From Moscow to Toronto

PRESIDENT: "As you all know, our guest-speaker for today, Colonel Drew, is a Past President of this Club and any introduction by me is quite unnecessary. He is also well known to the radio audience. I feel, however, it would be remiss of me if I did not express an appreciation of what he has done and is doing for the objects and ideals of this Empire Club of Canada. Colonel Drew is one of few men of his generation who gives unsparingly of his time and talents in creating an enlightened and intelligent public opinion. He has certain convictions and he is fearless in their expression. He is one who believes in British institutions, British justice and Canada's distinctive sphere in the Commonwealth of Nations. As such I have much pleasure in calling upon him to address us today. He has chosen as his subject 'From Moscow to Toronto.' Colonel Drew."

COLONEL DREW: Mr. Chairman, Your Worship, Gentlemen of the Empire Club: I do sincerely appreciate the honour of being your guest today. It is doubly an honour because, as the Chairman has pointed out, having been already an Officer of this Club, you are extremely patient when you come to hear me now. I do not think that there is any organization in Canada before whom one might so appropriately discuss the subject of Communism as that Club which is committed to the principle of keeping alive British traditions within Canada. To the best of my ability I shall attempt to lay before you reasons why I think that there is occasion for concern about the growth of Communism in different parts of Canada. No matter whether we may think that it presents any immediate danger to our democratic system of government, it is impossible to ignore any longer the surprising support that is given to its doctrines by those who are not themselves Communists. The fact that more than one-third of all those voting in the recent municipal elections in this City, which has boasted for years that it is the most British community in the whole Empire, supported a Communist candidate, surely offers food for thought. And the man who received that substantial vote is not merely a Communist but is the officially chosen leader of the Communist Party of Canada. It seems to me that this brings the discussion from the vague realm of academic debate into the sphere of extremely practical politics for every one of us.

It is abundantly clear that there is a wide divergence of opinion within Canada as to what Communism is and as to the possible threat that it offers to constituted authority. In the Province of Quebec, as you know, it is illegal to use any building for the purpose of advocating Communism in any way whatsoever. It is also illegal to distribute any printed material that might teach the doctrines of Communism and Mr. Tim Buck, the Leader of the Communist Party of Canada, and other Communists have in the past few weeks been refused the right to speak at meetings in that Province and we in turn have had large indignation meetings in the City of Toronto, organized by the League for Peace and Democracy and other Communist adjuncts, which have bitterly denounced what is being done in the sister province.

At the outset may I say I do not believe in a Padlock Law which does not bring a case into the Courts. I am simply describing the different attitude there is there toward Communism. In Ontario, Mr. Buck not only holds meetings, but he received 44,159 votes in December last from the people of this British city. Communist literature may be distributed on the streets and in the homes in the City of Toronto, and The Clarion, the Communist newspaper, carries daily, to those who buy it, its stories of the cruelties of Capitalism and the happiness which workers have found in Soviet Russia. Not only is it quite legal to use buildings in Ontario for the propagation of Communism, but Mr. Buck recently occupied a pulpit in a Toronto church and was introduced by its minister in these words: "A dear brother who is a martyr to the cause of freedom in his own generation; a man on fire to help his fellowmen, cost what it may." What then is this strange political doctrine, which is illegal in one of our two largest provinces and is shown such marked sympathy in another?

Many of its supporters are undoubtedly those of the younger generation who have no thought of being Communists themselves, but who look upon the acceptance of any new political doctrine as the best evidence there can be of their own intellectual emancipation. Youth has always sought the untrodden path toward unseen happiness and I imagine it always will. A witty Frenchman once said that any man of twenty who is not a Communist has no heart and any man of forty who is a Communist has no head.

But, contrary to the opinion of these misguided enthusiasts who are accepting it as some strange new belief, Communism is very old. Two thousand, three hundred years ago, Plato enunciated the principles of Communism which have been revised and expanded throughout the centuries up to the days of Karl Marx. Even such novel conceptions as community wives was not overlooked by Plato himself. For more than twenty-three centuries then, people have been trying to understand what Communism really is and apparently in Canada today there are many who have not yet learned. In England a hundred years ago the Corn-law Rhymer asked the question

"What is a Communist? One who has yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings, Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling."

