Sartre's Call for Treason
Sartre's Call for Treason The unabridged text of a violently pro-Vietminh editorial which Sartre's magazine advertised and printed, then ripped out of each individual copy On the cover of the...
...At a time when the German press is hailing Dienbienphu as a new Stalingrad and China runs the risk of H-bombing because it wants to be Redder than Senator McCarthy, let us be grateful, for the sake of having things clear, that Mr...
...But if their combined efforts lead to a catastrophe, they should know that a certain number of men in Franceand we are among the mare ready to go to any length to oppose them...
...The USSR, in turn, will be confronted with the choice of swallowing without a murmur the annihilation of China or risking total war...
...Those soldiers are fighting for us, just as all men throughout the world who are conquering the right to be men are struggling for us and with us...
...Foster Dulles has at last defined French policy in Vietnam...
...Dulles to America's allies: Either China will stand by idly while free Vietnam is crushed by the American war machine or it will be subjected to atomic "retaliation...
...And this war is given the sacred justification of a crusade...
...The others are victims whose murderers are among us...
...And any means are justified in replying to this insolence...
...Spare us, then, the legendary figures of our generals, our ancestors who fought the Crusades...
...That a handful of Americans dream today of destroying the Chinese revolution, that some Frenchmen are driven by hate to risk a world war in order to revenge themselves upon free Vietnam, that panic makes others call for military conscription as a "lesser evil"all this, no doubt, was to be expected...
...The New Leader has obtained the full text of the article which Jean-Paul Sartre did not dare to publish...
...Sartre's Call for Treason The unabridged text of a violently pro-Vietminh editorial which Sartre's magazine advertised and printed, then ripped out of each individual copy On the cover of the April issue of Jean-Paul Sartre's magazine Les Temps Modernes was advertised an article signed by the editors...
...To negotiate is, therefore, to be an accomplice of Ho, and to attack is to defend oneself...
...Here is the true meaning of the Dienbienphu operation...
...That policy is unambiguous: It is war...
...It casts significant light on the mentality of a certain type of self-styled "progressive intellectual," a type present in other countries as well as France...
...Peace in Vietnam would only serve the purposes of Ho Chi Minh...
...do not blackmail us with reminders of "those who are dying...
...When the issue hit the stands, no such article was in it...
...Since every Communist who is in power is, by definition, a triumphant conqueror, any nation that goes Communist is, by the same token, aggressive...
...Consequently, the American planes now killing the Vietnamese for France are doves of peace, since they are provoked by the Vietminh anti-aircraft batteries...
...Frenchmen are dying at Dienbienphu, it is true...
...The full text of the article follows below...
...A maneuver of vaster scope is thereupon launched with the "warning" proposed by Mr...
...Two pages had been ripped out just before the issue was bound, much in the fashion that pictures of Beria are cut out of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia...
...Everything is taking place as if we had deliberately chosen to turn a minor battle into a decisive test, as if we had wanted to fight with our backs to the wall and provoke a spectacular impasse in order to divert attention from the real signs of our military defeat (in the [Red River] Delta, for example), to halt the movement for peace and provide' the United States with a pretext for direct intervention...
...But some of them chose this fight, and it is not our fight...
...And, in the background, the Pacific a tolls go up in smoke amid the thunder of Judgment Day...
...Our admiration should go first to the heroism of those little men who, on foot, in the jungles and in the mountains, springing from the ground like the wheat, carrying rice and artillery shells on their backs, rise under a napalm-filled sky to assault the barbed wire which robs them of their country...
...Dulles says, one must know how to take risks: America, teeth clenched, resigned to its disagreeable duty, heart steeled for any sacrifice, prepares its beautiful soul to atomize the Chinese...
...As Mr...
...We must say it here and now: We are with them...
...As for the heroism of the combatants, that has never sanctified a criminal war...
...The extraordinary admission implied in this delirium for if peace favors Ho Chi Minh, it means that we are only maintaining ourselves by force and the impudence which brands Chinese aid to Vietnam as aggressive when Washington is openly financing and supplying the war would nevertheless be nothing out of the ordinary if it were not a question this time of effecting, by blackmail or force, the great "rollback" of Communism...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 24
