PARIS LETTER
"Would you call the present situation an
extreme
one?" I
asked a historian friend of mine. "It seems to me," he answered, "that
an extreme situation is characterized by the fact that the individual is
there confronted with, or crushed by, clearcut alternatives. In mortal
danger, in the tniddle of a revolutionary upsurge, in the ignominy of a
concentration camp, a man at least knows where he stands. But, if there
is any extremity in the condition of the European individual today, it is
an extremity of unclarity and ambiguity."
"
'Either
America
or
Stalin,
either
Communism
or
Gaullism,' they
tell him, 'you must choose.' And does he choose? I don't think so. I
think that it is a mere figure of speech to call choice the act by which a
French citizen today acquiesces to the inevitability of the. dilemma, and
eventually
follows
one kind of crowd or the other. He follows, while
being convinced that
neither
America
nor
Stalin,
neither
Communism
nor
Gaullism, is really the answer. To use Koestler's image (which con–
trary to what Koestler thinks, can work both ways), very little perspicac–
ity is needed to realize that there is no black and white, only different
shades of gray. In fact, the arguments used by the different political
groups, the way in which they state their dilemmas, implies that the
either/or alternative is intended for public use, while in reality the choice
is between lesser evils, shades of gray, expedients.''
"No shrewd Stalinist propagandist today argues that one must be
a Communist because the Soviet state is a model for socialist construc–
tion, but rather that one should stick to the CP because it is the
only
available
instrument in the struggle against capitalism. Similarly, the
real argument of the Gaullists is not that De Gaulle is a second Joan of
Arc, but the he is the
only available
man under whose authority the
French state can be rescued from the quagmire of Third Force fickle–
ness. Such arguments surely permit the individual to remain distraught
and perplexed, even though he may straggle along with the parade. There
is nothing desperate, nothing extreme, in such a state of mind. It is not
1007
