"COVETOUS HANDS"

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 83, 8 April 1938, Page 10

"COVETOUS HANDS"

In a broadcast warning to the people of the two Americas, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for War urges selective military service as defence against the "covetous hands" of Fascist nations, and warns all Americans to "be alert for the appearance in either of the Americas of political penetration, which is the first step in a new technique of conquest that the aggressor nations are employing." An alarm was sounded recently of alleged Fascist penetration in South America, but still more recently evidence has been adduced of Fascism in Canada—and this is the more interesting because, in his book-of-warning, "It Can't Happen Here," Sinclair Lewis pictured Canada as the refuge of democracy, from which sanctuary the United; States democrat-exiles would conduct their campaign for the reconquest of U.S.A. from usurping Fascism. Whether Fascism can happen, or can't happen, in U.S.A. and Canada, it seems to be quite certain—judging from a New York "Nation" interview, partly quoted yesterday—that M. Adrien Arcand is an established fact, that he edits a Montreal , daily called "L'lllustration Nouvelle," and owns or edits a monthly, "Le Fasciste Canadien," the name of which speaks for itself. One of the statements attributed to M. Arcand in this interview is that his Canadian Fascist party has "no international affiliations"; at the same time, "we feel anxious to be in moral solidarity with Hitler." Asked whether his organisation acted as agent in Canada or America for distribution of German-printed j material, M. Arccind is repotted as

saying: "We have received an odd bundle of leaflets from Hamburg . . . but by far the greater part of our imported propaganda comes from the Imperial Fascist League in London." To this extent "political penetration" seems to be legal and admitted. Those people who believe that the U.S. Assistant Secretary for War has discovered a mare's nest do not include M. Arcand. "In the States," he told the interviewer, "things are rapidly approaching a climax.