INTERNATIONAL DAY
729
Pact, they would not even have the freedom to sit in the Sorbonne and
criticize American imperialism. This so infuriated some of his auditors
that the Chair had to appeal to them to let the speaker finish.
At the Velodrome, Silone talked for almost an hour to an audience
which seemed a little disappointed that he did not go beyond vague and
commonplace generalities about a socialist Europe. He was followed
by a French scientist, M. Perrin. Karl Compton, who through some
misunderstanding appeared instead of his brother, Arthur Compton,
then spoke about the history of atomic research, the race against Hitler's
scientists, the considerations which led to its use in Hiroshima, and
the prospects of peaceful applications of nuclear energy. After he fin–
ished, the fracas around the mike took place. Garry Davis, world citizen,
got a big hand when he intervened to read a message the Communists
had prevented him from reading at their Congress. Rousset then delivered
a powerful speech, with the voice and manners of a mass orator, in
which he skillfully sought to placate the political surrealists. He criticized
the Atlantic Pact but carefully avoided making the same kind of equa–
tion between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. which Sartre and his friends had
done. Politically, he is a man of quite a different kidney from Sartre.
The meeting dragged to a close with the reading of resolutions
which were adopted by acclamation.
IV
To American liberals the most difficult thing to understand is
the reluctance of the non-Communist left to speak out openly and with
appropriate vigor against the regime of terror in the Soviet Union, its
betrayal of every socialist ideal, and its foreign policy of annexation and
subversion through fifth column specialists in national sabotage in other
countries. This difficulty in assessing the situation is aggravated by the
indiscriminate use of belligerent rhetoric against the United States
despite the facts that French ideology and traditions are certainly closer
to those of the U.S. than to those of the U.S.S.R., and that the foreign
policy of the French government, which this section of French opinion
prefers either to the regime of De Gaulle or the Communist Party, is in
general agreement with that of the United States. These two points,
although somewhat related, must be discussed differently.
Despite the myths and legends which sprang up after the liberation,
there was not much of a resistance movement to the Nazis in France.
In 1940 when the war seemed irretrievably lost, almost the entire popu–
lation collaborated in some form or other with the Vichy government
and passively accepted the occupation. The Resistance consisted of a
