Star-Phoenix from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada • 9

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t.4ur. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1947 A SORT OF A KIND OF WAY HAMBURC. IN' RUINS Can Fires Be Prevented? A City of Desperation The dt.vicc of czopcocal Irad one fmm Of dncFxr uiOold tOnfifnd.buT 1uh4TV.fr on prtttnT iwulttlblcr fftl would dipcnd SO inf tuh.it rv Jf-VJive vs i.j Copyright In All Countrirs. ulate conditions in private houses as in public buildings and hotels. In these days of over-crowded housing, more attention should be given to safeguards desirable in private dwellings.

Proprietors of rooming houses and apartment blocks, householders who rent rooms and the tenants who occupy them would do well to consider what ought to be done in case of fire. What is needed, in addition to intelligent handling of inflammable materials and the elimination erf fire hazards, is some form of fire drill in many crowded premises. In the Prince Albert orphanage fire, one thing that stands out in high commendation for those in charge, is the way in which the children behaved with admirable orderliness and 129 were saved. There is a great deal of forethought and training in that fact, and it is the only thing that limited the dimensions of the disaster. Those who escape from a burning building, in most cases escape before even the most prompt fire department is able to be on the scene.

So it is the individual who saves himself and others in many such cases. Does every person know how to turn in a fire alarm? This involves not only summoning the fire department, but also rousing others in danger from a fire. The question of how to evacuate people from a building is often a special problem depending on the building itself. In the case of basement suites, exits are sometimes more difficult to arrange than in suites on other floors. A little over a year ago, the fire department warned that some blocks in Saskatoon were fire traps.

The danger is more acute where a building is not centrally heated but where each room or suite of rooms has its own heating equipment. In some instances, the dangers pointed out then still exist. The danger in buildings which have been converted to multiple tenancies is often increased by the use of a variety of heaters and cook stoves. The correction of these risks, now that the housing shortage is being overcome and will likely be less severe in the months to come, is a responsibility of the city council, working through its fire officials. We would like to see the situation about which warning was given a year ago, looked into again and if fire prevention enforcement can be improved, the citizens of Saskatoon, we think, will demand it.

This English Winter Special url'ts(MUuir nrr Hamburg is a I worker and 1 1 city no loneer on the verge that thev could to buv of destitution. The edge of end --hoes if there were shoes to buv l.ed existence has already crum In theory, a recommendation tlv bled, and only the bitter cold a school teacher entitles a parent the apathy of being half-hungry to apply for coupons to bin always, and a kind of human shoes for a child hut it may nisery which is beyond the weeks or months In-foie the thought of revolt prevent out shoes can actually he obtained, breaks of despairing violence. I In these weeks tiie children go No di ibt military precautions barefoot. have been taken to suppress any 1 In a neighboring hut I found trouble that nil arise, and three more children, a little box, which may not long be prevent jaNo without shoes or stocking-, ed, hut the causes of unrest can a girl in paper-thin summer not he overcome by armed force shoes, and a sick baby, ubou They are intrinsic in an occupa-1 four mon'hs old, lying white and tinn policy that has denied to still in a basket covered with this once great city all reason rags. It will be a miracle if this for existence; they are made un child survives the weather, endurably hitter hv the savage' This camp at Hammerbrook is had, but it is not much worse than the streets of Nissen huts in which better-organized communities are housed; and it Is probably better than conditions to he found in independently patchedup dwellings among Hamburgs square miles of rubble.

In some of the Nissen huts, without fuel at the new year, the temperature inside was 8 degrees centigrade below zero (17 degrees above zero Fahrenheit). In one street of Nissen huts yesterday, along the Winterhuder Quay, I found families living in what, to them, was luxury. Conditions there had been so bad that someone found for them a hundredweight of brickettes for each family. This was the first coal they hud had since November, and no one dared to think how long it would have to last. PIE German Social Welfare A I 1 ration of Hamburg's City Government, which is supposed to Inspect and bring about improvements In living conditions, has a hopeless task.

For one thing, the department is virtually without cars for any of Its inspectors. They had some cars, but most of these are broken down and off the road, and they are waiting for a promised consignment of Volkswagens which has not yet arrived. Furthermore, much of the situation is beyond official handling. I heard an official of the Social Welfare Administration tell a woman how to apply for shoes for her shoeless children. She heard him in obvious disbelief.

Her children needed shoes then and there. It was no comfort to he told how she could apply for forms to fill in. On top of all this misery has come the abject wretchedness of hours of enforced darkness from the cutting off of electric light. Many British homes and messes in this city have no light until past 9 oclock at night. It is bad enough to sit in darkness, well fed and in a comfortably furnished room; it is the lot of Hamburg to shiver in darkness in a bare unheated hut.

