I CAME NEAR BEING A FASCIST
23
about.
It was plain to me that the confusions of the 7th of February
were marvelously favorable to the bourgeois class, which was taking ad–
vantage of those confusions to attempt to save itself at any cost. Now,
while I might put up with the bourgeoisie when it went about its business
smilingly, its tears and its grimaces on the score of oppression were a
little more than I could bear.
I thereupon wrote my
Open Letter
to Andre Gide, in which I defi–
nitely crossed the economic barricade, since on the other side all that I
could see was confusion, double dealing and hypocrisy. The result was
unlooked for. Letters cancelling subscriptions to the N.R.F. and insults
directed at the writer vied with the April showers in frequency. One
lady in "good" society, who prides herself on being something of a philo–
sopher, whote:
"Let M. Fernandez take sides, as he instinctively does, with the
corrupters and the corrupted and with the assassins; but let him not
hold responsible for this alleged conversion of his those who have been the
unfortunate and altogether praiseworthy v:ctims. M. 1<"ernandez, o1 caUl s;:,
is a foreigner; and this is by way of being an excuse, not for his intellec–
tual character, for which no excuse is to be found, but simply t"or himself
as an individual; for as a consequence, he is not qualified to judge French
reactions nor to appreciate the character, the moral significance and the
trend of an event such as that of the 6th of February. The
Pocl.:et-Book
has nothing to do with the case; it is simply a matter of decency and of
national pride, which is absolutely excluded from M. Fernandez' reason–
ing."
This incomparable document constitutes what scholars of old used
to term an
experimentum crucis.
I hardly need take advantage of the
lady's indignation by calling attention to the fact that, in replying to a
letter in which I had expressed a sense of solidarity with the proletariat
(which grew indignant like the other classes, and with how much more
reason, that 6th of February, and
~vhich
protested with the others
ag~.inst
a putrid regime), she
let~
it be seen that she looks upon the proletariat
as corruptors, corrupted and assassins. Nor shall I fall out with her
over her lack of good faith in making it appear that I hold responsible
for my conversion those victims of whom I mi ght have been one, and to
whom, in the letter in question, I had paid my proper respects.
I shall say nothing, finally, of the singular lack of mental co-OJ·dina–
tion which leads my correspondent to apply the epithet of foreigner to
one who makes common cause with the exploited of a nation against a
