INTERNATIONAL DAY
731
could have taken over the country by a telephone call was hardly an
exaggeration.
The legacy of fear, blackmail and silly hope in a new Soviet turn
has only slowly worn off-not in virtue of any counter-propaganda
but as a result of Communist intransigence in sacrificing the interests
of France on the altar of Soviet foreign policy. The postwar French
intellectuals were completely devoid of any political experience. Large
numbers of them had been newly converted to revolutionary socialism
and blossomed into full-fledged Marxists almost overnight not as a result
of study but of enthusiasm. To this day they have very little under–
standing of what Leninism and Stalinism mean. Although they feel hurt
that the French Communists "have gone too far" and "have been unfair"
to their opponents, they still regard them as part of the French com–
hlunity. The translation of Koestler's
Darkness at Noon
came as a
shock to them. The Kravchenko Trial was another. In terms of the past,
their
public
participation in the International Day marked an advance
for them, particularly in view of the reaction of the Communists to their
support of any affair in which some harsh truths about the Soviet Union
were expressed.
This evolution of opinion is related in a distinctive way to the anti–
Americanism of the non-Communist French left which is in turn related
to the anti-Americanism of the French public generally. For long-range
purposes this last point is most important. The French public, by and
large, is shockingly ignorant of the character of American life and
culture. Its picture of America is a composite of impressions derived
from reading the novels of social protest and revolt (Steinbeck's
Grapes
of Wrath
is taken as a faithful and
representative
account), the novels
of American' degeneracy (Faulkner) and inanity (Sinclair Lewis), from
seeing American movies, and from exposure to an incessant Communist
barrage which seeps into the non-Communist press.
The informational
fe-education of the French public seems to me to be the most funda–
mental as well as most pressing task of American democratic policy in
France, towards which almost nothing along effective lines has been done.
This does not require a propaganda campaign.
If
the sober facts about
American life in all their nakedness, good and bad, were communicated
to the French public it would be sufficient to produce a revolution in
this attitude.
The non-Communist left absorbs its anti-Americanism from the
general milieu. But in its case this is reinforced by several special factors.
First, like all political neophytes its spokesmen feel that they can only
criticize the Communist Party by competing with it in revolutionary
