The Wilmington morning star., 1944-08-31
BY WESTBROOK PEGLE


NEW YORK.-Reporters in France tell OF
the execution of French women and men who
were deemed to have collaborated with the
Nazis and of women shorn as a mark of dis
grace. The trials must have been informal
and emotional, and there runs through the dis
patches strong suggestion that the commu-
nists of France are sitting as judges of
patriotism to a country which they themselves
betrayed in the days of the phony war and
on down to the fall.
In the Herald Tribune, John Chabor Smith,
writing from Marseille, says the French Forces
of the Interior, after Selling town, install
local government consisting of the council
of liberation or men named by the council
The council, he says, includes a representa-
tive from each of the six principal political
groups. including the communist.
That the communists in France, as here,
fight desperately for communism no man will
deny. Like the Nazis, they are political fanat-
les and as cruel, wanton, devious and treach-
erous. They have SO much in common that
not long ago before the war some American
writer's who had studied history in process in
Germany were calling the Nazis brown boil
sheviks
But it is fact nevertheless that they
were traitors to France and would have open
ed the gates from the inside to let the Nazis
in without a fight, just as the communists In
the United States did all they could to keep
this country unarmed and helpless until June,
1941 President Roosevelt, himself, fatty ac-
cused the American communists of this when
he sent regiment of the regular Army to
Inglewood, Cal, to drive their terrorists from
the gates of one of our most important air.
plane factories SO that the Americans could
get to their jobs. Elmer Davis, of the owl,
said that in the absence of more exact infor-
nation he would regard communist any
one who opposed rearming program prior
to Hitler's attack on Russia, but changed over
night when the Berlin-MoscoW alliance broke.
To refresh our memory of the conduct of
the American communists during that time,
we may refer to the files of some of the
house organs of the CLIO unions which were
then (and remain today communist fronts),
controlled by clever and indefatigable commu-
mist minorites. The Daily Worker is another
reliable reference.
The communists in France were worse than
useless in the French army facing the Ger
mans. They not only wouldn't fight the Nazis,
but they made more CHASTITY the desperate
position of those Frenchmen who did fight
and many of whom died. They were saboteurs
in the factories and ports and collaboration
lists in far more deadly and tragic ways while
there was still a chance of survival than those
who, during the long dark night since the fall,
lost hope of rescue and simply submitted.
French politics has been so horribly corrupt
and confused that even before the war few
Americans had the confidence in their judg-
ment to boast that they understood But I'M
doubtedy there were royalists and faScists of
varying degrees who saw the situation as a
choice between fascism and communism and.
after the collapse, went fascist or collabora-
ZIONIST
But there was one certainty during all that
time down to the collapse. The communists
were active aggressive traitors who stabbed
their own country in the back just as surely
as Mussolini did, and only after the foul deed
was done and the Nazis were in, suddenly
turned patriots because Russia, their splr-
itual homeland, was in danger. Their purpose
was not to rescue France but to help Russia
by harassing the Nazis in France
That such people should now be able to
hound and condemn and execute others, even
though some of the accused actually were
traitors, is hideous irony and an injustice
to the American and British fighters W o
drove the Germans out. For these American
and British soldiers, too, were betrayed by
the communists and now find French commu-
nists exploiting their victory.
1t will not be SO, apparently, but surely
these traitors, too, should be called to trial.
Instead we find them participating in the con-
troll of the nation they helped the Nazis to
humiliate and torture beyond respect of re-
covery within that term which President
Roosevelt calls the foreseeable future.
| -V
so THEY SAY