"National Solidarity"

FRANCE "National Solidarity"

So many thousands of French people were refugees from the Frontier Zone in the last fortnight, many dead broke and in desperate need, that to get money to succor them the State announced a "national solidarity" tax to be collected after October 1 by taking 15% of all salaries public and private, annuities and even pensions. Refugee traffic through Paris--as refugees moved from one part of France to another--was at the rate of over 5,000 people per day. Since people have to carry baggage even in wartime and many of the refugees are old men, women or children, husky porters who might have been sent to the Maginot Line were still sweating in Paris stations.

Anyone owning foreign securities who dropped in at a French bank to cash the coupons was asked if he was French. In case the answer was "yes," the bank deducted 36% of the payment as a tax. Down at the other end of the economic scale, French workmen found their overtime pay docked by a tax of 25% also for "national solidarity."

Any grumbling about all this simply was out. And the French mood last week was such that any element which could possibly be called subversive was under pressure of cracking weight. Leon Blum, the Socialist leader who three years ago gave France a brief "New Deal" as Premier, wrote in his Le Populaire: "I appeal to the Communist chiefs, and I adjure them once more--let them cry out to the country that their pact with Moscow is broken, that Stalin's stab in the back has freed them from their pledges, that all is finished between them and Moscow and that they are henceforth only French citizens, entirely free, that is to say having now no other duty and discipline than the common duty and common discipline of Frenchmen. But let them make haste."

This was interpreted as a veiled warning that the Daladier Cabinet may soon outlaw the Communist Party altogether. Ever since the Hitler-Stalin pact was announced French Communist Deputies have been quietly resigning from the Party, hoping to keep their seats in the Chamber. The French equivalent of the American Federation of Labor, the C. G. T. (Confederation Generate du Travail) headed by Labor Boss Leon Jouhaux adopted a resolution which described Russia's gobbling up of three-fifths of Poland (see p. 29) as "a premeditated treason consummated against peace, and an act of treachery toward the proletariat, which had been summoned to rise against Naziism. This aid to an aggressor government places in jeopardy the lives of millions upon millions of human beings, including millions of workers."

> Meanwhile French style leadership of the world in the luxury trades was to be upheld right through World War II as an economic ace in the hole for La Patrie Hitherto obscure M. Gorin, Managing Secretary of the Chamber of Parisian Dressmakers, was busy with its big-name patrons, Lelong, Vionnet, Maggyrouff, and others devising style strategy and reputedly fixing on Biarritz as the probable wartime G.H.Q. of haute couture. It is not far from the mouth of the Gironde, where ships from the U. S. now call in France, also handy to Lisbon, the Clipper's port. "Doubtless there will be no mid-season openings." observed M. Gorin, "but by February the new wartime fashion machine should be running smoothly." In Paris the first feminine fashion to follow gas masks was low heels, because busses and cabs were getting so scarce and "everyone is walking."

> On the bacteriological front, the Pasteur Institute proudly announced that it has upped its production of tetanus antitoxin from 20,000 flasks per day before World War II broke out to 50,000, meanwhile doubling production of typhus, dysentery, diphtheria, pneumonia and gangrene serums.

> The State has been requisitioning mules, motor cars and trucks wholesale, but their former owners were found agreeing in most cases that they have been paid fair or even high prices. In its purchases of motor cars the State was shrewdly confining its requisitions as much as possible to Citroens, Renaults and Peugeots manufactured within the past two years, these being the French equivalents to Chevrolets, Fords and Plymouths.

> The Paris Opera will continue to perform, either at Paris or at Nantes. The Comedie Franc,aise, which has been dark since the war began (although it has given radio performances) reopened last week, stressing a bombproof shelter to which the audience can rush. Paris night life now ends at 11 p.m., shops display cheerful signs "EARLY TO BED, EARLY TO RISE!" and "WE HAVE EXCELLENT GASPROOF SHELTERS FOR OUR CUSTOMERS." But French cities, in contrast to British were not going in for anything like the total blackouts which in London have proved so depressing and even dangerous. Paris street lights burn dimly except during air-raid alarms, when they are all put out by throwing a master switch.

> Since the individualistic French can be regimented just so far and no further, the Paris police, after decreeing that anyone who went out without a gas mask would be fined, rescinded this order, left irresponsible Parisians free to breathe what they please.

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