Science and religion
#sditer, Pacific Tribune:

im the October 25 issue of the
Tribune, there is a letter from
Peter Disney dealing with the
role of christian religion in moq-
erm society. His thesis is that re-
iigion as propounded by Christ,
is of benefit to the modern
working alass; that ehristianity
purged of the ritual of centuries
of observance, is still a potent
forces for progress.

Mr. Disney does not discuss
the merits of religion in general
or of the christian religion in
particular, but bases his conten-
tion upon the benefits jto be
gained by adhering to the ethics
of christianity. He says in ef
fect that we cannot have an
ethical code without at the same
time embracing religion. This is
madeed a fallacy; the ethies of
dialectical materialism are far
Superior to the ethics of chris-
Ganity. The former is based up-
on the rock of scientific knowl-

edge; the latter upon the shift-
ing sands of conjecture and
emotionalism.

The christian ethic deals with
the good of the individual and
has small concern for the good
of society. The materialist ethic,
on the other hand, regards the
geed cf society as pre-eminent
and recognizes that society,
properly organized will promote
“the well-being of its individual
members. In fact, the individuals
comprising society by giving
their best to society will in re
turm receive from society assist-
ance to develop to the full, the
capacities of which they are cap-
able.

i do not wish to detract from
the bravery of the early christ-
ians, but I must point out that
this characteristic was not pre-
empted by the followers of
Christ. The revolt of the chattel
Slaves in the Roman Empire
had come to the boiling- point
before Christ was born. In 73
B-G., Sparticus, himself a slave,
organized an army of slaves and
Successfully defieq the armed
might of Rome for two years,
routing several Roman armies.

BOMBAY.
RUTAL terror has been let
loose upon the workers of
the South Indian Railway,
who have been on strike in pro
test against the wholesale vic-
timization of their union mili-
tants and the arbitrary chang-
ing of Leave Rules by the rail-
way authorities. 5
The police have been
ing workers’ quarters and terror-
izing and beating up families in
an attempt to force strikers to
returm to work.

‘The total arrests to date are

enter-

1054 including 30 women, 10
ehildren and almost all the of
fice-bearers and leaders of the
South Indian Railway Labor
Union.

@n September 5 at Golden

Rock (S3.R. workshop center)
the police opened fire on &
Crowd of 500 workers who had
fathered for a meeting. Four
Workers were killed and 142
Seriously wounded including the
General Secretary of the Union.
After that the police entered
the workers’? colony, mercilessly
and indiscriminately beat uD
men, women and children and
arrested some 400 more workers.
The police also raided the
Union press and office, smashed
up the furniture, tore down the
flag, destroyed the lamps and

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5

caMtAU TANNA CC ATE TTT a

In 71 B.C. he was killed in battle
oie agen

and™his army defeated. If my

memory does not -play me false,

it was the prisoners taken in
this battle who were elevated
upon crosses and lined the Ap-
Pian Way.

Religion from the early be-
ginning of class society, has been
an instrument in the hands of
the ruling class for the suppres-
Sion of the slave class. Long and
bloody is the record of religios.
History has proved that the
christian religion, like all other
religions, serves the interests of
the ruling class. To deplore the
fact that religion has lost its
hold on the workers and to ask
them/to return to the christian
folq is reactionary and an in-
sult to their intelligence. You
cannot have religion without
having a God and science has
routed the gods, both ancient
and modern. Our duty is to
Suard against the prostitution
of science and promote the re-
organization of society in con-
formity with modern knowledge.
Religion can only retard this
developmet.

Comradely yours,
W. R. MILLER.

Tommy and Jerry

Editor, Pacific Tribune:

A friend of mine in Alexan-
dria, Egypt, visiteq@ Palestine
during the recent unrest there,
and sent a very interesting lIet-
ter, from which fT have taken the
following excerpts:

“I was in Tel Aviv and Jeru-
Salem during the troubles, and I
have seen youngsters fooling
British soldiers . . IT was talk-
ing English and they asked me
if I was English; if I had been
= would probably haye been a
dead duck by now .. . in one
of the collective farms I got
talking with two Polish girls and
I asked them why was it they
diq not actually like the Eng-
lishman and here is one of their
answers: these girls have just
come out of the terrible concen-
tration camp at Dachau and
they still carry their serial num-

By NEEGIS BATLIWALA

the mike. The union records
were seized. E
HE Joint Secretary of the
Strike Committee and Gen-

eral Secretary of the SIR Sta-

tion Masters’ Association has
wired to Pandit Jawaharlal
Wehru, urging intervention and

stating that the railway auth-
orities were making capital use
of the Congress Ministry’s prej-
udices against the Communists,
to terrorize the workers and
smash up a perfectly justifable
strike.

