The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-02-25
BY HENRI BARBUSSE.


European associates into the white
terror conditions in Rumania. The
investigation was carried out under
extreme difficulties, the Rumanian
fascist government throwing every
possible obstacle in the way of the
investigators. The subsequent re-
ports which showed a systematic
persecution of workers and peasants
almost unequalled in the history of
bourgeois repressions appeared SUBJ
sequently in L'Humanite, the
French Communist daily.
Henri Barbusse is the celebrated
French revolutionary novelist, best
known as the author of Under
Fire." Chains" Light" and a
spirited appeal to the French in
teIlectuals, ''The Knife Between the
Teeth" He is the sponsor of the
Clarte group of revolutionary writ
ers and intellectuals.
'eTHERE is worse still, yes, worse
than the hammer strokes on your
bones and the tearing and cutting of
your skin, which stop just little be-
fore they kill you because yonder
they find means of killing you several
times consecutively), there is the di-
sease which they give YOU"
The cage and the gherla guaran-
tee you against tuberculosis" eaid
Spridicu and Jon.
II wish to speak of the disease
which is directly distributed, as the
bastinado is distributed. l wish to
speak of one of them, exantematic
typhus, to give it its true, dreadful
name. Yes, that is also an instrument
which is used in order to tame Rou-
manian political prisoners, an instru-
ment which one does not see, and
which creeps in everywhere.
There is prison which is i'm
pregnated and rotten with this
disease: it's Galata prison. For the
rest the bourgeois newspapers have
said it; when newspaper is bour-
geois and has said such a thing, it's
because it could not help saying it.
AT Galaoa it sweats, it oozes, it rains
typhus. 1t turks under the crust of
the soil, under the skin of the walls,
in the coats of filth on the doors,
even in the marrow Of the pillars.
"The typhus patients are, of course,
mixed with the other prisoners. The
lice which gorge themselves on their,
blood have nothing to do when their
client is buried, as they like warm
blood, so they apply themselves to the
survivors.
"You see the trick for evading the
Roumanian law which has suppressed
the death penalty. What would you
wish them to do to the lice, each of
which is microbe merchant? And
they are on you at once, layers of 'em,
and as to your skin, it's like news
paper in which the print is crawling.
There was one-eyed Simon who
lay alongside of us for three weeks,
unconscious. He writhed queerly and
was delirious from morning till eve
ming and so round the clock.
!" 1T is abdominal commissions, that
is to say, nothing said the doctor.
Sand he gave him camomile and
a purgative.
eve twenty-five prisoners shut in
the same cell with him knew very
well what it was, during the hours
which we used to pass looking at this
heap of rags which writhed and
writhed and made the last of human
strength groan on mattress of dung,
as you may imagine that it was never
changed, still less when it was taken
to the small tub. He was surrounded
by stencil so dense that it seemed as
if you could touch it.
"a week before someone had ven
tured to say to the head warder, Sup
pose Simon were given bath?'
"The face of the chief warder had
become as red as volcano in erup-
ton. "A bath! He has held out quite
well for five years without taking a
bath!' beloved the potentate in an
swer, and went on to bawl Others in
the prison have done very we'll with
out taking a bath for seven years.
And besides, what's it to do with
your
"You see the problem: wearing
clothes which had been bequeathed to
us by prisoners who had disappeared
under the earth, fed with little
warm water called tea, with ice-cold
pap and lukewarm soup of rotten
beans, unwashed and with doctor
who refused to be doctor, sucked by
poisoned vermin and heaped on top of
each other, the question was how to
escape deadly contagion.
Sometimes we hoped: one has such
strange dreams! But above all we
were afraid. Our teeth chartered
more and more and we felt our bellies
gripped and the stencil of Simon's bed
embraced us like death itself.
To KNOW WHY VI