‘Not of princes and prelates...’

E course of the thirty years

that separate John Masefield,
poet laureate of England, from
the man whose poetry welled up
from the depths of his own ex
riences as one of the common
' people is sharply outlined in the
contrast . between’ his
Poem “On the Coming Marriage
of Her Royal Highness Princess
Elizabeth,” and his ‘‘Consecra-
tion,” published as the first item
m The Cry for Justice: An An-

thology of Literature of Social

Protest, edited by Upton Sinclair.

Space precludes publishing a
‘two poems in full, but selecte
‘stanzas set side by side tell their
eMMSStorye te See .

In the recent special poem,
Masefield wrote:

What is the crown, but some
Sah thing set above —

-. The jangle and the jargon

and the hate
Of strivers after power in

the state,
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1047

v

special

© REPORT FROM FRANCE

Wind
the West

“symbol like a banner, for

men’s love.

To those dear lands still call-
ing Britain “home”

The crown is still, the link
with Britain’s past,

The consecrated thing that —

must outlast — ;

; Folly nil hate and other

human foam.

" But thirty years ago, when

: for the
Masefield — still wrote

people, his lines scorned his later
sentiments, and in “Consecra-

tion” he wrote: Set
relates
Not of the princes. and. pre
with periwigged charioteers

Riding triumphantly laurelled
a ee the fat of the years,

Rather the scorned—the reject-

'ed—the men hemmed vin
with the spears;
battal-
The men of the tattered
ion which fights till it dies

By CLAUDE MORGAN

from

—PARIS

violent anti-Communist campaign seen in France

A WIND from the west has blown our way the most

since 1939.

All of the tenors in the reactionary

camp took part in the concert: Francois Mauriac and General

de Gaulle, Andre Malraux and Jean Piot, ex-friend of the .

collaborator Marcel Deat at the newspaper L’OEU VRE during

the Nazi occupation. They re-
peated in unison the slanders
which the Germans had previous-
ly flung at the Communists.

Some time ago Louis Aragon
told the story of the death of
the first French hostages who fell
before a  firing-squad at Cha-
teaubriant on October 22, 1941.
One of the corpses was too
large to fit into the coffin. It was
the body of the young seventeen-
year-old Communist, Guy Moquet.
A German smashed at the corpse
with iron bars to get it inside.
When the municipal gravedigger
protested, the German answered
him in these simple words: “Com-
munist, not Frenchman.”

Today there are men who re-
peat these infamous words: Gen-
eral de Gaulle and his propa-
ganda agents. They have delib-
erately forgotten the tremendous
sacrifices .made by the French
Communists to free their country.
They are trying by every means,
including the vilest, to liquidate
the spirit of Resistance in order
to split the nation and seize

‘power.

That was why the municipal
election campaign was so lively
and so fiercely fought. It was
marked by the betrayal of the

‘leaders of the French Socialist

Party, who trained their guns not
on the reactionaries but on the
party of the working class, the
Communist Party.

The subway strike in Paris was
launched by an independent union
formed under the auspices of
Socialist Jules Moch, Minister of
Transport and friend of Premier
Ramadier, in order to make it
appear that it was a Communist
maneuver to intimidate the gov-

J

Dazed with the dust of the
battle, the din and the cries,
The men with the broken heads
and the blood running into
their eyes. © ‘

Others may sing of thé wine
and the wealth and the
mirth,

The portly presence of poten-
tates goodly in girth; —
Mine be the dirt and the dross,
the dust and the scum of
the earth. é

‘Theirs be the music, the color,
the glory, the gold;

Mine .be a handful of ashes, a
“mouthful of mould.

Of the maimed, the halt and

the blind im the rain and

the cold— :

Of these shall my songs be
fashioned, my tales be told.
"Amen.

ernment. The Socialist news-
paper, Le Populaire, equalled the
worst papers of the reactionaries
in the violence of its S&nti-Com-
munist campaign.