Mr. Asaf Ali, the Congress
Minister for Transport and Rail-
ways in the newly formed in-
terim Government, has, however,
issued a statement promising to
look into all the “reasonable de-
mands of the workers.”

But he has asked the CIR
union to first call off the strike.
The Strike Committe has not
yet arrived at any final deci-
sion in the matter.

One more step towards this
antilabor and pro-capitalist pol-
icy was taken when the United
Provinces Congress Ministry
drafted its Trades Dispute Bill.

One of the reasons put for-
ward by the Ministry for rush-
ing this Bill through was that
the Defense of India Rules
(DIR) were due to epxire on
September 30, 1946, and since
“the labor situation is still not

ZA

ber tatoced on their arm. Ac-

cording to them the British sol-
dier is as bad as the dJerries.
When the British came te Da-
chau they were treated mostly
the same way as the Jerries-
If it wasn’t for UNRRA they
would have been left starving
in the same concentration camps
till now.

“— myself saw ome of these
Palestine policemen (mostly com-
Posed of ex-sergeants of the
British Army) knock out an old
lady. Lucky for the guy that
there had been some army blokes
with tommy-guns around or else
he would have been duck (dead).

“Next comes the question of
refugees who were sent to Cy-
prus. Do the British think that
by doing this they are going to
intimidate the Jews? . They
are doing this to get in the
Arabs’ ‘good books’ fearing a
war with Russia (here it seems
inevitable). That is the thanks
the Palestine Jews get after
they gave Britain 300,000 soldiers
during her time of need ... .
And then come the Arabs: how
many soldiers did they give?

“Do you believe that if war
were declared with Russia the
Jews would get a crack at her?
Tf you do, you are mistaken. As
they say in English, ‘once bitten,
twice shy.’”’

My friend, who was once quite
pro-British, seems to have gone
through quite a change of heart,
especially since his visit to Pal-
estine.

Sincerely,
UBC STUDENT.

Plenty for dogs

Editor, Pacific Tribune:

Hard on the heels of your last
week’s story about. fancy py-
jamas and beds for dogs, comes
the stomy of a rich female plu-
tocrat who wills $1000 per year
to her terrier, and the stipula-
tion that her stately mansion
must “not be sold” as long as
the dog lives. What is the world
coming to?

It is time all working mothers
began to take a hand in setting
things right.

DISGUSTED MOTHER.

IOUSAVTERA EEA AEN LLUGLALE LULU EEN LOL Re EE PATER TUT EDEL HELLO SL =

India--the new ‘independence’

BUMMER TTTLT

easy - . . the Government
should have powers for main-
taining industrial peace and pro-—
duction .. . which have been
enforced under the DIR.”
Thus all the unbearable hard-
ships and curtailment of their
minimum democratic rights
which the workers suffered dur-
ing the war are to continue in
peacetime under the aegis of
the Congress Ministry. -

Se
Bill of course makes no
provision for a minimum

wage, old-age pension or mater-
nity benefit. It does not so much
as refer to recognition of work-
ers’ unions. On the other hand,
it bans “lightning strikes,” im-
poses compulsory arbitration and
puts every other conceivable
obstacle in the way of workers
resorting to their legitimate right
to strike.

To cap it all, the Bill gives
unlimited powers to the police

- . “Any police officer may
arrest without warrant any per-
son who is reasonably suspect-
ed of having committed . .
a contravention of any order
made under this Act.’

The Communist People’s Age
referring to this says, “Hven
British imperialism dare not
plan out its peace-time legisla-
tion so shockingly or give its
hated police such powers!”

Short Ja

/is not very much.

‘Good HERE is little need to venture afield this week
# F to find inspiration for the Shert Jabs. Right
Clean Fun here in Vancouver during the past few days, ince
dental contributions, not involving strikes, provided. proofs if sueb
were needed of the class character of social hfe in this last, best
West. .

Hallowe’en, with it hooligan ‘“frolics’, its “goed, clean whole
some fun’? again provided us with a demonstration aS it has done
for many years, that our native hoodlums are not raised in the
maligned East End of Vancouver, but are a product of the respect—
able section of the city which has its center around Shaughnessy
Heights and Kerrisdale.

That is cnly one proven fact of these Hallowe’en roisterings,
which will cost the city thousands of dollars to repair the damage
done. Ancther is the difference in the treatment of the hoodlums
from that quarter who were picked up and charged with obstruct-
ing the police, to that meted out to workers arrested on the same
charge. Two of these “high-spirited youths’ appeared in court the

.day after Hallowe’en on that charge and were fined $25 each.