The very fact that Communism is such an ancient doctirine and has been revived so often for so many centuries has doubtless led many people to look upon its present growth in the Anglo-Saxon nations as nothing more than one of those recurring political epidemics which are best cured by the exhaustion of their own emotional efforts. They point, with some appearance of wisdom, to the tolerance chown in Great Britain in dealing with Communism and urge that that toleration is the best remedy. They point to that particular place which can be used as an illustration for almost anything--Hyde Park Corner--and say that if we would only encourage them to come out in the open and discuss it as it is discussed there we would best cure Communism. These people forget that the British authorities have not hesitated to use just as vigorous methods as have been used under the Padlock Law in the Province of Quebec, to make sudden and forceful seizure of documents in Communist offices in the City of London. That, in the heart of the home of toleration! And, you will remember, those seizures of documents have had a marked effect on the course of British political history. You will remember that the seizure of the Zinovief letter in Communist headquarters in London changed the whole course of a general election there. It must be conceded that the most strenuous advocates of this negative course are usually those whose imagination has become congealed in the cooling atmosphere of long years of smug security. But there are many of them.

The Communism I propose to discuss today is that of the members of the Communist Party of Canada which is an integral part of the Communist International directed from Moscow. No abstract Communism of Plato, of John More, or of Karl Marx. I want to speak of Communism as it is, what it stands for and what it means. Very briefly I wish to summarize the result of Communism in Russia, the history of Communism in Canada and the actual purpose of the Communist Party of Canada and its members.

When discussing the result of Communism in Russia, I agree with those who say that what we think of what goes on in Russia will have no possible effect on the course of Communism there. That is not the reason that we discuss Communism in Russia. The reason I think it is important that we should understand what has happened in the only country in the world which has tried Communism and which still claims to be Communist, is that the Russian experiment is continually pictured to us, and particularly to those unfortunate people in Canada who are looking anxiously for help of some kind, as the successful cure for the undoubted tragedies of the present industrial revolution.

We shall be very foolish indeed if we are not prepared to learn everything we can from other countries in seeking to improve working conditions in Canada and to increase the security, during their working years and afterwards, of those whose welfare must be the primary concern of every government. But on the other hand, we shall be equally unwise if we permit false impressions of experiments elsewhere to lead our people to wrong conclusions. Because of the spread of Communism, and because Communism must depend on a belief in the success of the Russian experiment, I suggest that from the point of view of internal political theories, as distinguished from external relationships, it is much more important that we should understand what has occurred under the Russian dictatorship than it is to understand what has occurred under any other dictatorship of Europe.

As I understand it, the first purpose of Communism was to remove those inequalities between men which were supposed to be the worst feature of Capitalism and to establish a basis of equality between all workers. You remember the words, the words that have been emblazoned in every textbook on Communism: "From each, according to his capacity; to each, according to his needs." That has been the ideal held before the whole world as the principal object of Communism and the thing that they are trying to achieve in Russia today.

The truth is that under Russian Communism there are greater inequalities than in any other country in the world. On the one hand there is filth and utterly indescribable squalor, such as I had not believed could still exist amongst human beings. Men and women who work ten, twelve and fourteen hours a day in the workers' Paradise, scarcely able to keep body and soul together. But, in Moscow and in the larger cities, the Commissars, the heads of factories, the propaganda writers, those chosen few, and the professors and literary men generally, drive in Rolls-Royces, Lincolns, Cadillacs and Packards and receive salaries in excess, in some cases, of $100,000 a year.

It is not for me to decry the salaries they receive. I merely say it is a strange picture, this picture of equality among workers, where those whom Communism has lifted to the top receive salaries greatly in excess of most obtainable in a Capitalist state, beside filth, squalor and poverty such as hardly exists anywhere else in the world.

Take the most recent example. The new Parliament of Russia, which adjourned last night amid celebrations and parades past the wax figure in front of the Kremlin, voted the sum of $60,000 a year to President Kalinin, the nominal head of this impoverished Soviet Government. Not only did they vote $60,000 a year to Kalinin, but they voted the same sum to Premier Molotov, and it should, of course, be remembered that both these men are mere office boys to Comrade Stalin.

Another primary objective of Communism was to end the days of political imprisonment which was one of the very just complaints against the Czar's regime. But today the situation in Russia is worse than it ever was under any Czar in that respect. Practically all of the great construction works which are described and pictured in the press of the rest of the world are carried out by prison labour and by prison labour alone. The long canal, for instance, joining the Volga to the Moscow River, of which I saw the formal opening last July, was constructed entirely by political prisoners, 500,000 of them being engaged at times in that work.

