Page Six

THE ADVOCATE

March 29, a

THE ADVOCATE

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

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VANCOUVER, B.C., FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 1949

The People Must Organize

Now that the election has returned the King government to power with approximately the same majority it re- ceived in 1935 the big business press of both Canada and Britain vie with each other in assuring the people the Liberal victory is proof positive that the Canadian people are all for winning the war.

Says the Vancouver Sun: “Before the world, this young nation has demonstrated by free vote that it is united as never before, in spirit, in policy, in its determination to win the war,” and the Province adds: “Yesterday's vote expresses confidence in the war policies of the government and the war administra- tion. It asks the government to carry out also the promises made in this campaign of energetic prosecution of the war.”

That the results of the election would be interpreted as a ‘win the war’ mandate, regardless of which of the only two parties with sufficient candidates to obtain a majority won the election, was, of course, a foregone conclusion, further substantiated by the London News-Chronicle, which comments: “Whichever way the election had gone between the two great parties, it would have been a ‘win the war’ vote.”

This being the viewpoint of big business, it is obvious that the working people of Canada, in estimating the political sig- nificance of the election, cannot attribute return of the King government to any such ‘win the war’ sentiment.

ee two most significant results of the election are, first, the crushing defeat of the Conservatives and, second, the fact that after five years in office in a period of economic de- pression the CCF not only failed to increased its vote but actually emerged, on the basis of present returns, with 87,000 less votes than it obtained in 1935, a loss of some 22 percent.

Why did the Tories receive such a rebuff? Was it because the people felt disinclined to change the government because Canada was at war, as the kept press would have us believe? Not at all.

The real reason can be found in the returns from Quebec, the last province to experience a Conservative administration, the notorious “Padlock’ government of Duplessis. There the Conservative vote dropped from 323,000 in 1935 to 141,000 in 1940. Not a single Tory was elected.

While the people of Canada as a whole could not forget the reactionary Iron Heel’ regime of R. B. Bennett, the people of Quebee with the more recent experience of the ‘Padlock’ regime of Duplessis were even more decisive in their rejection of what they considered a reactionary party, and rightly so.

They have not yet had an opportunity to appraise the equally reactionary measures incorporated in the War Meas- ures Act which far outdoes even Bennett's Section 98 and Duplessis’ padlock law.

Rejection of the CCF as an alternative to both Liberals and Conservatives was to be expected in view of its official attitude towards Canadian participation in the war, which in all essentials differed not a whit from the old-line parties. Its voluble protests that the ‘economic problem’ was the main issue and the war of secondary importance was not taken seriously by anyone but the CCF. Even a child knows the mag- nitude of the effect of war on all domestic problems and par- ticularly the ‘economic’ question. The CCF betrayal of its own principles on war in its opportunist attempts to select a ‘respectable,’ midde-of-the-road course resulted inevitably in a milk and water policy that met with the defeat it deserved.

HE Daily Herald, organ of the CCF counterpart in Britain, the British Labor party, gloats that “the various stop-the- war candidates were almost annihilated in yesterday’s elec- tion.” Considering the intimidation and terrorism instituted in Canada, under the provisions of the dictatorial War Meas- ures Act, the showing made by the ten Communist anti-war candidates was significant. In Montreal police raided the com- mittee room of the candidate and arrested all found within it. In Winnipeg four supporters were arrested. In Hamilton the campaign manager was out on bail awaiting trial under the War Measures Act while conducting the campaign.

One candidate in Toronto was already serving a two-year sentence. Thousands of copies of election pamphlets and leat- lets were seized, anti-war speakers were barred from the radio, in most cases committee rooms were unobtainable and an air of intimidation prevailed throughout. Despite these terrific handicaps the anti-war candidates polled a respectable vote in all constituencies, headed by Leslie Morris in Winnipeg, who received over 5,000 votes.

The election did not settle any of the basic issues contront- ing the working class of Canada. The issues of paramount im- portance, conscription, increased taxation, profiteering, living costs, the threatened extinction of civil rights, still remain to be dealt with as well as the war itself.

The working people of Canada will settle these issues in their own way, but first of all by further strengthening their organizations designed to defend working class interests, labor defense organizations, anti-conscription leagues, consumers’ associations, trade unions and above all, their political party, the Communist party.

Fascists In Disguise

EMOCRACY has some strange defenders these days. But mone stranger than Major Harold Brown, president of Union Steamships, who in an address to the Bankers Lecture Club of British Columbia this week expressed his preference for fascism in indirect but obvious fashion terming it ‘a Sundy afternoon’ in comparison to communism.

