A Kick for the Reds

The Communists got a hard kick in the pants from voters in what had long been one of Communism's Canadian strongholds. The scene was Montreal's Cartier riding, which had elected a Communist to the Dominion House of Commons the last two times it voted. In a by-election this week, to fill a vacancy left by the imprisonment of Communist and Traitor Fred Rose, a seat in the House was won by Liberal Maurice Hartt, a self-made lawyer who once sewed buttonholes for a living.

It was a resounding triumph. Running in a crowded field (six candidates in all) plump, 42-year-old Maurice Hartt ran thousands of votes ahead of both Independent Paul Masse and Communist Michael Buhay. The fact that the Liberal Party's best bilingual orators journeyed over from Ottawa for the windup of a slam-bang campaign, helped. But Winner Hartt almost surely owed his victory most of all to the electorate's change of mind about Communism. The Hartt victory also indicated approval of the Federal Government's handling of the Russian spy-ring investigations.

For the Liberal Party, the Hartt victory was desperately needed. It strengthened the thin Liberal majority in the House of Commons (now 127 seats against 117 for the combined Opposition). It also seemed to indicate a brightened party future. The Liberals, after three by-election defeats in a row, now had won two straight (in Cartier and in Riche-lieu-Vercheres last December). In Ottawa, Liberal masterminds sighed with relief.

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