A recent evelt of sinister import has illustrated to lovers of democracy in the Canadian metropolis that Fascism is in our midst and waits its chonze to take a firmer hand in the affairs of this city and country. A week ago a public meeting was onnounced for one of the largest auditorlums in Montreal, at which representatives of the Spanish Government were lo present their case. Due notice of the meeting was given and it had the sanction of the civie authorities, During the day on which the meeting was to take place a petition was drawn up by certain students of the local French-Canadian university and presented to the police, advising that if the meeting were not cancelled they would take steps to seo that it was. And carly in the evening they staged a demonstration near the auditorium which showed that they were looking for trouble. Shortly before the meeting was due to begin It was cancelled. Efforts were then made to hold it in a civie auditorium in Westmount, a. residential city within the metropolis, but the students and others paraded through the streets to this hall also, The result was that no large meeting was hold, although a meeting had been held within the walls of McGill University in_the afternoon without opposition. The only untoward Incident of the evening was that a MeGill professor who was nccompanying the visitors to the train, was set upon by the parading stu: dents and kicked, although not seriously injured. Later the acting mayor of the city publicly backed up the action of the police department in cancelling, the meeting, and deplored the attitude of McGill University students and declared that he would see that any future meetings which seemed fo be of a Communist lavour would also be banned, He did not, however, explain why the police should have submitted to mob insistence after a meeting hod been formally" 9p; The "McGill Daily," student paper, has commented on these events in a manner that expresses fairly well the feelings ut those who are true lovers of democracy. "In the last analysis, the only place where the Spanish' delegates had a hearing in the province of Quebec was inthe MeGill Union. This does not necessarily mean that McGill students are communist or sympathetic towards the Spanish Loyalist cause. It does, however, mean that we, MeGill stu: dents, insist on the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.