INTERNATIONAL DAY
723
American line. Now, without ceasing to denounce American foreign
policy, it also ventures to ask rhetorical questions about the existence of
democracy in the Soviet Union. Recently it has had several sharp
exchanges with
l'Humanite.
So far it has kept its 300,000 readers who
only a few months ago were hardly distinguishable from the readers of
I'Humanite.
The editors are convinced that their reading public must
be spoon-fed with mild injections of anti-Stalinist criticism until they
build up a tolerance to stronger doses. Since the Communist Party has
. already denounced them as agents of American imperialism, they lean
over backward to appear as vigorous critics of American policy, parti–
cularly the Atlantic Pact. They no longer criticize the Marshall Plan.
The sponsors of the International Day set themselves a very ambi–
tious task-nothing more than the preparation of a World Congress
Against Dictatorship and War to be held in Europe next fall. The only
conditions for participation in the preparatory April 30th meeting were
(1) recognition that the struggle for freedom against all forms of total–
itarianism is bound up with the struggle for peace, and (2) acceptance
of
freedom of inquiry
for all participants to present solutions to make this
struggle effective. No one was to be choked with a predetermined
party-line.
If
allowance is made for the shortness of time, the slender re–
sources, and the peculiar character of the initiating committee-which
although at odds with the Stalinists often talks like them to the dis–
comfiture of some socialist groups-a rather large but
far from repre–
sentati'ue
group of participants gathered in Paris. There were delegates
from England, United States, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Western Ger–
many, and democratic Spain. Among the delegates were Silone, Carlo
Levi, Borkenau, Tarnov, Brockway, De Kadt, the English geneticist,
Darlington, Bourdet, Pivert. Expressions of support were received from
Julian Huxley, Crossman, Dos Passos, Sinclair, and many others. The
hulk of the delegates consisted of Frenchmen and an extraordinary
number of spokesmen for colonial peoples. The most important organ–
izations officially represented were the Socialist Party of the Seine, the
autonomous unions, and the Paris region of the
Force Ouuriere.
There
were a baker's dozen of other French organizations, represented either
officially or by self-delegated individuals, on the order of the
Mouuement
Socialiste .des Etats-Unis d'Europe
and the
Ligue Internationale
c~ntre
Ie Racisme et l'A1ntisemitisme.
What gave the International Day importance was that it followed
hard on the heels of the Congress of World Partisans for Peace-a
Cominform affair from start to finish. That there were two peace meetings
