THE FALL OF PARIS
of flame, cries of "J'Accuse." On the left bank, power itself was
grounds enough for suspicion; and no one was thought to be less
entitled to fair play than a man who had succeeded in making him–
self an Emperor, a Bishop, a Field Marshal, or a National Poet.
As late as 1928, Louis Aragon, soon to become the leader of
the Leagues of American Writers of all nations, could still assert:
"A Gentleman who wishes to stand at the summit of events: defi–
nition of a clown."
One had scarcely questioned the reception-in the city of the
Communards, and of Rimbaud, Courbet, and Zola-of the stupid
police pageant of Moscow, with its grotesquely staged appeal to
the simpleminded of all countries-this mass assault by the name·
less clerks of a State machine upon individual orators, theoreti–
cians, writers, revolutionaries; this mockery of historical achieve–
ment more sordid than a thousand public monuments.
A few courageous men-Gide, Breton, Serge, a few others–
strove to uphold the tradition of French criticism. But what
"higher need" had paralyzed the conscience of non·conformist
Paris?
The higher need was antifascism.
A struggle had to be undertaken, in parliament, on the streets,
in
the schools, the factories, the polling booths, the journals, the
armed forces, against a system that would not only punish human–
ity for the sins of its past but also compel it to repeat them again
and again.
The dead Internationals of culture and of politics went into
battle with unwilling limbs. Like all organisms that have lost their
potency, they sought some "practical" contrivance that would
ensure the desired effect without inner expenditure.
Wearing armbands supplied by Moscow, the Paris Left
adopted the style of the conventional, the sententious, the undaring,
the morally lax-in the name of social duty and the "defense of
culture." Feasible fronts were formed in which all the participants
were forced to give up their power of action-perhaps a profound
desire for this renunciation was itself the main reason for the
coalitions.
Antifascist unity became everything; programs, insight, spirit,
truth, nothing.