(Star-Phornlx Overaraa Service) ONLY THE FIT CAN SURVIVE The Free Prena iLonrtnni The Canadian climate makes hardy people, says scientist. cold, by the calamitous lack of fuel, and by the hopeless shortage of dwelling space for the German population. It is hard to convey in or dered sentences the disorder and grotesque confusion of a community whose whole fabric oi existence no longer holds together. In a way, it is logical here to see chickens better housed than men and this lit erally one has seen. A chicken is of enormous value to its owner, worthy of all the care that can be contrived.

A man and his children must fend in an icy world for themselves. IN THE Hammerbrook quarter 1 a community of Hamburg families have made homes for themselves in a derelict camp, originally for prisoners of war. The prisoners were freed and with them went the military discipline that kept the camp in repair. Now the huts are falling to pieces, hut the people who live there have nowhere else to go. These families are not vagabonds.

They are respectable working families typical of the men among them are a railwayman and former shipwright from the Blohm and Voss yards. The boards of their huts are so rotten that, one can see daylight through the walls and this means free entry for the bitter winds of a North German winter. Outside one of these huts I saw two children walking about barefoot over the snow-covered ground. One of them was aged about seven, the other said he was ten, but It Is impossible to guess the real age of a child peaked with cold. Inside the hut I found their mother, with her seven other children, ail with ragged clothes more or less falling off them.

The two completely shoeless children possessed neither shoes nor stockings. The mother was in despair. "What can we do? she said. "The children cannot go to school. They have no shoes.

The fact of her children not being able to go to school worried her almost as much as the fact that they had no shoes. THE children were clean, as far as it was possible for them to he clean, and obedient. By FRANK WALKER happily of central heating and warm bathrooms; of street cars with heaters in them and draft-proof cars; of storm windows and overshoes. The westerner plowing to work may consider himself somewhat rugged, but has nothing on the Englishman, who might well be living in the open air for all the good his house does him. Thursday morning, as if the weather were not enough, electricity was suddenly cut at 7.30, just when housewives in thousands of homes were busy cooking breakfast, fro there wasn't any breakfast.

Then in the afternoon, after prolonged efforts had made one room comparatively warm in this correspondents home, the I C'NDON. For the past week, b- this homesick Canadian has had winter real winter, western style on his doorstep. Temperatures have dropped below freezing inside and outside the house. A chilly wind off the Russian steppes has whistled and whined its way into every nook and cranny. Snow has fallen and piled into drifts anywhere from seven to 20 feet high.

Makes yer feel at home, I suppose, said the charlady. Just like Canada, eh? said the apartment block porter, who has a cousin in the Dominion. Well, you should like it, said a clippie (girl ticket-collector on the bus). All of which was fighting talk to a Canadian who had dreamed The tragic fire on Saturday morning at St. Patricks Orphanage in Prince Albert, which took seven lives and destroyed the building, will serve to underline the urgency of reform in fire prevention work in Saskatchewan.

The Barry Hotel fire in Saskatoon on December 8, which caused eleven deaths, brought the lesson home forcibly to the people of Saskatoon that a far more energetic educational campaign in handling inflammable materials and more extensive community co-operation in safeguards against fire will be needed if disasters of this kind are to be avoided. The Barry Hotel fire brought Saskatoon continent-wide notoriety, following as it did a great hotel fire tragedy in Atlanta, Ga. It would be possible, by energetic attention to fire prevention problems, to secure for Saskatoon and for Saskatchewan as a whole a different kind of notoriety, the kind of fame that comes from a low loss rate in lives and property from fire. Can we best the menace of fire? The Saskatchewan legislature, as the speech from the throne has disclosed, will consider revision of The Fire Prevention Act this year. The speech said merely: Amendments to The Fire Prevention Act will be placed before you, in order that every effort may be made to avert the tragedies which annually take a heavy toll of life and property in Saskatchewan.

The Prince Albert orphanage fire will be something less of the terrible tragedy that it is, if it inspires the kind of vigorous action that is required. The menace of fire cannot be conquered by legislation alone. What is needed is a greater measure of public information and public awareness of fire hazards, so that every individual will be encouraged to recognize a fire hazard when he sees it. Saskatoon city officials have given warnings and advice about fire hazards. The press and the radio have reported them.