What does Major Brown imply by his reference to ‘a Sun- day afternoon?’ He implies quiet. And who is ‘quiet’ under fascism? It is the working class, deprived of its rights to or- ganize, denied its own press, barred from platform and radio, ferrorized and forced to underground methods of struggle. This is what Major Brown and his fellow industrialists would like to see in Canada.

His remarks should serve to open the eyes of the Canadian people to. the enemies of the people now masquerading as ‘democrats, avowedly warring against fascism, but, through the King governments War Measures Act, actually introduc-

ing it in Canada.

From The Socialist Sixth of the World

EAND WHERE YOUIR RULES |

HEWLETT JOHNSON, DEAN OF CANTERBURY |

“Ee SOVIET UNION is a young country. Youth controls factories, workshops, and scientific institutes. The managers o:

the Moscow Dynamo works are under thirty years of age. The majority of those participating in the Arctic exploration: expeditions were under twenty-five years. The percentage of the population under twenty-nine years—that is, of those whe either were born under the Soviet regime or retained but blurred recollection of tsarist day

By VERY REV.

Britain is 50.

What has the Soviet Union done for its youth and what is it doing?

At fifteen years of age — that is, at the end of the seven-year school age, which extends from eight to fifteen years — twee altrnatives present themselves: the child may enter the ten-year school and proceed to the university or technical college, ane an extremely large percentage do so; or he may start at once to learn the profession of his choice.

Should he choose to become a technician—an engineer, say, or an aviation meschanic—he enters a machine-constructing technical college, where he studies the ele ments of mechanics, The course lasts.for two years, and is free. On his seventeenth birthday, and not before, he can enter industry. AS a juvenile he works for not more than five or six hours a day, receiving an appropriate wage.

At the end of his eighteenth

year he leaves the workers, and after an examination enters a higher technical college. For the next five years he under- goes an extensive course of theoretical and practical ser- vise. On his twenty-fourth birthday he emerges as a quali- fied engineer.

During all this time he has re- ceived, in addition to his meals, instruments, and text-books, a monthly allowance which makes him independent of outside fin- ancial aid.

At college he meets students from every country in the Union. He comes into closer touch with the outside world than in his school-days. He may become one of the five million members of the Communist League of Youth. He comes of age politically. He becomes politically aware, which is altogether desirable in poli- tics is “the art of living with one’s fellows.” At the age of eighteen he or she obtains the right to vote and is eligible for election. Of the 1,148 deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 284 are between the ages of eigh- teen and thirty.

e

2 THE earlier days of the revo-

lution this external activity Was much overdone, though nec- essity demanded it. The best young members of the Commun- ist party built entire works dur- ing the First Five-Year Plan and educated large mumbers of the backward peasantry.

Today, happily, none of that work, or overwork, is needed, and there is a happier blend of study with external work, such as tree planting or harvesting in holiday times.

But politics and work do not absorb his whole time. Soviet youths are as keen sportsmen as British youths, and Soviet teams can hold their own with any teams they meet Soviet youth Swims—perfecting new strokes— skates and climbs. I have wat- ched children of ten receive their first lesson in air-mindedness: as when a small girl eagerly offered

_ herself to be tied to a fixed chair

at the end of a long beam, to be swung through the air at the height of a two-storied house, landing head downwards at the far end, and then swinging back again. The next stage is the leap, attached to an open para- chute, from the parachute tower. After that the read thing: 5,000- 000 Soviet men and maidens in- dulge in parachuting. e AURICE HINDUS, writing in Asia of March 1938, assures us that communistic organization of industry in general, and agri- culture in particular, has defin- itely succeeded. As proof of this he selects the following dramatic instances. In the- city of Kiev, in April, 1937, 1,112 girls left school at the age of eighteen. Of these not more than 10 percent consid- ered their education complete and went to work. The remaining 90 percent passed on to some form or other of higher education. [I suppose that in England the per- centage would be nearer 5 or 6. This wholesale desire for high- er education seems to be inecred- ible, and the ability to gratify the desire more incredible still. Three considerations may help to account for it: First, there is no financial dif- ficulty to hinder a clever or keen student from entering the uni-

versity or institute for higher ed- ucation. Students receive a wage according to the standard reached in thei rwork, but in any event adequate for maintenance. An examination must be passed, but it is not competitive, as here, where a certain limited number of places and certain limited fin- ancial resources alone are avail- able. The examination merely tests fitness to profit by the course of advanced study.

