FRENCH PROGRESSIVES AND THE PEACE
Clair, Louis
French Progressives And The Peace By LOUIS CLAIR IT is a curious phenomenon that the same big dailies which campaign for the "free flow of news all over the world" hardly inform their readers of...
...France, rich today only in her labor and her liberty, should state to the world that the only true road leads to economic federalism, to common sharing in wealth, and to the submission of all nations to the laws of international democracy...
...They are offered, however, a policy of annexation and force, an ephemeral balance of power, fatal struggles for influence...
...23) represent a truly progressive type of criticism and a healthy approach to the problems of peace...
...But it is because the 'seat at table' indicates precisely the degree of consideration that people have for us and the opinion they have formed of our importance...
...And Temps Presents said: "The French people are not so naive as to believe that the masters of the hour would outdo themselves in disinterestedness and altruism...
...They do not oppose the Yalta agreement on grounds of French expediency, but attack its very principles of power politics...
...However, it is important that they be heard...
...17) and the other in the liberal Catholic weekly Temps Presents (Feb...
...Said M. Mauriac in Figaro: "In society we are amazed when we see refined men who are incapable of any pettiness become irritated at being mis-seated at table...
...It is for this that for 4 years this country was strewn with victims of the firing squad, with the dead and the tortured...
...The coverage of the reaction of the French press and French public opinion with regard to the Yalta Conference is a case in point...
...Even after misfortunes, France had always occupied her proper place in the Assembly of Nations, but today her friends refuse her what for centuries her most bitter enemies would never have dreamed of questioning...
...But we know too well the reasons for these 5 years of terrible struggle and horrible misery not to express, as simply as we can, our profound distress in the face of such [Yalta] decisions...
...They affect the fate of millions of men who expected from victory the certainty that peace would at least last long enough for their sufferings to be forgotten...
...Actually, the small nations will no longer be independent...
...For the first time in history at a meeting of the great powers the seat of Talleyrand and Chateaubriand remained unoccupied...
...There are two ways in which to achieve this organization of the world: through the imperialism of a few great powers dividing the vassal world among themselves, or by a federalism freely born—and internationally guided—from the will of the peoples...
...de Gaulle to the inner councils, but proceed, on the contrary, to a basic criticism of the issue...
...They expected that international law would protect the small nations as well as the great and that it would punish imperialist designs...
...economic feudalism within and international feudalism without...
...Some news is considered "not fit to print" because it does not seem to fall into desirable patterns...
...The two others, one in the leading Resistance daily Combat (Feb...
...A Progressive Viewpoint Yet there are others who have a quite different approach, above all such papers which sprang up during the period of German occupation and were published underground...
...Will this war have been merely the curtain raiser to an even vaster and more frightful tragedy...
...Mangling The Peace "The French people well know that national sovereignty is bound to give way, and that a European federalism—perhaps world-wide in a few centuries—will be established in the end...
...We know, in particular, that the German problem has been settled for some time...
...And since we are told about greatness, let us not cease to say that there is a kind of greatness we do not desire, that built on the misfortune of others...
...It was published in the conservative Figaro for Feb...
...When Europe is to be put in bondage, they want to know it, and to have things called by their right name...
...Democracy is indeed a broad term...
...It is unfortunate that the first solution should have been chosen at Yalta, with an attempt to disguise it with the idealism of the second, but no one is fooled...
...15, and is a good example of the "France Too" tendency...
...The first is written by the widely known Catholic novelist, Francois Mauriac...
...French Progressives And The Peace By LOUIS CLAIR IT is a curious phenomenon that the same big dailies which campaign for the "free flow of news all over the world" hardly inform their readers of certain important developments abroad...
...What offends them is not so much the sordid realism by which the decisions were inspired as the idealistic colors with which they were veneered...
...It is clear that owing to the development of communications and to economic interdependence, the shrinking world cannot allow fully autonomous states to subsist, any more than the French provinces could remain independent in the face of national unification...
...We mention here three significant articles from the French press dealing with Yalta...
...In reality, a triumvirate is dividing the world into spheres of influence—that word is rather mild—which leaves the small nations only the right to kiss the hand of the one of the Big 3 who enslaves them...
...Words deceive, the seat at table does not...
...These voices have so far hardly found an echo in the American press...
...It is a shame that the death of some 10 million human beings should end in this...
...But it is France's particular duty loudly to proclaim that all this is not justice and that the road they wish to make us follow, in the name of realism, does not take into account the fearful realities of power and conquest, which will tomorrow lead the world to a new death...
...They do not think that wrong can be turned into right by the simple device of admitting Gen...
...They are being placed under guardians, and unity will be established by force, not by voluntary association...
...Yes, France retains her sovereignty...
...But Combat observed in language which progressives everywhere will understand: "We know how flattering it is to find ourselves among the Great Powers...
...True, it has been reported that many leading French papers have voiced violent objections to France's exclusion from the decisions of the great powers...
...Feudalism is not dead...
...And as a matter of fact, many Gaullist and conservative papers objected mainly on the grounds of France's exclusion...
...Thus, tomorrow's peace is being mangled, the seeds of a new conflict sown...
...I do not think we should feign to take lightly the blow which has struck us...
...They clearly implied that if France were accepted as one of the policy-making powers, all would be well in the best of all worlds, and what had been injustice so far would suddenly and miraculously turn into right...
...American progressives should know that in Europe there are men who think as they do, that justice and fair-play as a basis of international relations have not yet been completely submerged in the best minds across the Atlantic...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 16
