Respect Through Strength

For a few hours last week, a tight feeling of crisis hung over Esquimalt naval base on Vancouver Island. Wives and sweethearts gathered for tearful farewells as the destroyers Cayuga, Athabaskan and Sioux slipped their moorings and headed into the straits bound for Pearl Harbor. The Canadian government had put them at the disposal of General Douglas MacArthur for use in the Korean war.

Across the Dominion, most people seemed stolidly unperturbed. With holiday plans or crop prospects to think about, Canadians felt far away from Korea. But there was calm agreement that the time had come at last to stop Red aggression. From the quiet reaches of New Brunswick came unusually heated words. Said the Saint John Times-Globe: "Probably a few [atom bombs] dropped now would quickly send the North Koreans back behind the 38th Parallel."

True to form, the Canadian Communists stepped up the beat on their peace drums. Stopping off to speak in Saskatoon on his way to the Calgary Stampede, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was angered by Communist pamphlets. In hot, high temper he cried: "We can't in this world expect rights to be respected merely because they are rights. We have to have strength to enforce respect. You don't get peace by talking about it."

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