Right to Incite

In the two years that Andre Stil, 31, a onetime schoolteacher, has been editing France's top Communist daily L'Humanite, he has proved his qualifications for the job. This year he won a Stalin Prize for the first volume of his novel Le Premier Choc (The First Blow), glorifying French stevedores who end up sabotaging U.S. military shipments to France under the Atlantic Pact. Last week Editor Stil was doing even better work for the party. On the eve of General Ridgway's arrival in Paris to take over NATO's command, he proclaimed mass demonstrations against the "microbe killer," ran cartoons showing Ridgway leading an army of insects. L'Humanite's articles were more than polemics; reading like marching orders ("All workers and inhabitants will come en masse"), they announced "more than 20 powerful demonstrations."

Paris' respected Le Figaro termed these headlines "undisguised appeals to violence and disorder," demanded to know what police would do. But Paris police did nothing hasty. After one evening's demonstrations fizzled, they waited for things to cool off. Next morning L'Humanite fanned the flames by saying that the first riot was only the beginning, and called on the party to resist the "black wall of police sticks and carbines." It sounded the tocsin for a bigger demonstration. At the same time party headquarters sent out orders which made it appear that the demonstration would be an attempt to overthrow the government (see INTERNATIONAL).

The Paris police waited no longer. They roused Editor Stil out of his suburban house, popped him into jail for "inciting to public demonstrations, armed or otherwise." Undismayed, Stil smuggled stories out of jail, but his biggest story ("Ridg-way . . . has entered a Paris in a state of siege") was lost to his readers. At 4:30 a.m. police descended on L'Humanite, confiscated 45,000 copies and seized others that had been distributed. The charge against Editor Stil was changed to a graver one (provocation to violence), with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Even though L'Humanite was back on the streets last week, it still had plenty of troubles. In France, where all newspapers have been losing circulation, no group has dropped more drastically than the Communist dailies. L'Humanite alone, once at a peak of 600,000, has fallen to an alltime low of 190,000. Ce Soir, the party's afternoon paper, is down to less than one-third of its 1947 circulation of 433,000. There are also signs that the new Communist "get-tough" policy for France leaves little room for weak papers that can't make their own way. Last month the pro-Communist weekly Action quietly folded without even a whimper of protest from party headquarters. Despite the rioting, the Paris police have no intention of restricting the Communist press. Said a Ministry of Interior official: "We can't do anything to a paper just because it's Communist. But let them break the law . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.