WRITERS AND DEFEAT
119
the 'national shame' of inglorious defeat: "Only shameful natures can
put
up with it; we shall follow our reaction against it to the hitter end."
2
Of all these groups the most pathetic-and, one might say, the most
significant from an American point of view-is that of the climbers, from
all over, onto the Hitlerite bandwagon. They show how varied are the
approaches to fascism open to modern European man. Mere horror of
modernism in the arts
(Kulturbolschewismus);
a metaphysical thirst for
the One in the Many; politically authoritarian forms of Catholicism;
rationalization of personal disequilibrium into a continental malady, with
consequent vague calls. for 'discipline' as the cure-as one might prescribe
exercise and fresh air for neurasthenics; or, simply, a keen awareness of
the futility of international politics as played by sovereign nations since
1918---all these may lead to a sneaking fondness for Hitler or at least to
a stuffy pretence of nobility and self-sacrifice
a
la
Petain. Many are com·
hined in Drieu Ia Rochelle, the new editor of the N.R.F.
Despite his fascist sympathies, Drieu is no contemptible figure.
Besides being a novelist of distinction, he brings a fluid intelligence to
political questions: too fluid, to he sure, hut hardly in a class with the
bloated brooding emotionalism of literary fascism as practised in Ger·
many. His diagnoses and prognoses of the European disease are as acute
as his political ideals are confused. Both the acumen and the confusion
are apparent in his most important hook,
Socialisme Fasciste,
a collection
of political essays published by the
N.R.F.
in 1934. One of them, 'The
Next War,' predicted not only the time of the present cataclysm hut many
of its leading events to date. Though vitriolic on French political parties of
all degrees of leftness and rightness, he pointed out the perils of dictator·
ship on the Hitler-Mussolini model as a government for France, and issued
a grave warning against any rapprochement between France and Germany
on the flimsy basis of opposition to communism. All this is sound enough;
and even now one may dare to hope that he has not sunk to the level of
Laval's Anti-Soviet Legion or the conception of Petain as Our Leader
piously advanced by the
Revue des Deux Mondes.
But other suggestions
on policy in the crisis he so clearly analyzed at that time manifested the
troubled oscillation which fascism steadies for its own ends. On the one
hand, he deplored the violence inculcated in fascist youth and condemned
militarism in general, even avowing great sympathy with absolute paci–
fism; on the other, speaking of fascism as 'a pure theocracy in which the
spiritual and the temporal are at last commingled,' he declared: "And yet
I want it. Liberty is done for, and man must steep himself again in the
dark foundations of his being. I say this, I, the intellectual, the lover of
2
According to
La France Libre,
this issue of the
NRF
was seized by the Germans.
Petitjean's words are doubtless the reason. Over and above their dangerous implica–
tioDS,
he takes as his text a quotation from Malraux'
Days of Wrath,
which of course
il
now banned in France. In general, as
La France Libre
says, all French accounts of
the
late-lamented war with Germany are being suppressed: "Les
Fran~ais
doivent
oublier .qu'ils se sont battus contre l'Allemagne hitlerienne." So Petitjean's outburst
joiDS Duhamel's
Chronicle of the Year 1939
and Roland Dorgeles'
Retum to the Front:
&ood company. P etitjean has since resigned from the N.R.F., at the same time as Gide.