The city council is engaged in an investigation. The duties of the fire marshal and the fire chief are being re-examined. The responsibility for the enforcement of regulations cannot be evaded. But there are limitations on the authority of public officials which can be remedied only by the individual assumjpg some responsibility. The fire department, for instance, does not have the same authority to inspect and reg- Cold, Did You Say? I.

The weatherman has gone completely off his rocker. Snow and hurricane in Vancouver; sleet and ice in southern Ontario; tornadoes and blizzards in the United States; an unprecedented eight-day freeze in Britain; and in Saskatoon the finish of Bonspiel Week and a blizzard at the same time. Its altogether unthinkable. But we have it and we can feel it. The warm Pacific air mass which daily wrestles with that cold Arctic air mass in the weather column of the newspapers certainly was thrown for a loss this week.

Mr. Arctic is champion this week and has apparently brought along all his friends and relatives to help celebrate the victory. Nothing less tamld explain the 82 degrees below zero registered at one northern outpost, or the feel of the wind as it knifes down as you wait for one of Mr. Archibalds trams on a breezy corner. Cold, did you say? Canadian Coal COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE window cleaner arrived during a short absence, threw open the windows and proceeded to clean them.

The resultant stampede to the electric fire resulted in a pair of singed pants for one small boy and coupons are none too plentiful. OUT life in London is pleasant compared to the unfortunates living in the country. Villagers In Bredhurst, a small hamlet In Kent, have had no supplies since Saturday. Now the vicar has organized a snowtdearlng party to dig out the population. Further south, near Dover, the Straits were swept by Arctic blizzards.

Farm work Is at a standstill everywhere. To add to the Englishmans troubles, there is a shortage of plumbers and plumbers are highly Important people during a cold spell in a country where nearly all the pipes run up outside the houses. The weather forecast is for more snow, more frost and more wind. Now the sun has just appeared. He might as well go back under the clouds for all the good he is doing.

Canadians who think they are hard done by in January should try winter English style. (Stur-Phornix London Srrvlr) OSS OE MtESTIGK The Dally Mail A fish frier who wanted a Rolls Royce to carry guests at his daughters wedding at fashionable St. Anns Church was awarded five guineas damages as compensation for his loss of prestige when inferior cars were supplied. The Saskatoon Art Centre rPUESDAY evening an auction of paintings, sculpture and camera studies is being held at the Legion Hall, the proceeds to go to the Saskatoon Art Centre. The sale has two objects: to meet current expenditures at the centre and, more important, to arouse interest in the centre and its activities.

The Saskatoon Art I Centre was opened in May, 1944. It operates on a SI, 500 grant 1 from the city, on membership fees and on admission collections. There has, however, been a yearly deficit, and each year this deficit has been made up by the member artists through donations of pictures for public sale. The artists have undoubtedly benefited from tjie establishment of the centre, but they have given more than thejj have rereived. The advantages of the centre as a community enterprise have been many and far-reaching.

Its most obvious public service has Their father was a railway 1 Naturally, the other kind die off I John Grierson Films increase the cost of doing business in Canada. The commission has argued that the tariff on coal for Ontario and Quebec is justified because of "the advantages accruing to Ontario and Quebec under Canadas fiscal policy. But two tariffs are no more right than two wrongs. The commissioners emphatically turned down proposals to nationalize the mines. One commissioner remarked: An unsound industry cannot survive indefinitely, and nationalization provides no magic lamp.

One is tempted to add that there is no magic, either, in tariffs and subventions. There is, of course, a solution to the problem presented by Canadas coal mines. It is to build up industry and consuming power in the areas where the coal is found. We think the whole country will be happier when this solution is tried. City Hall Plans One notes with interest the announcement that Saskatoons new city hall has reached the blueprint stage, the building, so goes the report, is to be 300 feet by 80 feet, will include offices for the school boards and the Board of Trade.

This is an interesting development since we have not yet noticed any final decision on where the city hall is to be located. Apparently someone has a site in mind, or the dimensions of the building could scarcely be so definitely fixed. We recall that the town planning commission of which Mr. C. J.

MacKenzie, now head of the National Research Council of Canada, was chairman had mapped out a broad plan for the development of a civic centre based on the present City Hall Square. To what extent the city planners tied the general plan for Saskatoons development to the location of the civic centre we dont know. But this would seem like a good time to dust off the earlier plans and find out just what that committee had in mind. Editorial Notes Do the girls who take part in those radio horror thrillers have to take a scream test? been the number and range' of exhibitions which have been displayed in the gallery. During its nearly three years of operation approximately 50 shows have been hung.