Compare the outcry of the Communists over incarceration of Mr. Tim Buck in Kingston Penitentiary, with their present effort to gloss over the use of millions of political prisoners in Russia today. I saw that fact denied in London by the Russian Ambassador while on my way to Russia. There is no denial of it in Moscow. I have a copy of Pravda, which is called The Truth, the Moscow government daily, in which it announced with some pride that 50,000 of these political prisoners had been freed for their good work on the Moscow-Volga Canal.

Now, if you have any doubt about the use of those political prisoners, please listen to this extremely naive official explanation that I took from an official Communist publication on the use of political prisoners on that canal

"Many of them are people who have been sentenced by court for various crimes and who, under' conditions existing outside the Soviet Union, would be languishing in prison. But the Moscow-Volga Canal from the beginning has been the means of transforming former lawbreakers into free and useful citizens participating in the development of their country." Isn't that wonderful? Glory to Comrade Stalin, glory to the Soviet Revolution, glory to the freedom of the workers which made it possible for 500,000 former law-breakers to participate in this development of the Soviet State.

Then you saw last month the announcement of the completion of 1,800 miles of railway, parallel to the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was the occasion of great celebrations. Another Soviet achievement. But did you notice that at the same time they announced the completion of those 1,800 miles, they also said that 10,000 political prisoners had been freed for their good work on that job. The remaining hundreds of thousands who were used on that long line are going on to further glories of the Soviet Revolution.

Now, we have heard a great deal about the concentration camps in Germany and we should hear a great deal more. I have seen them and they are a disgrace to any country which calls itself civilized. There is no question about that. But how often do these imported Communists, who speak at Massey Hall and elsewhere about the horrors of the concentration camps in Germany, tell us about the infinitely worse concentration camps that exist in Russia today. Please do not take my word for it. Let me quote to you the words of an extremely ardent Communist sympathizer,--or he was when he went there--Mr. Eugene Lyons, who went to Russia as the correspondent for the United Press and spent many years in Russia. These are his words

"Those who shouted hallelujahs to the Five Year Plan either were ignorant or pretended ignorance of the fact that the most extensive and most effective taskmaster and employer of labour was the police apparatus of the government. Its concentration camp near Moscow alone--one of several along the trek of the Moscow-Volga Canal under construction--contains more prisoners than all of Hitler's concentration camps put together."

That is true. I have seen that camp. It is a ghastly sight.

Then, you read the stories of the great constructions being undertaken at Magnitojorsk and other industrial centres under American and English engineers. Don't take my word in regard to this either. Let me give the words of Mr. William Henry Chamberlain, of the Christian Science Monitor. These are his words, not mine

"I could testify from personal observation that tens of thousands of such prisoners, mostly exiled peasants who had been guilty of no criminal offence, were employed at compulsory labour at such places as Magnitojorsk, Cheliabinsk and Berezniki."

It is not only the cruelty of the conditions in Russia that is of concern to us but it is, it seems to me, the contemptible hypocrisy of those who would seek to convince Canadian workmen that the vast enterprises which are being undertaken in Russia represent an ideal adjustment of labour conditions which should be imitated here.

Let me again give you the words of Eugene Lyons, summing up the situation as it really is today in his wonderful book-"Assignment in Utopia." This is what he says

"I simply question the revolutionary pretensions of a society which counts its prisoners by the million, subjects them to hideously inhumane conditions, then seeks to fool the world into accepting this monstrosity as an educational institution. I question the building of Socialism by slaves. I question the unprecedented hypocrisy that would rally the noblest instincts of the outside world, the soaring hopes inspired by the Russian Revolution, in blind support of human depredation and organized sadism."

I saw at this concentration camp outside of Moscow, along the Volga Canal, thousands of men living under conditions which, if they had been repeated here for animals would have led to conviction and severe punishment for those responsible. I have seen the poverty, the utter, hopeless poverty of the peasant masses of Russia. I have seen, on the other hand, the opportunity that is provided for luxury and comfort to the chosen few of the Party officials who are the hosts of those Communists like Tim Buck, Stewart Smith, Salsberg and others who go over there as guests of the Communist Government and come back and tell us all about it.

