Paris Letter
F
IWiCE IS IN the g<eatest confusion. We a1e at wa1
yet
W&I
ba•
not
really begun. We are a democracy yet everything happens as if we lived
under a military dictatorship. We are what are generally called "intel–
lectuals" yet the normal exercise of our independent minds threatens to
become a misdemeanor, a crime even, against "our fatherland."
Changes and paradoxes pile up around us. Jean Giraudoux, author
of
There Will Be No Trojan War,
has become grand master of propa·
ganda. You should hear him on the radio exhorting the men and women
of France to unlimited confidence in the government and total abnegation
for themselves. He declares moreover that "even in the conduct of the
war Frenchmen are unlike other people, because they do not regard them·
selves as pawns in a game hut as human beings." M. Giraudoux is right.
In
fact he cannot very well he wrong, for besides controlling propaganda
he also censures the public's complaints. We agree with him that France
as a whole is no "pawn" in the game of world politics; as for Frenchmen
in particular, they too are quite free-free, that is, to applaud the speeches
of M. Giraudoux.
Yet the censorship recently spent a had quarter of an hour before
an investigating committee of the Chamber. It had leaked out that certain
fascist-minded officials were making rather too free with their privilege
of ransacking mailboxes. M. Maurice Petsche himself was indignant at
the startling results of his inquiry; and the government was advised to
undertake certain "purges." Naturally the government is considerably
embarrassed by the disclosures, for it has been engaged in a frantic repres·
sion against opponents of the war. These, of course, will simply he thrown
into concentration camps (as in Germany!).
And to further complicate the situation, war cannot really he declared
on Russia. Stalin is still regarded with some complacence by our friends
Churchill and Chamberlain. The former said: "The vital interests of Russia
follow the same direction as the interests of Great Britain and France."
And
Chamberlain: "It is too soon to pass final judgment on the causes or
consequences of Russian intervention in Poland." And when the day fol–
lowing the "Red" invasion of Poland, M. Champetier de Rihes received
the Soviet ambassador, our government-no pawn, remember, in the game
of politics-was obliged to declare: "0 yes indeed, M. Molotoff is an
amiable man. He has had the courtesy to inform us that while violating
the Polish frontier he remains neutral. For the present we can only record
the event."
But certain Evil Spirits are to
he
found in the very midst of official
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