Through these the public has been given an opportunity to become familiar wit'i the work of local. Western Canadian and Canadian artists. Some British exhibits have been displayed, one of which included rare pictures by three old masters. A few American shows have been received and one Chinese. Because of the existence of the centre Lawren Harris, president of the Federation of Canadian Artists and one of Canadas great painters, paid a three-day visit to the city; because of tiie centre a young Chinese artist visited Saskatoon bringing with her a magnificent display of Chinese art.

Other tangible evidences of public service have been the children Saturday morning art classes, demonstrations by recognized g'tists and lectures on different branches ot visual art. The encouragement hich the centre has given to art) in Saskatchewan, however, bis been one of its most essrntiU functions although the value of it is not easy to estimate Art thrives on public interest and 1st killed by indifference. Many brtists have been able to have shiiws of their work for the firstuime, gaining a certain recognition. The first Province-wide exhibition was arranged by, and held at, tfte centre last spring, A few promising artists have been developed, at least Indirectly, by the centre, and many persons have been stimulated to take up sketching and painting for their own pleasure. One might almost say that there Is such a thing as Saskatchewan, art now.

All this has been of greater value to the city than to the artists. Artists can live anywhere, hut the citizens cannot live a full life without art. Finally, and perhaps most Important of all, when the art centre was established it was regarded as a nucleus for a future community centre for the arts. Such a community centre would provide an outlet for a wide variety of interests and It would enrich the life of the city immeasurably. A.

J. Trotter, chairman of the auction committee, helped to raise thp money for the Arena not, he says, for a few hockey players but for the thousands who enjoy hockey games and carnivals and for the thousands who like to skate, He regarded the Arena as a means of helping Saskatonlans to pass the long winter months more agreeably. The art centre, he believes, should he regarded in the same manner, While it is small now, It can, with public support, be developed into a hive of activity. The financial success of this auction will fix up the centres balamc sheet lor this year. But the centre Is not an artists project.

It Is a community project and It. rie-erves support fiom the uty and from IndMduals. J. $. THE extent to which films of the National Film Board of Canada have shaped and nourished the new concepts of Cana-dianism is not understood widely, Some of the fire of nationalism which courses in Canadian veins was put there by John Grierson, former film commissioner.

A hook published in Eng-, land Grierson on Documentary gives the full story for the fuM time. I do not know whether it is now published in Canada, hut it would lie of great interest to Canadian readers. It covers more than the Canadian chapter in the career of a creative film producer who worked in Canada for almost six recent years. It is a tiook about the documentary film, which has become familiar to millions of people who find In It a screen document of life to contrast with the romantic fare offered by Hollywood. That Grierson came to Canada at ail seems to have been largely pure chance, That he did so proved to he one of the most fortunate accidents of the Canadian war elfort, The National Film Board became one of the most valuable munitions factories of the war against the Axis nations.

'I hat It worked in ideas, that its functioning was psychological, made it none the less Important in a military sense That It incldentaly played a vital part In placing the Canadian war effort, the dimensions of our struggle and the role of this nation in a world at war and its potentialities in the new order of affairs that would follow the war, before the Canadian people and before millions of Americans, British and other peoples, is something that no historian of the rise of Canada can affoid to overlook. THE field in whit Grierson was working before the war could be described loosely as "imperial relations, as long as It is remembered that tills meant that in many of the films ho was producing In England he was exploiting the new concept of the British Commonwealth a tin successor to old concepts of By B. T. RICHARDSON the British Empire. I first met him in 1931 when lie was head of the film unit of the General Rost Office in Britain.

The GIO film unit was in Soho Square and it was Miss Evelyn Spice of York-ton, one of the first Canadians to work with Grierson, who introduced me. Grierson had worked tor the Empire Marketing Board, where he launched the documentary film as a medium of education and persuasion. He was a graduate of Glasgow University and had held a Rockefeller Research fellowship for three years in the United States, studying press, films and other agencies of public opinion Precisely how he happened to he invited to heroine film commissioner in Ottawa is not a matter of record, but Ross McLean, the present commissioner, certainly had much to do with it. Later the Canadian war films could not have developed as they did if it had not been for the understanding and support of influential persons in Ottawa, not of one party alone and Including the prune minister, Mr. King.

Grierson on Documentary Is published by Collins, London. It is a collection of Grierson's writings, edited by Fortyih Hardy. It Is alter all, a hook ot ideas. But they arc tiie ideas that aetivated the most prnduc live era of our national history, productive in both the economic sense and in the spiritual sense. Grierson rlul little actual producing of films himself In Canada.