Second, the parents have no need of the arly wages of their children to ekeout the family in- come o rprovide maintenance in their own old age. Their own earning power, the absence of un- employment, and the certainty of a pension on retirement, or main- tenance if sick, cause them to en- courage rather than hinder their child’s desire for auniversity eru- cation of the highest order ob- tainable.

Third, and not of least impor- tance ,is youth’s own eagerness for the highest possible forms of mental equipment. There is a zest for learing; especially, but by no means exclusively, in the several fields of science. 3

6

HE NUMBER of students in

universities and technical col- leges is to reach 650,000 during the Third Five-Year Plan. Sec- ondary education is to grow still more rapidly, and the number of those with a completed higher education will increase from 650,- 000 to 1,290,000. And that is but the beginning, not the end. For the fundamental aim is the mat- ter of education is to raise the whole clutural and technical level of the working class to that of engineers and technical workers and to remove forever the dis- tinction between the man who works with his brain and the man who works with his hand.

Stalin expressed the intention with his usual simplicity in words spoken at a recent conference of Stakhanovites:

“The elimination of the dis- tinction between mental labor and manual labor can be achieved only by raising the eultural and technical level of the working class to the level of engineers and technical workers. it would be absurd to think that this is unreasonable. It is entirely reasonable under the Soviet’ system, where the productive forces of the coun- try are freed from the fetters of capitalism, where labor is freed from the yoke of exploita- tion, where the working class is in power, and where the young- er generation of the working class has every opportunity of obtaining an adequate technical education. There is no reason to doubt that only such a rise in the cultural and technical level of the working class can undermine the basis of distinc- tion between mental and man- ual labor, that it alone can ensure that higher level of pro- ductivity of labor and that abundance of articles of con- sumption which are necessary in order to begin the transition from Socialism to Commun- ism.”

The goal is that of a wholly ed- ucated nation.

@

Tl HAVE traced the course of

Soviet youth from infancy throughout the childhood to the higher ranges of education in un- iversity or technical institute; we now reach the point where he is ready to launch boldly forth into the world of affairs with which through his whole career he has been acquainted, and the prin- ciples of whose industries he has been encouraged to understand.

What awaits him now?

It is that this moment, I ven- ture to think, that the profound difference between planned pro- duction for community consump-

tion and production which is ei- ther unplanned or planned only for the safeguarding of profits is seen the most clearly, and alto- gether to the advantage of the former,

For the Plan gives to Soviet youth a creative purpose and a hundred opportunities to work it out. The Plan seeks his help. Un- limited possibilities open up be- fore him in the spheres of sci- ence, economics, general culture, and politics. For Soviet youth the nightmare of unemployment is forever gone. His future is full of hope. There is a niche for @€ach and a call for each. There is for each a promise of security, banishing devitalizing fear; and an honored place in a cause which gives, or can give, zest and nobility to life.

@

ITVID indeed is the contrast

between the outlook on life of the average Soviet youth, from the otulook of the average Brit- ish youth. No one in close touch with British youth, or with their parents too, can fail to know the fears, anxieties and strain with which they face the future, whe- ther in times of slump through which we are passing, or in times of boom into which we may shortly come, only with the knowledge that another slump

. lies inevitably ahead.

More than most, perhaps, am I placed in a position to know the inner side of this question as it affects the various types and classes of boys and girls of Eng- lang; being at the moment chair- Man of governors of an elemen- tary school, of two large second- ary schools, and of a great public school, the oldest in the English- speaking world; having also held Similar posts in the great indus- trial centres of the north.

There is general and disturbing anxiety in the later school years as to whether a job can be se- Cured which will provide a live- lihood. The number of useful jobs is limited, the number of ap- plicants immense. Competition is severe. Even the strain of ob- taining a job through examina- tion often leaves the winner ex- hausted when the job is secured and glad to leave forever the Studies which secured it. thers less fortunate, gain no job at all. Hundreds of thousands of boys and girls have been condemned to pass to post-school life with- out ever knowing the joy of work, lacking tools, room, skill, or re- sources to make their own em- ployment. Life consists of hans- ing around street corners, with its morally degrading effects.

)

OUTH — TIT am speaking now

of vast numbers of youth in industrial centers—sees no way out. He cannot trace these things to. their source. He feels that he is in the grip of fate. Luck rules, You are lucky if you are born in- to the right circle. Lucky if you have brains. Lucky if you get a

CONSCRIPTION IS. | ON THE BOOKS

By T. G. MCMANUS

pee MINISTER MACKENZIE KING promised on Sept _ 7 that there would be no expeditionary force. Today thou sands of young Canadians have left our shores. Dr. Manion agreed with King on Sept. 7 that there woulc be no expeditionary force. Throughout the election campaisi he criticized the King government because more men were no

sent overseas.