Whether Stalin continues to rule Russia or not is perhaps to us in Canada a matter of comparatively little concern. What is of importance is that Communist Russia, which is pictured to our workmen here as a sort of Valhalla, has failed hopelessly to fulfill its ideals. It is a nation of privilege to the few, in which that privilege is enforced by firing squads without trial. Mark this. Less than one and one-half per cent of the people living in Russia are members of the Communist Party, and yet it is only members of that very small minority who may be members of Parliament or may occupy any of the senior positions in government or industry throughout Russia. Yet their Canadian hirelings talk of their new freedom and democracy.

The question naturally arises in one's mind, how is it that members of some parties touring Russia do not see these things and come back and tell an entirely different story? Well, here is one of those enlightening breaks in the clouds that one sees from time to time. Let me read from a letter from Mr. M. Popovich of Winnipeg to Mr. Tim Buck of Toronto, reporting to him as Leader of the Communist Party of Canada

"We have selected Comrade Navis as leader of the delegation. The names of several were considered and finally all agreed that John must go. He was abroad and knows the ways to go by. He can talk to the delegates on their way to U.S.S.R. and prepare them psychologically for the visit. He can give them the proper interpretation of everything they will see there. We want the delegates to come back with an unanimous opinion about the achievements in U.S.S.R. and we don't take any chances. That is why we have unanimously agreed to let John go with the delegation."

Good old John!

And now with this summary of Communism in Russia, and a very brief one it is, let me give you something of the history of Communism in Canada. In 1919 three men came from Russia with $60,000.00 in Russian gold and instructions to establish Communism in Canada and the United States. One of these was a Russian named Freina; another was a Japanese named Katayama; and the third was a Latvian named Jensen who was particularly assigned to work in Canada. He later changed his name and remained here as Mr. Scott. He worked in close association with Jack MacDonald, then Leader, of the Communists, and Tim Buck, and by May, 1921, they had organized sufficient Communist units to call a Convention at which the Communist Party of Canada was formally organized and became officially a member of the Communist International. By resolution the objectives of the Canadian Party were stated. They were these

"The Constitutent Convention is the organization of the Canadian Working class into the Communist Party of Canada, section of the Communist International, with a programme of mass action as the vital form of proletarian activity, armed insurrection, civil war, as the decisive, final form of mass action for the destruction of the Capitalistic state."

There you have it, Gentlemen. The words are clear. From the outset their purpose has been identical with the Communists in Russia. They are a part of the Russian organization. They are financed and directed from Moscow. They always have been. When Jack MacDonald, who was ardent enough to get jailed several times in Canada, but was not ardent enough for Moscow, refused to resort to violence in 1930, they cracked the whip and Comrade Heckert of the Communist International in Moscow, sent this cable to Tim Buck:

"Place before MacDonald demand that he as member of Party and C.C. must openly admit and immediately abandon right opportunist position, unconditionally agree to carry on resolute struggle in deed against all right elements in party, against Lovestonites as well as Trotskyites, unconditionally accept Communist International and Party line and discipline informing him failing to accept these conditions of the Tenth Executive Council of Communist International Plenum means expulsion from the Party STOP In case he does not comply with this demand C.C. should take action publishing statement of his position."

MacDonald did not comply. He was expelled from the Communist Party and on instructions from Moscow, Mr. Tim Buck, the present Leader, was appointed.

Then, on November 12, 1931, he was convicted with seven others under the Criminal Code and sentenced to five year's in Kingston Penitentiary. In August, 1933, he was convicted of participating in the serious riots at Kingston Penitentiary and sentenced to a further nine months. He did not complete either sentence. You will remember that following a highly emotional and wellorganized campaign at that time, he was released on ticket of leave on November 24, 1934.

He then ran as a Communist candidate in Winnipeg North, in the Dominion Elections of 1935 and received 7,418 votes. He next turned to municipal politics in Toronto as an apparently brighter field. In January, 1936, he ran for Controller and received 20,873 votes. A year later, running for the same office, he received 31,304 votes, and a month ago, 44,159 votes.

His progress, and I am describing it not because Tim Buck is so important but because he is the Leader of the Communist Party in Canada, may be best epitomized, I think, in the closing words of a very pithy letter, written from Communist headquarters here in Toronto to the Communist office in Montreal, on May 2, 1931,

"The demonstration in Toronto yesterday was good. Four police were beaten up and one had to go to the hospital, so you see things are picking up."

And things are picking up for Tim Buck.