Hal Iter he devoted his energies to building up the film hoard and lie drew to Ottawa former associates from abroad and new disciples from Canada The board produced two or three hundred films a year, and ns largest audience was found in the schools and factories ami groups who gathered where Griersons travelling projectionists set up their equipment, The two main projects were the Canada Carries On series and the World In Act Ion series, each issued once a month. The iter was circulated In 7,000 theatres In Canada, the UK. A. and Britain. The fdin board was not only an a-scmbly line.

It V1 became a laboratory of film treat-treatment for ideas with which the screen had not dealt before. Grierson attracted to the film board a crew of helpers as motley as the compulsive ideas which he undertook to deal with on the sci een. For a brief period, one of them was this writer, at the time when the film board was seeking to reduce the abstractions of economic warfare to workaday meaning for those who could not escape its impact. PREVENT wars, we must make peace exciting. Tills is one of the central principles of Grierson, as ho says, as a propagandist, "Simple notion ns it is, ho wrote, that has been my propaganda ever since to make peace exciting.

In that Idea one may see the opportunity which Canada can exploit, by continuing the National Film Board in the peace years and maintaining the Grierson tradition in it. One thing that Grierson did was to leave In Ottawa a substantial nucleus of younger people trained in his methods and ins inspiration. It would he a pity if Canadian ollicial films lapsed into the negative, anaemic, one-dimension things they were helot Grierson hit Ottawa. The film can it ill perform a vital to Canada. I hoped, wrote Oriersoii, that we could use the film to give visual ngniticance to the words of the (.

an.ulian Prime Minister when lie said that the spirit of mutual toler-atiee and respect for fundamental rights are the foundation of national unity in Canada." The hook is full of Grierson's views and criticisms of the movies for the general reader, a -ado front its paitteular appeal to a Canadian. He has not left Canada so much as he has moved into the wider field of interna tlonal aflairs of winch Canada is a part, lie has formed International Film Associates, with a producing organization called The World Today in New York. Its aim is 40 films for International circulation. Peace is International: It is bound to be exciting in the Guerdon films Hill to come Pastures Grow Good Beef Rv P. W.

Dempson In Saturday Night Like other sections of Canada, the prairies are doing their share to help feed the hungry people in Europe. From 77 community pastures established in Saskatchewan and Manitoba by the Dominion government, thousands of fat cattle have been shipped overseas. These cattle, not so many weeks ago, were grazing contentedly on these great grasslands. Then for over a month last fall roundups were conducted with much of the color of the old West. Cowboys rode the range from morn till night, roping and bulldogging.

About 80,000 head of livestock were returned to their owners. It is many of these that have since been sold to the European market. While all this may seem like something out of the West's past, it is really an idea born of the present the realization that much land once sought for the plow is fit only for grazing purposes. Community pastures were organized in the dust-blown days of 1937-38, under provisions of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Art. At first farmers were suspicious of efforts to take their sub-marginal lands tagged as such because they were found unsuitable for grain growing-out of cereal production.

Now they are largely enthusiastic. From a small beginning of 10 pastures in 1938 comprising about 100,000 acres, the 70 pastures in Saskatchewan and seven In Manitoba today cover a total of 1,000,000 acres. These range in size from 6,300 to 155,000 acres. FROM TIIE BIBLE Rut Thmt art a Cod ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and fnrsonkest them not. Ncheinlah 9.17, Neither subsidies, subventions, nor tariffs will permanently solve the problems of Canadas coal mines.

At best, these are palliatives which may keep the mines going and the miners working for a time. But they do not solve anything and they are liable to many abuses. Yet this is the only solution which the royal commission on coal has offered after months of study of the industry. The most seriously depressed coal area is in Nova Scotia. The reason it Is depressed is that there is not enough industry in the maritimes to use its product.

Nor is there any other market within economic hauling distance of the mines. Hence the whole of Canada is asked to help pay the freight on Nova Scotia coal to a market in Quebec and Ontario. Further, the users of coal in these provinces are to continue to pay high tariffs on coal from the United States in order that the region in which other Canadian coal may be sold in a competitive basis shall be as large as possible. The coal tariff artifically raises the cost of production for many Canadian industries and the cost of living of many persons living in Ontario and Quebec. It may be a necessary and worthwhile national objective to keep Canadas coal mines in production.

If to, then it would seem the better part of wisdom to let the whole cost of maintaining the industry be met out of national funds. The "coal tariff is an indirect subsidy to the mines which serves to confuse the issue and A pastor says that married men are Mimh more out-spoken than single men. And we know by whom. An Ohio woman sued for divorce, charging her hubby liked the radio better than he did her. He could always turn the radio off I.