army leaders and the : ers ‘mating on the mission, Tol- wid: “Per. a-is making a examination of the origin, id and aims of the junta shen report to the special @: the CTATI, executive Pueeting in Montevideo in th omy rag “ey Ui read ato) | Te to Ips Soy h @ y i : ; a ug did sit Tete pworked with the part of this month. Per- CTAL foundation and his wide 5 guarantees an exact and examination of the situ- he Bolivian people.” fontevideo CTAL council tte which U.S. and Cana- Er have been invited, has poned ten days from the set date of February 15 jsult of delays in receiv- lt visas from Brazil. The ivas called Tast week to ‘action to meet the grow- : threat in the Americas # from Argentina. ; FINLAND he Road Pnoerning of June 22, 1941, lanes took off from Fin-- e2ids to bomb Kronstadt grad and from bases in ‘injand Nazi troops began mS #8 (pnce across the Soviet tp d foretext that Finland was Te Of { deca: fate bass’ the he ation sel @ ans aly a “defensive war” to “strategie frontiers,’ the Mime of President Risto wlarshal Mannerheim- had pf with Nazi Germany to d seize Soviet territory. was to become a Finnish @t Karelia was to be in- in a Greater Finland. \ advancing Nazi armies deeper into the Soviet Snish troops were sent to ‘sus to fight under- Nazi and a Finnish brigade in the attack on Stalin- ™ngrad was brought un- £ Finnish- artillery and sky, capital of the Kare- bh Republic, was occu- monish troops. he war the citizens of ®sk, capital of the Kare- ‘1 of the growing produc- bity of their city’s thriv- tcies. But not for a Jong have those who still sur- J0pulation has been cut ‘mown relief from hor- ‘nish occupation. iS renamed Petrozavodsk Aanislinna, which means the Castle on the Onega. And for its citizens it has become a castle in fact, a prison where the Finns strive to outdo the Germans in torture and murder. : Prisoners in camps are starved and tortured. Men and women are publicly flogged, hanged or shot -without trial. Whipping with a-knout has been legalized through Soviet ter- ritory occupied by the Finns. In the schools, where use of the Rus- Sian language is forbidden, even the children are beaten. With six concentration camps es- tablished within its limits, the en- tire city of Petrozavodsk has in concentration faet been converted into a concen- - tration camp where hunger, forced labor and terror are the rule. In the occupied Karelian villages the Finns have confiscated all col- lective farm property and methodi- cally pillaged individual farms. They have seized farm machinery and driven off the livestock and they have carried off furniture, household articles and clothing. Many of the farm ‘workers have been sent to forced labor in Fin- land. This is the horror one Finnish fascists have brought to the occu- pied areas of Soviet Karelia. But the Finnish people themselves have derived nothing from it. For them the war has brought only famine and epidemics in its wake. While thousands of people in the cities face starvation, tuberculosis spreads among them. Of the chil- dren sent to Sweden, half have been found to be affected wath tu- berculosis. The only answer President Ryti’s regime has been able to give to the widespread demand for peace has been prison or the concentra- tion camp for those courageous enough to voice that demand. Mauri Ryoma, former leader of the Society for Peace and Friend- -ship with the Soviet Union, which: grew into a powerful mass move- ment. is in jail. So are Dr. Wiik, former secretary of the Social Democratic Party, Yrjo Raisanen, Mikko Impuja and Johan -Helo, all leading personalities in the Social Democratic Party who op- posed Finland’s alliance with Nazi Germany. But the demand for peace con- tinues and desertions among Fin- nish troops are increasing. Now, with Leningrad freed and the Red Army driving into Est- onia, with bombs falling on Hel- sinki, the Finnish fascists: cannot escape the catastrophe to which they have brought the country. The retreating German armies, beaten but still resisting, cannot spare troops or supplies for the Finns now that the Red Army is in a pos- ition to launch a major offensive against Finland. And even if treops and supplies could be pee: the supply lines are being cut. - Having staked everything on the victory of Nazi Germany, the Fin- nish fascists haye reached the end of their bloody road. SOVIET UNION Change and Development HE last «time the Supreme Soviet met, in the summer of 1942, the Nazi armies were pre- paring to force their passage of the Don and drive to the Volga of Stalingrad. Ieningrad was still under siege, Moscow still threat- ened. : How great has been the triumph of Russian arms in the intervening months would be estimated last week when the Supreme Soviet met again in Moscow. On all fronts the Nazi armies were in sullen re- treat. In the south only the Cri- mea, a dwindling area of the Ukraine and the territory of the Moldavian Republic remained in German hands. On the central front the Germans were being driven from Byelorussia and soon they would be driven from Es- tonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the north, the Red Army could now foree the surrender of Fin- land. _ And matching these tremendous accomplishments on the battlefront since the Supreme Soviet last met was the conference of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt at Teheran and the declaration, with all its fundamental significance for the future, issued there. A development of the accord reached at Teheran was the pro- posal made by Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov, unanimously adopted by the Supreme Soviet after a four-hour discussion., to give the 16 republics of the USSR the right to conduct their own foreign affairs and organize their own national armed forces, An example of the Soviet ability to foresee new problems arising from changed conditions and pro- pose measures to meet these prob- lems, the structural changes ap- proved by the Supreme Soviet were designed to facilitate realiza- sell Vins siege to the city for more hen two years, during which an estimated one million ltsiefenders died, the Nazies have finally entered Leningrad—as prisoners. This Feder- qctures radiophoto shows a long column of Nazis drearily winding their way through amered streets of the city they strove in vain to take. : livid and the