26
PARTISAN REVIEW
some grotesque incidents of the debacle; non-commissioned officers
had been seen making off in autos "to save the regiment's flag."
I
asked him, "Suppose for a moment that the radio had announced
that there was no longer any general staff, that all the officers had
been removed, and had cried 'Soldiers, defend France yourselves,
hold every bit of ground you can!'?" He answered, "Then it
wouldn't have happened this way, oh no!" He was right....
We had to find a refuge. Several had been offered or prom–
ised to us; it had been quite the fashion in Paris to hand out invi–
tations:
"If
Panama gets too disagreeable, come to my place in the
Dordogne or in the Gironde. You'll like our wine." But my com–
panion was put out of the chateau of a rich anarchist, quite politely
indeed, on a day of torrential and romantic rain that beat down on
the slate towers, the river and the beautiful rocks the anarchist had
once praised to us. At an isolated farm in the woods, a friend who
had been a socialist journalist the day before yesterday, revealed
himself as Lord of the Manor and begged us to leave immediately,
even if we had to take his car-because
They
were coming! As we
were about to go, this one-time socialist explained that he had been
converted to collaboration with Hitler, and was now in favor of a
strong military government. (Government, that is, by bankrupts.)
One more possible asylum remained, which had been promised to
us by
the
pacifist writer.
It
was a pretty little house, nesting among
flowers, but its door was closed and well guarded.
The
writer had
gone to the mountains to meditate. Policemen gathered us up and
sent us on our way; they too were meditative. These experiences
were not confined to my case alone, but were rather the rule. To
the petty bourgeois of these rich provinces the refugees were some·
thing suspect, hostile. Refugees made prices go up, looted provi·
sions, stole bicycles-and just think of it, there were Spaniards
among them, regular bandits! We could have kissed a peasant
woman who offered us coffee and shelter on a day of pouring rain.
She was not rich, but she refused our forty sous. A great moral
exhaustion was revealed by this concern for money and material
comfort.
It
was another aspect of the defeat. In a more or less
working-class town even the militant trade unionists had not the
slightest idea of offering the hospitality of their sacred meeting
hall. The socialist municipal government refused to house any
