1940-05-08 — Page 14

THE CHINA MAIL, MAY 8, 1940.

FIFTH COLUMN IN FRANCE SOVIET AND

You have told us that in Great Bri- tain certain allegations are being made concerning French policy which you would like to refute, and that there are certain rumours which you would like to destroy.

It is said, in particular, that France is a semi-Fascist country, where all liberties have been abolished, where Parliamentary government no longer exists, where the Trade Unions have been suppressed and their leaders im- prisoned.

As a result, surprise is apparently alliance between expressed at the British domocracy and French dicta- torship.

Need I tell you that we are some what surprised and disconcerted by such allegations, which in no way correspond to the truth.

state

Without doubt, there at present exists in the French Republic a of affairs which tends to restrict certain number of liberties.

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a

This is the inevitable consequence of the State Emergency Law result- ing from the war. In many cases the the military authorities have taken place of the civil authorities.

Certain abuses and excesses, it is true, have been noted, and against these protest has been made, in order that their effects may be modified.

It is wrong to say that Parliament does not exist.

It deliberates freely. The Govern- ment is subjected to and replies to questions, and, when matters which concern National Defence are under debate and necessitate discretion, all the Parties and the Government agree to discuss them in secret committee..

the early During

months of the war, there was a brutal and arbitrary censorship regime.

After campaigns in the Press and a full-dress Parliamentary debate, this regime has been a good deal modified and the political censorship suppress- ed.

It is not the above state of affairs, to which I have referred briefly, which has aroused in Great Britain the ac- cussations in question.

The cause has to be sought else where, and it is to be found, without doubt, in the measures taken any

Communists-measures against the which I do not deny are severe.

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But how can they not be considered legitimate? It is first necessary to understand the magnitude of the dan- ger which the communists represent to us in France.

If this were a Party which acted in the name of our national defence and determined its own policy and attitude, then, no matter what might be its social doctrines and revolutionary principles, the attitude of the French Government and of both. Chambers would be indefensible.

|

was

There would

have

YUGOSLAVIA

been a bullet in the heck for each of (SPECIAL TO "CHINA_MAIL") them and for everyone who tried to defend or excuse them.

Should it not be remembered that out judgment. the Communist Party made itself, in the National Assembly and the country at large, the mouthpiece of a foreign the accom- government which plice and associate of the government of another foreign country with which France is at present at war?

Under these conditions the question was absolutely clear.

It had simply to be decided whether a Party, under the orders and in the pay of a foreign Power, could, in time of war, take part, discuss, vote, legls- late in a French Asembly and whether it could be informed in the parliamen- tary commissions or secret committees of the Chamber and the Senate, of the military and diplomatic situation of

-By- PAUL FAURE

Secretary of the French Socialist Party, in a letter to the British Labour Party.

the country and given all the secret intelligence concerning national de-

fence.

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It has been said that the grounds on which the Communists were excluded are not to be found in the Constitu-

tion.

Perhaps. But the Constitution did not foresee, either, the existence of a Party of treachery installed, with sly malevolence, in the Chamber, in the parliamentary Commissions, in the ministerial ante-chambers and why not on the ministerial benches?

There, are circumstances where na- tural rights make good the weaknesses and loopholes of the written law, and of preservation where the instinct dictates to the individual and to the community measures of self-protec- tion and safety.

It should be noted, too.

have.

But there is something else that our British comrades ought to know and ponder over.

Belgrade, To-day. The curtain would have fallen on The Russo-Yugo-Slav négotiations six months ago. The in Moscow are proceeding most this incident French Republic knows how to be-favourably and it is probable that normal economic and diplomatic rela- tions between Moscow and Belgrade will be resumed in the near future. according to well-informed sources. That is the importance which the

It is even rumoured in authoritative Communists had assumed in the Paris region, thanks to large-scale propa-circles that the Yugo-Slav Govern- an opportunity of ganda fed by funds from abroad dur-ment is studying

sending to Moscow a military mission ing 20 years.