Manion was a member of the government that helped t

frame the Conscription Act.

M. J. Coldwell and the CCF leaders promised to fight fo peace. Today they are supporting the war! Coldwell and the CCF leaders promised that they woul

s — is 63. A similar percentage td

|

job. But, then, your luck may turn against you. All life is 3/ gamble. Belief in 3 peneficients providence, or in purpose behini the order of things, departs. L

How can good work be done against a background so black and se discouraging? /

By ;

Or, when a youth is lucky and | finds a job, how often can we call; it a creative job? Innumerahied young men and women, capable : of achieving much and enriching j the world with the things they could produce or the service; | they could render, eke out a mis: erable and precarious living ar. touts urging the purehase of commodities we neither need no; want. And how many more arm: tied down for life to routine taske and dread the very invention: which may make even these- tasks superfluous and cast 4

present workers on the ‘scrayy heap of unemployment? i

And, while many are unenj) ployed, many more, and especial i ly those in the more skilled type of employment, are seriously oy erworked. The end of the work ing day finds them too fatigued © to take interest in the social and” political order which -so vitally affects their lives. The strain of keeping the skilled job they have Secured is incessant Age will quickly prove a handicap. In or der to keep to the front here is danger of sriving for showy op dramatic results. It is not easy te do solid work in the time ai: lotted. Life shrinks to small hor izons. {

Some few, in ‘the higher ranges of industrial or professional life, inherit, or gain by influence, or | even win by open competition, in) a struggle for which they have had all the advantages which | wealth and leisure and every fa-~ vorable circumstance can give, q sphere where life really has cre” ative purpose, as in the case ‘af many enterprising industrial con-~ cerns. i recall again my own ex- perience. Such jobs are few and precious.

eS

T IS just these creative tasks that open up in the Sovie} Union, not to a favored few, but to all. Ail have a share in the Ownership of industry and pro- ductive processes. All have their appropriate niche, and it is ths niche of their own choosing There is no hunt for a job. The jobs do the hunting. And each job is part of a greater whole Nothing is haphazard. In what ever job he chooses, a Soviet bor may know that he is building up @ national concern. What hi does creatively affects himsel! j his family, his city, his father

land.

Soviet youth is assured of healthy, creative and attractive work, his perplexity lies only in its choice. It is no mere hum- bug when you speak to a Sov- iet child about vocation: each ean hear an inner call and heed it.

THE EPEITOMY OF CAUTION

fe to set aside a suitable day for general prayer

throughout the United Kingdom for the speedy end of the war, Prime Minister Chamberlain replied that the question would be considered at the proper time. “I do not think that time has yet arrived,” he said. This remark, we feel, represents about the ultimate in British caution. The prime minister ap- parently has an uneasy faith in the power of prayer, combined with a lack of faith in the divine grasp of the situation. Pray for the end of war, and there’s just a chance that that’s what you'll get; peace right on the dot, with all the issues still up

in the air and the balance of power yet to be determined. The prime minister, it seems, has no doubt that God can put a stop to hostilities any time He feels like it, but he would rather not trust Him with the details. The time for peace will be deter- mined at No. 10 Downing street. Until the cabinet gives the word, the people will kindly refrain from stirring up the Almighty until the empire has things under better control, God can just count sparrows——_THE NEW YORKER.

fight against an expeditionary force leaving Canada. The did not issue one leaflet or say one word of protest when Cana dians were shipped overseas.

Coldwell says he is against conscription, but Tom Johnsor CCF member for Touchwood, wants a registration of all mei under the age of 40 years. He said so in the Saskatchewa? legislature. On their past performance, can the people trus them to fight against conscription?

The Liberals, Conservatives and the CCE’ers are sayin ¥ they are opposed to conscription. But it is hard to comprehen: their attitude in view of hte fact that conscription is now oO. the statute books of Canada — and can be enforced by th} order-in-council at any time.

The statute reads:

“Section 8—Al]] the male inhabitants of Canada, of the ag of eighteen years and upwards, and under sixty, not exemp) or disqualified by law, and being British subjects, shall be liabi to service in the militia: Provided that the Governor-Genere may require all male inhabitants of Canada, capable of bearini arms, to serve in the case of a levee en masse. :

“Section 69—The Governor-in-Council may place the mill), tia ,or any part thereof on active service anywhere in Canad, and also beyond Canada for the defense thereof at any tim) when it appears advisable so to do by reason of emergency)