POLITICS AND THE FRENCH INTELLECTUALS
603
World. (Even a writer of the calibre of Camus has supported Gary
Davis, as has Andre Breton, or at least he did so as late as a year ago-–
since then, I have heard it said, he has parted company with the "first
citizen of the world.")
Others conceive of this neutrality as political. The refusal to sup–
port either of the two camps they look on as a means of easing the
tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, and eventually
of facilitating a reconciliation between the two. They dream of a
Socialist United States of Europe interposed between the two colossi.
Liberal and Socialist at the same time, it would create an inter–
mediate and neutral zone between the two antagonists.
Why are there so many of these neutrals in France, when in
the United States and even in most of the other countries of Europe
r:;eople accept the fact that they belong to one camp or the other?
It
is perhaps deplorable that this should be so, but, without being blind
or exercising a great deal of subtlety, the necessity of choosing can
scarcely be ignored. The theoreticians of abstention and neutrality, of
the Third Force, much more than they think, express the inarticulate
and indeterminate desires of the French nation. The majority of the
French would like to escape the unremitting pressure of an inhuman
and apocalyptic history. What's the use of getting mixed up in the
fight?
If
war comes, France will be the loser in any case. The United
States will probably win, but, regardless of who dictates the terms of
peace (supposing that such relics of an age of law and order as
treaties wilL survive into the atomic age), defeat will be the lot of every
nation where the havoc of war has reached a certain stage. Neutrality
is the deep-seated reflex of a France exhausted by two wars. At the
same time it is the French intellectual's response to an unprecedented
situation. Never in the past did he have to ask himself: Which camp
do I like best, or dislike the least? He had always taken his stand for
France, or for universal ideas valid for the world as well as France.
Now he is asked (or he has the impression he is asked) to choose be–
tween the Soviet Union and the United States. He feels that he would
be lowering himself to make this choice.
Thus the anti-American line that some French intellectuals are
pleased to take is easily enough explained. These people (M. Duhamel
is best known among them) instinctively abhor the technological civili–
zation of the United States. (Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir
are scarcely behindhand in expressing their repugnance to the American
style of life.) Now it is hardly possible to doubt the success of America
so far as its material power and standard of living are concerned.
