Unprintable

Canadian newspapers had one of the big news stories of the war. Editors fretted, egged each other on in the hope that someone else would break the story first. Then, if the Government did not crack down, they could all go to town and freedom of the press would be saved. A few papers printed sparse quotes and brief summaries, the Winnipeg Tribune went even further --with reservations.

The reservations were big black Xs (see cut, p. 43) to indicate the parts of the story still withheld, voluntarily. What was released was enough to show that the man-behind-the-story, Colonel George Alexander Drew, World War I hero and Conservative party leader in Ontario province, hadn't been talking through his hat. The charges he made were twofold: 1) that the 2,000 Canadian soldiers sent to Hong Kong and promptly killed or captured had been miserably undertrained and tragically underequipped; 2) that Chief Justice Sir Lyman Duff, acting as a royal commission, had absolved those responsible.

Drew's first blast at the commission report on June 5 led to the Government charging him with sedition. Then the Government dropped the charge, as the hottest political potato picked up in years. Still mad, Colonel Drew wrote a 32-page criticism of the commission report. He sent one copy to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie ("Wee Willie") King, other copies to leaders of the Conservative, Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and Social Credit parties in the House of Commons. A copy also went to the Canadian press, which sent it out to member papers marked "Hold for Release." The release was contingent on Prime Minister King's tabling the report in the House. But the Prime Minister refused to table it, on the grounds that it would give aid & comfort to the enemy. Immediately the question arose of whether the Government ruling was valid or a blunt attempt to suppress legitimate criticism. With the Drew report before them, but with no go-ahead from the Government censors, the decision to print it or not was up to the editors. The Tribune's half-revelations were as close as any editor got to risking prosecution under the Civil Security Code.

The most "dangerous" quote considered printable:

"Up to the time of their departure neither unit [Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Rifles] had been able to give its men any training with the two-inch mortar. They had never fired a three-inch mortar. They had never fired an anti-tank rifle. They had never fired an anti-aircraft machine gun. They had never fired a submachine gun. They had never fired a rifle grenade. They had never thrown a live bomb . . . the Winnipeg Grenadiers had never even fired their Bren guns and, until just before their departure, had never fired service ammunition with their rifles."

An Opposition demand this week that Colonel Drew's letter be made public threw the House of Commons into an uproar. Amid wild shouts and cries of "order, order," Mackenzie King called the Conservative party "a mob" and defied them to silence his defense of the Government.

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