people, 7)
voice of the press must go u
hampered and be heard. Only
the silence of oppression do {
Seeds of confusion grow; and
they are allowed to srow, we wm
reap a harvest of chaos 7
right of assembly, the right |}
human association is the law}
freedom,

Our standard of education, ot
Standard of life, must go fo
ward; progress should be the kr
word. The training schemes ini,
go on. If we would be stran
our homes must be kept in S02.
circumstance, our houses impre
ed, our slums cleared.

—JOE McKENZIE, preside
ef the Alberta Wouth Go:
ress, in New Advance

= = =

| Eps war cloud must have

Solden lining for the inves
ment bankers. In the erim daa
which they foresee ahead — tt
black-out periods, the home
made unhappy by the sons ¢
farmers and workers fighting o
foreign soil — no matter ho
grim the horizon, or how delaye
the dawn, all through the nig?
they will have the quiet comfc
of knowing the ticker tape is sh
there.

Quite a few Americans wor
See eye to eye with them; for on
thing, millions of us have n
liquid assets but blood, which i
spilled on the fields of battle wi |
send no ticker tape soaring 6 i
prosperity for bereaved mother:
Wives or children at home.

- - . We can’t see peace as:
threat We can take but littl
comfort in the knowledge tha
the financial overlords of Amer
ica will have their war-frayet
nerves soothed knowine tha
they have found a way of in
vesting their liquid assets with
out sharing prosperity with the
American people.

—HOWARD COSTIGAN, &
ecutive secretary of Wash 7
ington Commonvwealth Fed
eration.

Tear Off The
Masks

Tear the masks fe

from these who all too lons —
have worn them

to the bitter masquerade.

And you shall see, as we havi ©
long since seen them, B

and know of whom they art -
afraid.

E

Seb I TONE Yate

leg nin mn le ng en gn il Fatt NRO TEE Mee Pipe ry art aie

Strip the suise

from these who plotted )

and called it
peace — ‘Peace in our time
O Lord’—

|
and in the name of freedom |
forged the chains t
and to oppression gave tht)
sword.

Let truth ring. A
Shall these who oppress fet;
those oppressed =
in war that is not to free
and precious liberation be the

of these who strangle liberty 4
—Hal Gri