FRENCH EXPECTATIONS
235
under the leadership of the Communist Party, a thing which made them
feel most uneasy.
Could the Resistance hope to gain power and become the source of
a revolution? It had neither the indispensable leaders nor the backing of
the people. The Resistance demanded just retribution, and this worried
a majority of French who had not taken an active, visible and recog–
nizable part in the fight against Nazism. The Resistance was divided.
Radicals, Socialists, members of the right, all admitted the heroism of
the Communists but feared their leadership and turncoat policy. The
Communist Party styled itself "The Party of the Hostages," the true
national party and, in addition to this, the party of ·Red Army victories
and of the Soviet Union's future international influence. Too many aces
and too many marked cards! But with Allied troops on French soil, the
Communist Party could no longer resort to a
coup de force
and had lit–
tle interest in starting a lot of trouble. The Communists claimed the
right to keep their arms, but then consented to having their armed groups
transferred to an auxiliary police. After all, it is of vital interest to them
to gain positions within the police force.
A well disciplined minority, backed by a powerful organization,
can easily control
a
large number of well-intentioned men who, for
a certain amount of time, may not even realize that they are being com–
pletely controlled. Under the pressure of the Communist Party, which
was acting through the intermediary of the Resistance, the elected in–
stitutions of Paris were replaced by a council under the presidency of
the Communist scholar Langevin. On the day that Paris was liberated,
two Communist dailies,
l'Humanite
and
Ce Soir,
were being so!d on the
streets. It must be admitted that the strongest political press is now
owned by the Communist Party. Part of the Spanish Maquis, in South–
ern France, was under the influence of the Communist Party which, in
the name of the
Junta Suprema de Liberacion
and
Union Nacional,
attempted to gain control of the entire colony of Spanish exiles. It failed
in this attempt, but Dr. Negrin, the only legal owner of Spain's gold
reserve which now lies in Moscow's vaults, still has some strong argu–
ments on this point. The "Free German Committee" was finally re–
cognized by the French Forces of the Interior and was permitted to use
their radio facilities.
The Maquis in the Limoges area was under the command of both
the Communist writer Andre Malraux and the fellow-traveller Andre
Chamson. It came to light that, among the writers of French clandestine
literature, a jack-of-all-trades like Louis Aragon could enjoy a tremen–
dous influence. This Aragon is the man who wrote the infamous pro–
paganda during the Moscow trials, who hid all the crimes of his party
during the Spanish Civil War and even in France, for instance the
kidnapping and murder of Rudolf Klement in Paris in 1938. This same
Aragon today has the audacity to demand that Andre Gide be ostracized.
