PARIS LETTER
243
has made of our beautiful country, our country which has made so many
revolutions.
But will it ever be possible, with whatever formidable bureaucratic
mechanism, to control the "subjective secret denunciation"? I doubt it.
For example: Every morning, as we go off to work, we perceive at the top
of our street the marble silhouette of the Basilica of Sacre·Coeur. This
rounded whiteness touches us and awakens a thought: Sacre·Coeur is
white. White as a dove, which flies over the tumult of cities, Sacre·Coeur
dominates the metropolis submerged in shadows. But here is the forbidden
area. Is not our morale threatened by the evocation of this "white" hope
in the middle of the shadows of doubt? Will not our humble reflections
inform the enemy on the true state of our soul? But, nonetheless ... every
morning, Sacre·Coeur is always there, placid as a monk, rounded as a
Virgin,
white as a dove.
Imagine, instead of thinking of Sacre·Coeur, a banal and everyday
image, this psychic mechanism applied itself to other phenomena, imme·
diate and more explosive.... For example: Almost every day Hitlerian·
Stalinist propaganda explains to us that the British Empire was created by
theft, conquestj 'pillage, assassinations, that it is founded on the necks of
five hundred million slaves, and that it must be destroyed. Naturally the
Allies retort, reasonably enough, by exposing the frightful barbarities and
the
nameless atrocities of the Hitler and the Stalin regimes. But the first
lltatement is not completely false. Imagine what goes on in the brain of
one of those slaves-whether his yoke is labelled "London·Paris" or "Ber·
lin·M9scow"-when he compares the facts, deduces certain principles and
concludes that in truth it is necessary to destroy the one as well as the
other. But by fraternizing with all the victims and by refusing, to follow
one's national leaders. The "subjective secret denunciation" now takes on
a terrifying aspect, but what can one do? Will the judges ever be well
enough armed to repress the effects?
Isn't the real criminal social reality itself, which independent thought
looner or later discovers?
... Every morning we see Sacre·Coeur, placid as a monk, etc....
And every day too, we understand better the destiny which all poor
men, all the hundreds of millions of the "Third Camp" whose interests lie
with neither of the two warring imperialist camps, the destiny which they
have in common, a common cause which is as indifferent to the lines of
Crontiers as the pure flight of the dove. . . .
Friends, do not imagine that the conflict which is developing in
Europe will be localized between the Maginot and Siegfried Lines. There
is
another line of battle, that they try in vain to camouflage and which
opposes a Voltairean irony to the sword of the generals. And the World
War has not yet begun....
!
CYPRIEN MORMICHE
