WRITERS AND DEFEAT
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first
9f
them {written in the shelter of the German-Soviet pact) he even
drops a faint hint of sympathy with the French communists:
"If
France
had made a revolution in '34 or '36, a fascist revolution or a communist
revolution, she would not have made the war of 1940, for she would have
placed herself in a clearer, more modern position with regard to Ger–
many." This can mean either that France would not have fought the war
of 1940 or would not have lost it: the ambiguity is doubtless intentional.
Nor is there much in his other political comments beyond the familiar
condemnation of France's policy between wars and the familiar com–
mendation of such ·winning attributes of fascism as free physical culture
for all. ("The evil lies in the forgetting of the body.") Tactfully, he con–
cludes his first pronouncement-a brilliant refutation of the view that the
French are a moderate people-with the words: "I should have liked to
talk about Europe, about today's France in today's Europe. Another time.
There two passions are jostling one another, but they are capable of join–
ing
forces." A meaningless enough remark. He seems to be striving to
preserve that 'freedom in the face of fascism' Qf which he spoke eight
years ago. One wonders how long it lasted.
And yet Drieu and men like him are zealously working for fascism
by broadcasting their special views of it through the N.R.F. The oddest
case of this is a 'Letter to an American,' by Alfred Fabre-Luce, in the
December 1940 issue. Fabre-Luce has been a 'collaborationist' for years:
among other things, his dislike of the Versailles treaty and what it stood
for led him early to pro-German sympathies, which now apparently extend
to the invader. Here he purports to be answering a letter in which an
American friend let slip a suggestion that he, Fabre-Luce, might be un–
happy in occupied Paris. The Frenchman unleashes an almost lyrical
description of the 'ennobling' effects of the German occupation on a city
once febrile with 'haste' and teeming with 'parasites'. Haste and parasites
have vanished; quiet and dignity return; "German and Frenchman are
learning many things about one another that proximity did not suffice to
teach them.... Only now, before this new horizon, do we understand that
we had been lacking half the world." French liberty?-"Another race is
taking shape, a race that will perhaps be able to enjoy liberty to the full
because it will be worthy of it.... Do not believe that we are thinking of
eome sort of revenge. Henceforth we shall seek greatness in a new direc–
tion." The new direction appears to be toward a united Europe, impov–
erished and noble-the impoverishment being laid to the 'guilty men' who
kept France divided, the nobility to the people who have now been freed
of them. In the end, it seems, the Spartan virtues will triumph over eco–
nomics: "Tomorrow the U.S.A. will not be able to withstand the competi–
tion of a disciplined and impoverished Europe." The letter ends on a note
of pity for America, reversing the American's pity for France: unless we
100n
get rid of our money and gross materialism, we will be too late for
e New Age. {In summary, the article sounds like some grotesque attempt
satire, but it is in deadly earnest.) An equally imaginative note is
