New Face

On a lecture circuit through four Ontario cities last week, two ministers of religion preached a confusing creed. They spoke soothingly of peace, but hinted darkly of the power of Russian atom bombs. They professed faith in God, then praised the ways of Soviet Communism. One of them, the Very Rev. Hewlett Johnson, the Church of England's "Red Dean" of Canterbury, was an old hand at following the twists & turns of the Communist line. The other was a comparative stranger. He was a Toronto doctor of divinity, James Endicott, 52, a United Church minister only recently arrived in the front rank of Canadian apologists for Communism.

Soft Words. Soft-spoken James Endicott told interviewers that he was no Communist. Canadians who judged by past associations rather than present company might well take his word for it. Born in China, the son of a missionary who later became moderator of the United Church in Canada, Endicott spent most of his youth close to the church. After twelve years as a China missionary, Endicott became an adviser on social-welfare problems to Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Like many another Westerner, he was shocked by the poverty and corruption he saw in China, but his disillusionment ran deeper than most. He came back to Canada in 1947, highly critical of the Chiang government and full of praise for its Communist enemies.

Whether he knew it or not, Dr. Endicott fitted neatly into the propaganda effort of the Labor-Progressive Party, the label under which Canadian Communism has paraded since the Communist Party was banned temporarily in World War II* Endicott turned out a party-line news letter on the Far East, financed, he said, by voluntary contributions. He lectured across Canada, defending the Chinese Communists and gradually broadening his approach into a full apology for Soviet foreign policy.

Frank Manner. When the Communist-inspired peace conference was held in Paris last year, Endicott went along. Said he: "It looked to me just like a big missionary convention." This year, for another Communist peace meeting, the Russians flew him to Moscow, gave him the full caviar-and-ballet treatment plus an interview in Pravda in which he said that Canada was a police state infested with U.S. spies. (He claimed later that Pravda reporters had misquoted him, but added a hasty explanation that Soviet reporters, like all reporters, sometimes make mistakes.) Back in Canada, Endicott was a logical choice to escort the "Red Dean" on his pro-Soviet peace junket.

Canadian Communism sorely needed new and persuasive friends. The party's influence has waned steadily since the uncovering of the Russian spy ring in 1946, when Soviet espionage agents in the Dominion government were linked to the Canadian Communist Party. The Communist vote in last year's federal election dropped to 32,623 (from a peak of 111,892 in 1945). Red leadership has been mainly wiped out in Canada's labor movement. What was obviously wanted was a new face to give the party a kindlier look and dispel the aura of treachery that has hung over it since the spy scandal. Dr. Endicott, with his pleasant voice and frank manner, seemed to be just the right man.

*By a vote of 147 to 32, the House of Commons last week defeated a new motion aimed at outlawing Communist political activity.

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