LETTERS. TO THE EDITOR
- L'AFFAIRE KRAVCHENKO
Snt,—Mrs. Tanya Matthews's article L'Affaire Kravchenko has struck me as one-sided, redolent of or, rather, immersed in, the atmosphere of impassioned party spirit that prevailed in the court-room itself, and, therefore, unworthy of the traditions of intellectual probity and fair play which the Spectator makes it a point to keep up. And I cannot help thinking it was in the circumstances hazardous to entrust to the pen of a Russian woman an article in which severe impartiality was the first requisite.
While the author has chosen to set the greatest store on the evidence- given by the Kravchenko witnesses, an evidence which may often sound suspicious for reasons identical and inverse to those that tend to discredit the Soviet witnesses' testimony, she has dismissed the British witnesses with easy jokes, has omitted to mention the very important testimony of the American writer Albert Kahn, aini has airily lumped under the label of " simpletons or fanatics " such mien as Vercors, Martin-Chauffier, Farge, Cassou, d'Aitier, Joliot-Curie, and several other university pro- fessors!
Such proceeding is most discourteous and un-British. The reporter has also given the impression that General Rudenko acted as a fanatic vomiting abuse, whereas the real fact is that the Soviet army officer, while dealing with his adversary in a straightforward soldier's manner, spoke in a very quiet voice • and with never-to-be-ruffled self-control, while Kravchenko reached one of the summits of his pulpit-punching, stamping, foaming, howling, insulting performance. Indeed, even Kravchenko's hottest supporters had to admit that he had gone too far in that instance, and President Durkheim to protest against that treatment of a Red Army general, in the name of decency and courtesy.
But the most surprising statement is that about the Communist Party being responsible for the trial. It was ICravchenko who brought an action for libel against Les Lettres Francaises, wasn't it? But the libel angle of the matter should not be over-emphasised. When asked why he had not sued American journalists who had been quite as unkind to him, Knwchenko blurted out that it was because, whereas the American Com- munist PartY was negligible, the French Communist Party was something " worth attending to." That is why he has come here to fight it.
He will probably get Les Lettres Francaises condemned, and what will be the result of it? He will contribute to increase the power of the Communist Party, who will exploit the condemnation to their own advantage. That has always been the outcome of any maladroit and challenging action against them. From 1940 to 1944 they were persecuted first by Daladier, then by Laval-Hitler: the result of it was the stupendous increase of their number within that period. That is why I think—for 21111 no Communist—that an article such as Mrs. Tanya Matthews's defeats its own ends. The one entitled Frontier in France is much better.—Yours truly, JEAN BAILHACHE. 15 rue Dailly, St. Omer (S. et 0.), France.
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