LABOUR’S ROLE IN WAR AND PEACE

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 292, 8 September 1942, Page 5

LABOUR’S ROLE IN WAR AND PEACE

Work-bench Celebration

(Received September 7, 11.10 p.m.)

NEW YORK, Sept. 6.

American Labour has been celebrating Labour Day by reimaining on the job and keeping the machinery of war production humming as spokesmen emphasized Labour’s determination to win the war to preserve its freedom. The president of the American Federation of Labour, Mr. William J. Green, issued a Labour Day statement declaring that, in addition to President Roosevelt’s four freedoms, Labour Would insist upon a fifth guarantee being included in the postwar peace terms —the freedom of the workers of every land to join free and democratic trade unions of their own choice. He added, “This is Labour’s peace plank, and no force on earth can prevent us from making it a reality.” The president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Mr. Philip Murray, in a statement said, “Labour today is in a position of world importance greater than ever before in history. We call this Labour’s war, because the great basic issue is the right _ of the common people everywhere to enjoy liberty, democracy, aud the opportunity to work out their destiny as free men and women.” The Secretary for the Navy, Colonel Knox, and the Under-Secretary for War, Mr. Patterson, jointly stated, “In no other country has Labour enjoyed so full an opportunity to win the battle of production voluntarily, and without coercion.”

Messages from a dozen namesake cities in the United States to the enslaved cities of Europe will be shortwaved tomorrow bearing the greetings of free American labour. These include Athens (Pennsylvania), Amsterdam (New York), Warsaw (North Carolina), and Oslo (Minnesota). Likewise Moscow (Vermont) will send encouragement to the Russian capital, while Berlin (Pennsylvania) has assured the factory workers in Berlin (Germany): “We are not warring with the Germans. We are at war with your insane leaders, who force coalminers and machinists to work at the point of a Gestapo gun.”