To what extent was the effect produced upon us by
the first book of Vercors, as by the poems of Aragon, an adventitious effect? Is Vercors really an important writer, or merely a man of fine character and sensibility who writes well? I have received this week two further books by Vercors, published by-the same Editions de Minuit, which have now no further need to be clandestine. I have sought to read them with the utmost objectivity and not to allow their emotional content and associations to disturb my judgement ; and I confess that I have not succeeded in disentangling such permanent value as they may possess from the feelings which their contemporary impact arouses. It should be possible, now that France has been liberated and that her fezt are set upon the hard road towards recovery, to read the story of her humiliation and triumph without experiencing those gusts of pity and terror which shook us in 1941 and 1942. But the central theme which Vercors deals with in his two recent books is not only the theme of France ; it is a theme which is still achingly contemporaneous, namely the decline, " l'ignoble recut," of human values in the face of power. The problem of which he treats is not merely a French problem, but a world problem ; and the tragedy which is implicit in these two stories, and which gives to them so intense a topical appeal, is the surrender of heroism and selflessness to the vices of lassitude and personal convenience. We cannot read these two books without experiencing the pangs of self-reproach.
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