The CIO news. (Cumberland, Md.) 1942-????, 1942-12-21
LOOKING AHEAD
By Len De Caux


curious mixture of people as ever astonished the
natives there.
There were dapper Chinese; Hindus, Moslems
and Sikhs from India; stolid Netherlanders and
dark-skinned Indonesians from the Indies; Filipi-
nos Thailanders Koreans and Fighting Frepchmen.
Mngling with them Australians New Zea-
landers, Canadians, Englishmen and Americans, with
such differing accents and manners OF speech as to
cast doubt their common language.
The writer joined these delegates to the con-
ference of the Institute of Pacific Relations with
a certain sense of unreality about such gathering
so far from the of war; and with still more
doubts as"to what all this had to do with the CIO.
But after days and nights of close study, dis
cussion and association, all sense of unhealthy and
remoteness was displaced by feeling of the vital
urgency of the international issues that brought
together so many people from such great distances.
And the conviction grew that American labor
has very direct and immediate concern in all Of
these major problems of Pacific relations.
No news report be given on the conference
as SUCH 1t entirely unofficial and informal.
Such government officials as attended did so in a
purely personal capacity, and with the understand
ing there should be no publicity.
But what we can do is to look through CIO
eyes at some of the problems that necessarily arise
in any consideration of Pacific relations Here are
q few:
Atlantic Charter: Not only the United States
and Great Britain but the other United Nations
as we'll have subscribed to the glowing principles
of the Atlantic Charter, with its promise of freedom,
self-determination and economic opportunity for
all peoples.
The CO. by convention action has called for
application of the Atlantic Charter to all colonial
peoples, and particularly to India. 1t did so both
to mobilize the free energies of these peoples against
the Axis and to remove the imperialistic roots of
future wars.
The peoples of Asia and the Pacific look to the
United States, and especially to American labor,
to use it's great influence for the speedest and wild
est possible application of the principles of the At
lantic Charter both during the war and in the
postwar settlements. X X X
Racial Discrimination: The CLIO stand against
all forms of racial discrimination in the United
States has international as we'll as domestic i'm
plications.
Labor's demand for abolition of the poll-tax aids
Pacific unity by demonstrating American demo-
cratic sincerity at home well as abroad.
Similarly the CLIO stand against any racial dis
elimination in employment and union organization
strikes an answering chord among our Pacific al
lies For denial of union membership, as practised
by some AFL unions, and other determinations
against people of Oriental and Pacific origin legally
resident in the United States inevitably riffs
between our United Nations
1t is not hard to explain the economic reasons
for restrictions against any mass immigration of
low-wage labor. But it is impossible to explain or
excuse racial Determinations, within the United
States between the various nationals who are adj
mtted under such restrictions.
X X
that the closest bond between the peoples of the
world is the sympathy and common interest that
unite all working people.
The ties are close between United States and
Canadian labor. They are less close between North
American labor and the highly developed move
ments of New Zealand and Australia; and still
looser with the struggling labor movement of India,
with the bare beginnings of union organization in
China, and with the underground struggles of sup
InIA -.