May Day

In London, Herbert Morrison wore his red tie, and lady Laborites turned up at the House of Commons in their nattiest scarlet dresses. The News Chronicle's Columnist Ian Mackay was in a reminiscent mood. "May Day," he wrote of his youth, "to my eager young mind, was the great annual festival of freedom, when the quenchless spirit of the common man was continually refreshed and rededicated to the endless quest of love and friendship, liberty and peace among all the peoples of the world. How many of us even dreamed, as we marched starry-eyed behind the flags . . . towards our proletarian paradise, that we should find it so rigorous and austere?"

When May Day dawned last week, the common man--by the millions--was on the march again, but not so starry-eyed. Labor had stolen its holiday from the Virgin and primitive goddesses of fertility to celebrate the dream of the eight-hour day. Now in turn Communism had stolen the holiday from the working man, and it had gone sour.

Cold, Wet Rain. In Berlin, a cold, wet wind whipped the stinging rain into red banners planted every 50 feet along Unter den Linden, in the Russian sector. A parade of workers shuffled drearily past while loudspeakers blared. Most of them had to parade whether they liked it or not. "I remember," said one oldtimer, "when we were liable to be fired if we participated. Today you're likely to be fired if you don't."

In Warsaw, a weary postman who had marched all day reflected the enthusiasm of most Poles for the May Day festivities: "I wonder if the Government is going to pay for our shoe leather and for getting our varicose veins treated."

In Havana, Cuba, the authorities expected a big day. Soldiers lay on the flat roofs along the parade's route, while first-aid stations and Red Cross blood banks stood by. It was the quietest May Day on record.

Perfunctory Venom. In Paris the sun shone on the Red Flags bordering the Place de la Concorde. But in the warm spring air the paraders sauntered listlessly, shouting their war cries with only perfunctory venom. A few demonstrators shouted: "A has la politique du dollar!" (Down with dollar diplomacy!)* in front of a Marxist movie from the U.S.--A Night in Casablanca, starring Groucho, Chico and Harpo. A woman stood weeping as she watched the Red Flags flutter close to France's own tricolore. "In the days of the occupation," she said, "Nazi flags, too, were sandwiched between French tricolores. They were tricolores without meaning. Now it is the same."

Moscow put on the biggest show. Atop Lenin's Tomb, peace-loving Generalissimo Joseph Stalin reviewed the greatest annual military show on earth. For some five hours, more than a million Red soldiers, sailors and workers marched by. While more than 200 Soviet warplanes swooped overhead, cavalry clattered and giant tanks clanked. The militant note was also struck by Ilya Ehrenburg, one of the Soviet Government's snappiest journalistic terriers. In Pravda, he gave the official text for the day: the U.S. Government does not speak for the American people. Even while the parade is taking place, cried Ilya, "the imperialists with their criminally aggressive plans [are] dreaming of plunging humanity into a sanguinary whirlpool of a new war. . . . Americans carry an atom bomb in one pocket and an Easter egg in the other. Against us are those Americans who are against the American people, those Englishmen who are against the English people, those Frenchmen who are against the French people . . . but in every country we have one friend, the people. . . . May Day will conquer."

* For the May Day antics of U.S. Marxists, see National Affairs.

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