And when all is said and done,

what happened? General de
Gaulle and his_ brain-truster,
Malraux, had proclaimed that

they were going to crush the
Communist Party. But the latter
has maintained its positions in-
tact with thirty percent of the
votes nationally. In _ reality,
what they crushed was the MRP
(the Popular Republican Move-
ment), the party of Georges
Bidault.

That’s not quite the same thing.

It is true that when it came to
naming mayors after the elec-
tions, close co-operation between
the de Gaullists and the Socialists
succeeded in eliminating a good
many Communist mayors. But

this coalition, so shameful on the -

part of the Socialists, does not
in any way change the party
percentages, which no amount of
statistical juggling can conceal.
The Communist Party has kept
its strength and confidence.
e

T be sure, de Gaulle’s Reunion

of the French People (RPF)
has had a big success; and for
the first time in postwar France
reaction has found its leader. But
this movement bears within it-
self germs of weakness.

In it are to be found the
worst Vichyites, those who hailed
Petain and who, with Charles
Maurres,
Republic (“abattre la gueuse”);
and side by side with these
exploiters and enemies of the
people are a good many sincere
but politically backward people
who are either impressed by the

_ anti-communist campaign or dis-

satisfied with the, food rations
and rising prices. Voting for de
Gaulle, they naively thought they
were voting for order, while on
the contrary they run the risk
of helping usher in the worst
disorder. enh:

sought to smash the.

te despair of France!

The General’s sweeping state-
ment on the day after elections
has already disillusioned more
than one of them. By demanding
a revision of the freely-voted
constitution, dissolution of the
National Assemby and reelection
of another Assembly by means
of a new electoral law expressly .
designed to facilitate his seizure
of power, General de Gaulle has
appeared in his true light—a man
with dictatorial ambitions. And
many Frenchmen, reading the
text of his insolent statement,
recalled Hitler’s pronouncements
prior to his advent to power.

Bor they are biting off more

than they can chew. If the
Social-Democratic petty bourge-
oise in France is playing its trad-
itional role, if the two sections
of the conservative big bour-
geoisie, now reconciled, are

- launching an offensive against

democracy spearheaded by Gen-
eral de Gaulle, the only force
remaining intact is the working
class. That is the great pro-
gressive force which embodies
the spirit of our country.

It is very amusing to watch
the rivalries between the partis-
ans of de Gaulle, open fascists
and the shame-faced fascists who |
prefer the sugary and hypocritic-
al manners of Ramadier.

Speaking on the radio, Jean-
Paul Sartre attacked General de
Gaulle, criticizing him in effect
for not sufficiently keeping up
the appearance of freedom. Then >
in his broadcast the following
week Sartre attacked the Com-
munists. That is exactly Ram-
adier’s position, and he had Sartre
talk over the air to defend that

position.

These gentlemen claim that
they are creating what they call
“the third force” between the two
blocs. But this aleged third
force represents nothing. One
does not have to be over-intelli- .
gent to understand that there is
only one way to check reviving ~
fascism: by uniting all the demo-

The Assembly has not under-
stood this. That is why the Com- |
munist Party is taking the de-
bate straight to the masses. The
country’s welfare depends on the
energy of the working class, on
its unity, its faith in the future.

And since I believe in this
energy, this unity, this faith, I
am convinced that de Gaulle will
never come into power. :

The de Gaullists will undoubt-
edly intensify their agitation,
stepping up their demonstrations
and provocations. But the As-
sembly .will not commit suicide.
In the final analysis, the Social-
ists will not dare to do so. And
besides, they want to hold on to
their seats! :

So everything now depends on
the vigilance of the working
class, which alone is defending
the independence of our country
threatened by the Marshall Plan. ©
And de Gaulle and Ramadier are
both advocates of the Marshall |
Plan for the same antiCom- _
munist reasons, — ape eS

No, this is not the moment

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