So much for the brief history of Communism in Canada, as exemplified by the Party and Tim Buck as its leader. It is quite obvious that there are a lot of people who have no sympathy whatever with communism who are prepared to support Communists at the present time. The remark is often heard that it was a great mistake to prosecute Tim Buck in 1931, and that his conviction and imprisonment in Kingston penitentiary only aroused sympathy in his favour. All those who use that argument appear to be under the impression that Buck was convicted merely because of the fact that he was a Communist. He has been extremely careful, as you know, to spread that impression himself. That is of course quite untrue. These men were convicted by a jury of Canadian workmen, on conclusive proof that they were members of an organization that was actively working to bring about a change of the government of Canada by the use of arms, force and violence. Whether you think they could succeed is not the point. The jury found that to be their purpose. Tim Buck, in the box giving evidence under oath, himself admitted that this was his idea of the Revolution for which they were working. These are the exact words

"Part of the population imposes its will upon the other part of the population by bayonets, guns and rifles."

Fortunately we have no need here in Canada to guess what Communism is. Its aims and objectives have been clearly defined. This is what Sir William Mulock, then Chief Justice of Ontario, and still taking a happily vigorous part in Canadian affairs, had to say in the judgment of the Court of Appeal:

"The evidence proves that the Communist Party of Canada is a member of the Communist International of Russia and that instead of determining its own policies, purposes, teachings and aims, it adopted and adopts those of the Communist International, and, therefore, whatever are the policies, purposes, teachings and aims of the Communist International are also automatically those of the Communist Party of Canada.

"The Communist International has by its Theses and Statutes declared what are its policies, purposes, teachings and aims, and, therefore, an examination of those Theses and Statutes will enable us to determine also those of the Communist Party of Canada.

"According to the evidence of the accused Timothy Buck, large numbers of Communists in Canada, in the fall of 1920, secured copies of those Theses and Statutes and in 1921 several groups of Communists held a conference in Canada and formed an association called the Communist Party of Canada. Buck testified that the Communist Party of Canada was a section of the Communist International, and that from the year 1924 onward the above-mentioned Theses and Statutes became binding upon the Communist Party of Canada."

Then it was proved by Buck's evidence and that of others that the guiding rules of the Communist Party of Canada are what they call the Theses and Statutes of the Communist Party. Now, just a few extracts from these will indicate what the Communists in Canada are working for:

"The working class cannot achieve a victory over the bourgeoisie by means of the general strike alone, and by the policy of folded arms. The proletariat must resort to an armed uprising."

Then let us look at the instructions given to Communists who are seeking public office. Some people point out that after all Mr. Smith, Mr. Salsberg, Mr. Buck and others are seeking ordinary democratic office, and we even have the Toronto Daily Star supporting Mr. Smith in his candidacy for Alderman. We find that the instructions are as follows

"The Communist Party enters such institutions not for the purpose of organization work but in order to direct the masses, to blow up the whole bourgeois machinery and the parliament itself from within."

Whether or not they can achieve it, that is their purpose. There is no doubt at any point in the Theses and Statutes that armed uprising is the ultimate objective and that any pretense at conforming with existing institutions is only for the purpose of working more effectively for the destruction of Democracy. It is also quite clear that there is no such thing as a separate form of Canadian Communism but that it is part of the Moscow organization. Let us take this as an example

"The Communist International makes its aims to put up an armed struggle for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and to create an international Soviet Republic as a transition state to the complete abolition of the state. The Communist International considers the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only means for the liberation of humanity from the horrors of Capitalism . . . . It is especially to carry on unlawful work in the army, the navy, and the police."

Communists in Canada are also instructed that they must work for the breakup of the British Empire. They were given specific instructions and the first report to the Canadian Government, as far back as 1920, stated that in Quebec the Communists were to aim particularly at stirring up strife between English and French-speaking Canadians, with the ultimate purpose of weakening the British Empire. These words are part of the instructions in regard to the Empire

"It must establish relations with those revolutionary forces that are working for the overthrow of Imperialism."

Where do the farmers come into the picture of Communism? This is what the Theses and Statutes say:

"The landed peasants or farmers are capitalists in agriculture, usually managing their lands with several hired labourers . . this is the most numerous element of the bourgeois class and the decided enemy of the revolutionary proletariat . . . and, together with the overthrow of the capitalists in industry, the proletariat must deal a relentless, crushing blow to this class."

