Underground

Europe's newest dictator, King Carol II, squeezed the last squealing drop of press freedom from Rumania last week. That it was an easy thing to do, he knew. The last anti-Fascist Italian editor has long since been silenced. Few Germans today ever see an anti-Nazi publication. A smattering of troublesome pamphlets is still smuggled in the bottom of wheat barges ascending the Rhine from Holland, and such journals as the inflammatory bi-monthly Die Schiffart (Shipping) are printed in New York, hidden in the cargoes of German ships by U. S. longshoremen and sneaked into Germany under German longshoremen's jackets.

But within German boundaries, the rare and fearless publishers of anti-Nazi sheets are soon traced, not often heard from again. Cleverest ruse to defeat the omnipresent police has been to plug the rear end of a van with furniture, set up a print shop between that tier and the driver's seat, travel brazenly from, town to town turning out anti-Nazi propaganda. One such traveling paper, The Wanderer, was discovered last summer when it stuck in the mud, summoned another truck for succor.

Any other Wanderer still at loose in Germany could last week have learned some tricks from an engrossing tale* told by Englishman Oscar Millard, onetime London correspondent in Belgium now in Hollywood doing a movie version. He heard it from Paul Jourdain, whose father Victor was pre-War publisher of Le Patriote and Wartime publisher of La Libre Belgique (Free Belgium). The German occupants in Brussels silenced all other patriotic Belgian papers but in spite of all efforts Free Belgium defied the Germans to the very day of the Armistice, then carried on to become the fourth largest modern Belgian daily.

Most influential among Belgian Catholic editors, Victor Jourdain was stunned by the tragic fallacy of his policy of pacifism when Belgium was overrun. Soured, the old man vowed never to give the Germans the satisfaction of a silent opposition. He built a trapdoor to his attic, began translating smuggled copies of London papers. Through an intermediary who used a false name, Victor Jourdain supplied money to build up a staff of patriotic priests and laymen for gathering articles and distributing 20,000 copies of Free Belgium, taunting the German occupants and preaching patriotic passive resistance. The stories, written on thin tissue, were carried to the printers in a hollow cane. Bundles of the finished sheet were transferred in store elevators, on dark street corners, in crowded busses. Yet each man knew only the distribution links above and below him. For aiding Free Belgium two men were shot and scores of others died slowly in German concentration camps without ever knowing who produced the paper, or where.

Raids and arrests made each issue a crisis. Once a German policeman, directing a raid on a trembling printer's shop, sat down on a type form of Free Belgium, almost carried a "proof" on the seat of his pants. Thrice police rounded up everyone they thought responsible for Free Belgium but never did they pluck out its heart. At one mass trial, the German policeman guarding the courtroom found the next issue pinned to his coattails. The bewildered Kaiser and the enraged Brussels commander regularly received copies.

A few days before the Armistice Victor Jourdain died, but for nearly two years previous police had suspected him and he had turned over to others the reckless venture he had begun. In four years 171 issues were distributed (some a week late) and only the last was openly issued without fear of death. Victor Jourdain had made good his taunt: "We defy our persecutors ever to silence us. Truth will cry louder than their lies. . . ."

* UNDERGROUND NEWS--Robert M. McBride

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