On Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918

Resolutions on Censorship and Intervention in Russia Passed. Trades and Labor Council Upholds Its Records for Orderly Meetings.

Pursuant to a decision of the Vancouver Trades and Labor Council at the last meeting, a big mass meeting was held in the Empress Theatre on Sunday afternoon, to demand the abolition of the censorship, and to protest unequivocally against intervention in Russia. President E. Winch presided; and, as there had been some talk of an attempt being contemplated to thwart the object of the meeting, he quietly intimated, to any whom it might concern, that arrangements had been made to thwart any such situation as might arise. At the same time, he declared his inability to see from what quarter such hostility was to be expected; and as it turned out, any apprehensions on this score proved to be unnecessary. The theatre was crowded upstairs and down; the speakers were heard without interruption and enthusiastically applauded; and the resolutions condemning the censorship and intervention in Russia, were passed by loud acclamation without a dissentient voice.

E. T. Kingsley was the concluding speaker, and he handed it out in his usual inimitable style. “I have the utmost respect for the censorship,” he said. “So much so that I absolutely refuse to pay any attention to it.” No worthy cause ever had to depend on “verboten” signs to support it. It was only tyranny that had to resort to that kind of action. Of course, society could put him in jail; but that had happened to “the best men who ever walked God’s green earth.” It was an old truism that “Truth is ever on the scaffold and error on the throne.”

The speaker created some amusement by relating how the local Socialist Party some years ago had caused the censor’s office at Ottawa to be “smothered with communications,” following the ban on the “Appeal to Reason,” in consequence of an article by Debs, of which the Socialists here had reproduced 20,000 copies and scattered them broadcast. He pointed out that mail addressed “O. H. M. S.” didn’t even need a stamp; and, by the requirements of “red tape,” every letter had to be answered. As to the recent edict on popular educative literature, he said, “that edict has been absolutely defied.” The literature in question had been sold with absolute disregard of the order-in-council; and that course should meet with the approval of the workers. With regard to Russia, he declared that there had been the most artistic lying he had been acquainted with.

Mr. Kingsley referred to the project of intervention in Russia on the ground that the Bolsheviki would not pay the claims of the French capitalists, who had financed the old regime. The speaker suggested that the money-lenders should “go and chase the Czar” for their money. (Loud applause.) He was “opposed to the sacrifice of the life of even one Canadian to collect that bill.” Not a capitalist on earth ever had anything to loan that they did not first steal from the slaves. As to the vaunted wealth existing today, he declared, “There isn’t anything to it but figures. It’s what you may call ‘figurative’ wealth.” (Laughter.) The only real wealth in Russia was in the hides of the Russian slaves themselves. The only thing their ruling class had lost by the war was the firm grip they once had on the mass of slaves.

The speaker recalled the time of the Paris Commune, when over 50,000 workers were killed in the streets, while the United States and other powers stood by and smiled. Now, in Russia, they would multiply that slaughter a hundred-fold in order that the workers there should not have that kind of Democracy that seemed to them the only kind worth while. “If we are to have self-determination of nations,” he said, “we must keep our hands off.” It would have been no worse for the Germans to come here, “and make us two-step to their ‘verboten’ signs,” than it was for the Allies to do the same in Russia.

The Allied powers had formerly declared for “no annexations or indemnities;” now they were in favor of both. The only way the Germans could pay was in products, spread over an interminable period of time; if they did that, “there isn’t a plug anywhere else in the world that could find a solitary thing to do,” the speaker declared. The debts were simply “unpayable, irredeemable orders on the future.”

Concluding, he insisted that it was “none of our business what the people of Russia think proper to do about their own business.” (Applause.) “We have got to settle the self-determination of our own country—and speed the day when there is no longer a master or a slave anywhere in the world.”

The following were the resolutions carried:

1. (1) “Whereas, the censorship regulations in Canada have been so extended as to preclude the workers of this country acquiring a correct knowledge of the activities of the workers in other countries, and
2. “Whereas, a knowledge of international affairs is necessary for social progress;
3. “Therefore, be it resolved, That this mass meeting of citizens of Vancouver require the government at once to remove the censorship regulations in their entirety.”
4. (2) “Whereas, President Wilson has clearly expressed a policy respecting the self-determination of nations; and in No. 6 of his fourteen points, demands evacuation of all Russian territory and opportunity for Russia’s political development;
5. “Therefore, be it resolved, That this mass meeting of citizens of Vancouver place ourselves on record as being opposed to intervention in Siberia, or any interference in Russia’s internal affairs.”