THE REPUBLIC OF SILENCE

By A. J.Liebling '24, editor, and Prof. Ramon Guthrie, translator. Harcourt, Brace and Cos.,1947. 522 pp. $4.

During the war we in the Dartmouth Library tried to get examples of French Resistance literature. The only thing that turned up, as I recall it, was a translation of Vercor's The Silence of the Sea which was published over here by Macmillan.

Now, thanks to The Republic of Silence, any student of human nature or of history can read how men resisted a fiendish and calculating oppressor, once characterized, as Liebling tells us, by "the old Cure of La Chappelle" who had reason to know: "Sometimes I think that the good Germans are worse than the bad ones." Why some men collaborate with the enemy and others endure torture and death for freedom and love of country is a mystery probably no man can answer.

A. J. Liebling, brilliant war correspondent of The New Yorker, has done the English speaking world a great favor, as has the translator of most of these pieces, Professor Ramon Guthrie of Dartmouth College—and an excellent translation it is—in editing and compiling this book with illuminating and, at times, excusably bitter commentary, together with a few fugitive pieces he wrote for The NewYorker. Liebling writes: "I love France, just as I love New York City or the smell of burning leaves on a Long Island lawn. This does not mean that I love all the French or everything French, but the things I do not like I can often find excuses for. This is a pretty sure sign of an emotional attachment." A frank and honest statement.

This book will make us love France the more, a good thing in these days of "peace," and will recall to us many men, some of whom died under torture without betraying comrades, and some who fortunately survived, who loved freedom and liberty more than they did comfort and wealth under a treacherous and dangerous foe.

I hope we take this book to heart for collaborationists flourish in all countries, among all races, and among all creeds. We can be thankful some of our gloomy forebodings of 1940-1941 did not come true. They might well have, had it not been for the men of good will who write these pages. Just for the record some of them are Jacques Debu-Bridel, Vladimir Pozner, Vercors, Charles de Gaulle, Leon Moussinac, Jacques Decour (who was executed on May 30, 1942), Jean Paulhan, Louis Parrot, Joseph Kessel, Louis Aragon, and JeanPaul Sartre.

Vive la France!