They had cells in all the factories of headed by General Maximovich, In-

the Paris region, which constitutes spector-General of

Yugo-Slav the vital centre of the country. They armed forces.-Havas. had got their hands on the greater part of the trade union offices.

the

In the electoral sphere, thanks to the system of abstentions in the second balfot and to the Popular Front, they had secured 33 out of a total of 60 Parliamentary seats for the Seine

area,

took part in all popular demonstrations with the republican parties. They learnt to sing the Marseillaise.

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A very large number of suburban They entered the Popular Front in mayoraltles were under their control. order to sabotage its internal policy and they made them into centres of and to impel its foreign policy towards Bolshevist propaganda pure and sim-war. They advocated war, whether ple.

in the case of Spain, Czecho-Slovakia or Poland.

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To-day, no one can doubt that the Communists place themselves outside the nation, that they obey a foreign Government.

If this state of affairs is difficult to admit in time of peace, it becomes absolutely intolerable in time of war.

Let mé

They even got to the point of ad- vocating national union and, forget- ting or pretending to forget their for- mula about religion being the "opiate of the people," they ostentatiously held out their hands to their Catholic brothers.

Then, once more changing their atti- repeat: no one can doubt | tude, they accused France and Britain that the Communists have always been of being responsible for the war. the agents of Moscow. We have only to look at their evolution since 1920.

Naturally, there have been several developments in the life of this Party, but these have always been determin- ed by considerations of foreign policy dictated by a foreign Power.

At first they attempted to form a Party which should be at once legal and underground.

They attacked everything which had until then been the basis of working class action and propaganda.

Hitler and Stalin are both as meek as lambs and innocent aş newly-borns. Only Chamberlain and Daladler, and with them the 'capitalist elique and their socialist lackeys"-mentioned by name-have put fire to the powder.

The "glorious" Russian armies ·an- swered this in Finland.

There the "rabble" have had the criminal impudence to defend them-

"Liberators" selves against

using methods which are known to have surpassed in horror everything that history has taught us of misery and

They claimed that they were essen- tially propagandists for the world re-

the massacre of men. that the volution, and said that the era of re- forms had gone by, that parliamen- tarism and democracy were things of the past, and that the time had come for armed rebellion.

French Government and the Chamber were punctilious and used the method of reprimand and generosity.

They allowed the Communist de- puties weeks of reflection in order that they might dissociate themselves from the Hitler-Stalin collusion and those who thus dissociated themselves --there are examples were allowed to retain their offices.

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Communists propaganda, carried on in co-operation with Berlin and Mos- cow, sometimes assumes a more sub- tle form more perfidious and more

It is true that these new theories dangerous. were not proof against experience and, This is when it seeks to exploit for with an extreme facility for adapta- its own ends the discontents and suf- tion, the Communists turned them-ferings of those sections of the popu- selves into reformists, while continu-lation who are most affected and suffer ing to make use of a most unheard-of most from the war, in order to cause result of which disorders, the first demagogy. Generosity was thus pushed to the

At the same time they attempted to would be to break the resistance of cause risings in the colonies; they en- our armies, point of imprudence. Those

An abominable underground leaflet munists who retracted are in a posi-couraged the Alsatian autonomists and tion to appreciate the superiority of sent telegrams of congratulation to campaign is being carried on which de- democratic methods over those of | Abdel-Krim at the time of the Moroc-scribes

can War. Bolshevism.

Com-

Must it not borne in mind, how- ever, that the

In Russia they would have been shot Communists are the direct agents of a foreign Power?

Then, they suddenly became very en bloc, without explanation and with- I nationalist and very democratic. They

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the present war as having been desired solely by British capital- ism.

The Communists thus seck, to, turn Fronoh public opinion against Britain, to demoralise the mass of the people and the Army in order to provoke moral disintegration and prepare the atmosphere for disorders.

After that, no doubt, Hitler and Stalin would have the mission of re- storing order.

That is the situation.

Once more, it justifies French policy and the measures `taken against a Party, of treachery, at the moment when hte destiny of France together with that of Britain, and all hopes of democracy and freedom, are in the balance.

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