That is where the farmers come into the picture. No details are overlooked. They have even given instructions as to how to throw stones. Here are the exact words

"It is not enough to pick up a stone and throw it, but it is important that the stone should hit the target, and not merely hit its target but that some effect should be seen from that blow. But so long as our comrades don't ago through any training in throwing stones, they naturally throw stones more for the moral effect. But if, meanwhile, members of proletarian self-defence organizations systematically train themselves in throwing stones, and set themselves the aim, let us say, of each evening, when they finish work, and each morning, instead of going through gymnastic exercises, throwing stones at a target twenty-five paces away, we can say beforehand that in two weeks the results of such a training on any attack would be quite different."

Can't you picture them throwing stones in the evening to the music of the radio? There have been a lot of stones thrown on the North American Continent in the last few months. Perhaps the instructions have been carried out.

In case anyone may suggest that these Theses and Statutes are not binding upon the Communist Party of Canada and that it has no such bloodthirsty motives, let me quote from the programme of the Communist Party of Canada itself

"The revolutionary epoch which we have now entered forces upon the proletariat the application of militant methods, namely mass action, which leads to direct collision with the bourgeois state, developing into armed insurrection and civil war."

"Mass action consists of mass demonstrations and mass strikes."

"As these strikes grow in number and intensity they acquire political character by coming into collision and open combat with the Capitalistic State which openly employs all its machinery to break the strikes and crush the workers' organizations. This culminates in armed insurrection and civil war aimed directly at the destruction of the Capitalistic State and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship."

We see all the way through strong emphasis on the importance of strikes. However, Communists indignantly deny their, part in these disturbances. Last summer when it was suggested that they had taken an active part in certain strikes it was most vigorously denied and by none more emphatically than Mr. Tim Buck.

I would, therefore, ask those who accept Mr. Buck's words and who vote for this mild-mannered little man to listen to what the same man said in Moscow, when he was appearing on one of his regular visits to the Communist Committee in Moscow. He gave a speech on the work they were doing in stirring up strikes in Canada and these are his exact words

"The political line of our Party is to utilize this tendency of radicalization by adopting a policy of developing demands and initiating movements in different industries. All the characteristics of the third period are manifested today quite sharply. On account of the position of the Canadian working class it is necessary to develop demands in advance, rather than wait for sporadic outbreaks. Spontaneous strikes do not generally assume the proportions or the possibilities that the spontaneous strikes in the United States do, because of the difference in the size of the centres and industrial concerns. The political value of these strikes therefore tends to be less, unless we ourselves can prepare them in certain industries. The result is that we have adopted a policy of developing demands in many industries and on this basis sharpening relations and developing strike movements."

I ask you to remember Tim Buck's own statement to his lords and masters in Moscow, that the Communist party of Canada has "adopted a policy of developing demands in many industries and on this basis sharpening relations and developing strike movements."

The danger is not so much that the Communists may seize power in Canada. It is that they may become a sufficiently powerful minority to make their destructive influence felt, that they may lead to disturbances such as are creating chaos in France today. If it can there, it can happen here.

Let us remember that the last thing Communists want is industrial peace or the security of our workers. I have given you evidence that their purpose is to cause disturbance and unrest so that Communism may be accepted as the terrible alternative. That is the only way they can survive. We should all strive to remove the causes of industrial unrest and of these Communism is certainly not the least important.

Gentlemen, that is my case. I leave it to you to draw your conclusions. You are the jury-you and other Canadians who face these facts. I have given you a brief summary of what Communism is in Russia today, the history of Communism in Canada, and what Tim Buck and other Communists stand for. In the face of their efforts to destroy religion and to destroy the things which we hold dear, shall we stand idle although their numbers may be small? Don't forget that only one and one-half percent of the Russian people have it within their power to rule the whole of Russia today. Gentlemen,--in the face of these incontrovertible facts, do we want Communism here in Canada?

There are wrongs to be righted-many of them. There are inequalities which must be removed. We are going through one of those vast industrial and economic adjustments such as have shaken society from time to time in the past. But with faith and courage and good will we can solve those problems and assure the welfare of all our people under British democratic institutions. The flag that this Club honours stands for freedom. We don't need to be taught freedom from other countries. It stands for equality of opportunity for all. It stands for everything that is best in life today. Let us hold it high.

But British tolerance, I suggest, does not demand that we extend the protection of that flag to those who seek only to destroy. They have their own flag. Let them follow it if they choose, but let us say in terms which they will understand that the hammer and sickle on a red background has no place in Canada today.

(Applause-prolonged.)