tion of the aims of the Teheran Declaration. Pointing out that “no other coun- try would dare to carry out such a reorganization in wartime,” Molotov. said: “Before the union was organized the individual republics had their Own commissariats for foreign aif- fairs such as the Ukraine, Byelo- russia and the Russian Soviet Fed- erated states. Some of them con- cluded treaties with foreign coun- tries independently. When the union was organized, the Soviet Foreign Office alone represented the whole country. “The national needs of the re- publics can best be served by in- dependent direct relations with foreign countries. This, of course, serves the general interests in bet- tering the international relations of the whole country. The Mos- cow and Teheran conferences did their best to strengthen the anti- Hitlerite coalition. Crushing blows to come soon will fortify further the anti-fascist coalition. “The reorganization of the for- eign office and our defense is a further step in the solution.of our National problem. The Nazis them- selves now realize how vain was their hope to sow disunity among Soviet nationalities. “The new step has a great sig- nificance for all progressive hu- manity. When Hitler is trying to stifle and crush all -of our neighbors, this is a step for pro- moting the free national develop- ment of peoples and it acquires double international signifi- cance.” ; In the years following formation of the USSR, and throughout this war, the issue was the existence of the socialist state encircled by. hostile capitalist states. But in the course of this war the conditions of that encirclement have been profoundly changed. The Soviet Union must still face the concerted effort of the reactionary forces represented by Nazi Germany to destroy it: 3 ' With the military defeat of the Nazi armies in’ Russia, however, impending operations “from the east, west and south” promised at Teheran, the destruc- tion of these forces is being ac- complished. And with new accord epitomized in the Teheran Declara- tion, envisaging a new era of world cooperation, the Soviet peoples will no longer be surrounded by a hostile world. As the conditions of hostile encirclement become changed to conditions of friendly collabora- tion, the corresponding changes within the Soviet Union itself make possible new developments in Soviet democracy. Jews In Red Army ARTICIPATION of more than 500,000 Jews in the units of the Red Army and as partisans is described in a suryey on the situ- etion of the Jews in the German-. occupied parts of the Soviet Union published by the Union of Russian Jews in America, under th® title, “Jews in German-occupied Soviet Territories.” - The survey, made Sehechtman, reveals that in num- erous, Soviet cities and towns the Jews were among the first to be evacuated into the interior in order to prevent their falling into the hands of the Nazis during the early months of the invasion by the Nazi armies. : = BRITAIN Largest Union (\VEMeEnSe of the Amalga- mated Engineering Union, largest labor organization in Brit- ain’s war industries, in December 1943 reached an alltime peak of 915,297 and its financial resources a new high of £5,500,000 ($22.000,- 000). This was revealed in the AEU Journal last week. The union, which only began admitting women te membership in January 1943 now has nearly 200,000 women members. _ deaths. by J. B.. ——by OW Bill 5 I uggernant CANNOT describe how If felt when I first read about the Nazi atrocities in Soviet Russia or Japanese atrocities in China and the Philippines, but I had the same feeling one day this week when I heard the radio announcer teil of three little kiddies being killed by a streetcar. - @Qne would almost think this was the answer of the B.C. Collectric to Anscomb’s communication te Vancouver City Council demanding - that something be done about the slaughter of the innocents on the streets by the broken-down rolling stock that passes for a street rail- way. system in Vancouver. Fifteen people killed in street car acci- -dents in the city last year! Accident statistics prove that high-powered vehicles running on our streets are more deadly than the 16 inch rifles of our warships and street cars contribute their full share of fatalities. Vancouver appears to be worse than else- where. The driver of the car in this ease did not-see the unfortunate children even when warned by the blast of a motorists horn. The windows, fogged by rain, had no wipers on them. The motorman cannot be blamed for that. No automobile is allowed on the street without wipers. Why should - the B.C. Collectric be privileged? Fesponstbilaty Wor is the company alone to blame. The men and their union must accept a share of the respon- sibility for these unnecessary Alderman Jack Price, ac- eording to the press; told the civic traffic committee, “Parents require education in traffic affairs just as much as children.” ft would like to add, so do some streetcar motormen. Some of them seem to be more anxious to maintain the running time demanded by the company than to adhere to the regulations made by the city council for the safety of those who use the strets. The right to operate vehicles on busy streets is only granted on condition the operator respects the rights of others to their use and recognizes that the weaker and less able have the right of way just - as a sailing ship has the right of Way over a steamer: But streetcar motormen do not always seem to know this. Last week, Hal Griffin was telling me that a platoon of soldiers in the Reserve, of which he was one, was almost run down by a streetcar, the driver of which ignored the sig- nals of the officer in charge. The soldiers, obliged to. march along the streetcar tracks because of cars parked at the curb, had the right of way, but some of them only saved themselves from the fate of those three little kiddies by being good jumpers. And how many times a day do we see motormen break the traffic regulations by running . through red lights to conform to the B.C. Colleetrie regulations: “Six miin- utes from there to here, 8 minutes from here to somewhere else.” The union can stop that and if it does it will get more whole- hearted assistance from the public in opposing the plan of the B.C. Collectriec to put one-man cars on the same route where these little victims were killed.