ANARCHISTS IN CANADA.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 July 1919, Page 3

ANARCHISTS IN CANADA.

PLANS TO OVERTHROW GOVERN MENT, (Melbourne “Argus” Correspondent.) TORONTO, May 1. The Toronto police have arrested 1 Bolsheviks, who aro said to have plotted ! a general movement for the overthrow j of government throughout Canada. The I trio in question are Lieb Samsonovitch,, | alias Samson, Bland, and Chainie; Otto ■ Ewart, alias Ewit, believed to be a former German officer; Lita Zaborowiski, alias Annie Bancourt and Mrs Ewart. The police, city, provincial, and federal are now investigating documents and books which were in the possession of the prisoners, which are said to incrimi- | nate scores of Germans, Austrians, RusI sians,'-Jews,Englishmen and Canadians now resident in the city. The captured literature includes recent communications between the accused and certain i socialistic firebrands living in Winni- j ; peg, Kitchener, 'Hamilton, Brantford, | i Vancouver, and American cities. Sam- * sonovitch, who is well known to Toronto and American police as a dangerous incendiary, was a former student of Columbia University, having had his career terminated in the third year because of seditious utterances he made during a speech delivered by Major-General . Woods, of the United States Army, to the students of Columbia on “Preparedness.” Following his ejection, Snmsonovitch tried in vain to enter Harvard and Yale. He went to Buffalo, i and crossed the border in a motor-car I without registering, heading for St I John’s, New Brunswick, where his efforts to enter a college also met with a cold reception. Later he endeavoured to entor Toronto University, but his record prohibited such a course, and ho was ■ sent away. Determined to reach the proletariat directly, if not through the medium of a university, the young* revolutionary . held socialistic gatherings on January 19th and February 23rd in Broadway Hall, Toronto, advocating “Bloody War.” Later he addressed and tried to incite to acts of violence, a crowd of unemployed in front of the City Hall. Ho was driven away, but led his followers to the Labour Temple in Cburcli street, where the Labor union officials, police, and detectives had difficulty in dispersing the mob. The police claim that Samsonovitch has not done a day’s work since entering Canada. He seems well supplied with

money. I The papers found on Ewart show that lie came to America in 1914, and is a native German. He was employed in Toronto as a saddler at good wages, but was arrested for carelessness displayed in failing to register as an enemy alien. Among his effects were four automatic revolvers and a quantity of revolver ammunition. A number of letters bear_ i.ng German postmarks, telling of false labour conditions in Canada, and do. scribing falsely various military movements, "were found in Ewart’s possession. Prepared in Ills own handwriting was a Communistic platform advocating ‘the overthrow of all existent forms of government, the abolition of the Senate and House of Commons, the disarmament of the naval, military, and police forces, the arming of the proletariat, the looting of the plutocrats, and the division of the land among the peasantry.” Other documents prove that the supposed wife of Ewart is of German birth. She came to Canada some time ago from Detroit, and secured a position with a photographer, giving her name as Annie Bancourt.; Several photographs of Bolshevik leaders, Lenin, Trotsky, Liebkuecht, and Rosa Luxembourg, with a large quantity of Bolshevik literature were found in her possession. During the niglit of April 29t1i-30th Bolshevik agents distributed quantities of revolutionary literature throughout the industrial city of St Catherines, 80 miles from Toronto. One side of a fly-sheet 'circulated in hundreds is headed “May Day,” and declares that the time lias come not only for “demonstrations” and “defiances” to be “burled against the capitalist class, ’ but for “bold action.” The screed paints a lurid picture of social conditions. It says: “Unemployment, hunger, disease, and death stalk among the’ workers here. The capitalists are bloated with luxury, their wives dressed in silks and jewels; you are starving and your wives are in rags.” The keynote of the pamphlet is Red Revolution. “Your only hope lies in revolution, the sweeping away of this rotten svs_ tern of exploitation. You must achieve a victory over the capitalist class, so that you can celebrate May Day along with your fellow-workers in Russia.” The programme of the Communist party is printed in-full. The first acts of revolution are declared to be the forcible seizing of Government power; the complete destruction of political institutions; the abolition of the army, disarming the capitalists and.their followers (especially police officers and army officers), and substituting a fighting proletariat, to be known as the Red Guard; the abolition of tli c Law Courts; the confiscation of all banking accounts (excluding the small accounts of the workers), and the banding' over of the land of* the agricultural labourers and poor farmers. The appeal has fallen on deaf ears. May Day is marked by a few local strikes here and there, but Labour in this country is quiet and orderly in its methods. It prefers evolution to revolution.