A few weeks ago, when the strike situation at the Province was
at its heigh, at couple of young workers appeared on the same
charge, in the same court and before the same magistrate. Qne of
them had torn up a copy of the scab Province he had bought with
his own money and thrown it in the street. A cop standing by
ordered him to pick it up. Me refused to do so, for which he was
hailed into court. A friend of his was also grabbed for asking what
it was all about. When they were tried by the same “justice-
dispensing” minion of the law, they were fined $100 each.

That is how the law operates—the class law of whieh Anatole
France wrote that “The law in its majesty allows the rich equally
with the poor to sleep under bridges” if they haye no homes and to
go hungry if they have nothing to eat. But when: it comes to soalk-—
ing them in cash it differentiates by penalizing the poor—the work-—
ers—particularly when class issues are involved.

EF the Tory party should run out of leaders
Free Speech in the near future, (they are very low at
at the UBC present), they have one in the offing at the UBC,
one who appears to have all the qualities necessary for that office.

Lest you have no knowledge of the qualities needed for a Tory
leader, here are some of them, those that- relate to his intelligence
or lack of it. His knowledge of the world in which he lives and
the people in it, must be deplorably low; even if gifted with ora-
torical powers of a Churchill, although this is not necessary, the
content of his utterances must be an insult to: the ‘intelligence of
those to whom they are addressed; he must present a stone-wall
barrier to anything or any move of a progressive eharacter: he
must hate anything or any one, that someone has told him is _
“red”; along with this “intellectual” equipment he shoula be
adept in the manipulation of bloc votes, as is no doubt worked
among the elite at the UBC, among the fraternities and sororities,
and—he should be a good judge of feminine pulchritude. Such are
the characteristics of a good -Fory- leader: , - ae

The student council at the UBC, in taking a reactionary stand
on free speech on the Campus, have expresseg their views on the
matter of allowing one of the, student clubs to invite Tim Buck to
address the student body or those of them who wish to listen to him.

In refusing this permission, this expression was made public by
their president, Mr, Kirkpatrick, who, let’s hope, is not representative
of the student council or of the student body as a whole. -

The statement he made to the press is probably the ultimate
zero in estimating the intelligence of the students and the general
public of Vancouver. This is how it was worded: “You know how
these fellows get up and have the’ girls in tears and have the
fellows fighting among themselves.” (Interjection from Mark An-
thony, “If you have tears prepare to sheq them now”). And let us
hope we are not dealing with crocodile tears!

While there are Kirkpatricks to prevent the students from
learning anything worthwhile, the Tory party will not want for
leaders.

Free Speech OR is the UBC the only place where free

a 5s speech is endangered. The ‘four freedoms”
on the Redio was a great document when the Atlantic Charter
was formulated. A promiSed new world in which each could speak

the thing that was in him, was alleged to have been born.

‘But the framers of that charter, in which free speech was in-
cluded as one of the four freedoms, calculated without the mon-
opolistic control of the radio by Big Biz. and their henchmen.

Al Parkin’s program, beyond all doubt, the favorite program in
hundreds of working class homes in the city and distriet, has been
cut off the air by the arbitrary action of the monopolist owners of
CKWX. We say monopolist owners advisedly since the limitations
of the air channels puts the radio in the same category as land;
it is not an academic monopoly, but an actual and real one.

A newspaper may be launched by a group of people, labor or
otherwise, who can raise the necessary dough and sometimes that
They can break into the newspaper business
easily, but it is impossible to do that in the radio field. Radio
station owners have therefore a tighter hold on their monopolistic
privileged position in the broadcasting of news and comment and
So moulding public opinion.

They compete with newspapers’ to the extent that at a recent
conference in Ottawa the question of putting a limit to their privi-
leges in that direction was voiced by some members of parliament
and newspaper owners.

: Since it is the case that these station owners determine whe
will speak on the air and who will not, since their interests are all
with Big Biz, and they are influenced at every turn by the CMA
and the Boards of Trade, the time is long past due for labor to
move in the direction of curbing their monopolistic powers.

At the same time Al Parkin is cut off the air, the scab produced
Province newspaper carries on, coloring the news to the discredit
of the labor movement and the sculvy, professional anti-laborite
R. J. Templeton still befouls the atmosphere with his vicious clap-
trap, both on CKW2&X, the station that bars Al Parkin. This is a
question for the workers to make an issue of right away.

: Freedom of speech was not lightly won and it must not be
lightly lost. Every form of pressure must be brought ‘to bear on
that particular station to ensure that the freedom guaranteed to
the people who did the fighting on the battlefields and provideg the
weapons to carry on the war to success, is not taken from them
by the agents of monopoly or any of their heelers.

ERIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1946