The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 24, 1926, Page 10

(OE NA ERNE LOLOL REE IEEE SD DME LPS ROE UR ee a ’ The CRIER ~ : By Henri Barbusse TRANSLATED BY LYDIA GIBSON. Third Installment. “MMHE CRIER” is the nickname of a man who lived in.a little village in France. His neighbors gaye him this name because he had a mania for telling the truth to everyone, They feared him, not knowing who or what would be the next to come under his tongue-lashing. He told his gonsumptive brother that he would die, and he told the woman who had lived with him for awhile after his wife left him, that not love but necessity had brought them together. He laughed at the townsmen and the mayor for toadying to a mittionaire tourist, he urged and showed up bunk like a whirlwind. But when his wife came back, after running away with another man, he took her back to their house, He told the churchgoers that “God is a product made for the use of those who pro- duce nothing,” and was amazed that they themselves didn’t believe in God, though they went obediently to mass “to do as others do.” And when they laughed at a Negro he showed them how all races of men are alike under their superficial differences, and that war is a fraud maneuvered by others higher up. The preacher and the mayor tried to quiet the peo- ple by explaining that by doing nothing they should improve everything; but with one of his huge bursts of sardonic laughter the Crier showed how ridiculous and hypocritical this was. But nevertheless, his neighbors feared him. They didn’t like to have all their hypoc- risies and illusions and comfortable lies pulled out and torn to pieces. And they wondered how this strange man would end. Then some- thing happened. THERE was a revolutionist. This red couldn’t find work, he was chased away everywhere, he knew only the wrong side of the houses hereabouts. He was like something that had sprung up out of the earth. His clothes were ragged and patched. The light clothed him in gray. The villagers, with the instinct of hunting dogs, growled at him. | The*Crier stood by the hunted man, and said} oo anat Wasorising there.>, ...: he was the only honest man among them: “This man has against him all the jesuits, all the jingos, all the profiteers and the in- triguers, all the ministers and hangmen in creation! They will make even peace between themselves in order to fall upon him all to- gether. “Revolution? Ha! Mix injustice with loyal- ty, start it fermenting and you will have revo- lution,” He made them see the sort of big trap they were caught in, when they stuck a finger into the fear of revolution, and that they were beat- en and bound, and that the minute one wanted to do something better and decenter, the “im- mediate duty” was held up before one’s eyes like an. immovable thing—the “immediate,” bah! (it was so true that several of his hear- ers put out a hand to push off that “imme- diate’), because the rich must make, for their succéss,;,more separation between men than jthere really is. ' “Where is truth to bé found, who will tell it ‘to us” quavered the school marm, who was full of good ideas and.of good will, but who was troubled by grave inner doubts, He said, sonorously: “Who tells us that the metric system is the truth? “And yet you have the audacity to ap-. ply it? And before adopting this arrangement of weights and measures, you didn’t wait for them to make that famous voyage to the moon]. , to prove it?” The reason that is in us is of fragile health; ‘it easily sickens, with lots of complications; | andsthis, in one flash, he had shown. _ “He is insupportable!” said the gentleman. This’ gentleman, who intervened so often, was never the same one. It was the petty offi- cials, or the liberal professional man, or the investor, all cut to the same pattern. This time it happened to be a vast body which came walking on tiny legs; from behind, his trousers looked Jike a,dwarf’s. ¥ The: gentleman in question wanted very ‘much to make a speech, but he had the disad- vantage of only being able to call names,. He wanted to say, for example; “You may hate the war and curse all you please, Very well. But if you so much as dare to rummage into ,\ the real causes of the war, Halt! Police, seize this man.” He wanted to say this with dignity and force, but- it was like an indigestion. But this didn’t stop a great wave of indig- nation rising against the trouble maker who poured unrest and bitterness into people by showing them reality as it really was at work. All were really against him. He was all alone, because, when you say what is so, it makes an explosion that shocks everyone. But wait. a “Always me, they say, always more. I want more than you, more than you! Grab, here and there and everywhere, families, countries, everywhere and always. Then what?” _ He put the question, and it was twenty ques- tions at once sinking each person there, ~ “Why, the end of the world,” saifl a little boy. And what the little boy said was like a very soft and very clear clap of thunder. The gentleman lifted up his voice, but he didn’t say what he would have said an instant before. He humbly approached the upright man and in the soft voice of a tempter he said: “My dear friend, I am as bold as you, bolder even... But keep your dreams to yourself. To respect Truth, begin by not speaking. Never avow it. It is not the proper time. It is never the proper timé.” The shrill chorus of lawyers, and specialists called politicians, and all the vicious-minded, and the speculators sweating calculations, echoed that it was not the proper time. But it was like a drop of holy water sprinkled in the ocean. Around the edges of the crowd voices were rising. “Equality!” said one. “Equality!” said another. And more and more, each one-saying the same thing. And they didn’t stop. The gentlemen, preacher and the mayor, were terrified by these people who were all saying what must be. For what in the world then could stop it from being? They had never been so frightened. They stuck their fingers in, their ears and ran away fromthe hurri- “A fool? You still say he was a fool? Don’t you see that it would be a paradise—the only poor paradise possible—if everyone finished what he began?” That day, from one minute to another, dis- approval became approval. Everyone felt the miraculous swing of the seesaw. His sin- cerity, his simplicity, his truth, became evident to all. Now you heard everywhere: “‘There’s a cap- able man; there’s a dependable man, He and his ideas will live a hundred years.” . To the stranger passing by, he seemed a man like all the rest; to us, his neighbors, he seemed immeasurable. The hatred that, had hung around him was now called “respect”; for that’s what men are like. LECTION time came around; they said: “We'll vote for you.” And the vote tell- ers read his name, his name, his name, noth- ing but his name, on every scrap of paper. But at the time he was alderman, then mayor, he was ill. A queer sickness—you couldn’t say just ex- actly what it was. It began about the time he didn’t sell his hay. He had a stroke with all that hay unsold. He said-then he was tired all the time. His face was lined, combed in all directions with wrinkles. ; He cried once or twice (and it’s a bad sign): “But it isn’t age!” But that’s what it was. He was growing old; he had grown old. Age came slowly like a sickness and at the same time suddenly like an accident. He became mayor at the same time that he became old, and that made a mixture. TTHAT business of the chimney. _ “Mister Mayor,” said the people standing in rows in his office, “things are going wrong. It’s on account of that new factory chimney. It_ smokes.’ Thé people to windward of it in the valley are all poisoned withit. It isn’t natural smoke, it’s metallic, it’s like sand. We swallow it. You have to open your windows sometimes. When we wake up in the morn- ing we have to open our windows to air out the rooms; then we have.to eat that . black smoke. We and our children are choked full : ; 4 | dered the mayor. of that dirt. What are-we anyway? Boxeg for them to throw their clinkers and slag into? There it is. Think it over and we’ll come back Tuesday to hear what you have decidéd to do about it.” : a sey They went away, very, orderly and_ polite, having set forth their clear right. not to be poisoned. He knew that chimney, of course, which you could see fronr anywhere in the neighborhood, like the opposite of a lighthouse. But he made an inquiry, from which it was found that the master of the chimney smoke was a great per- sonage who made a lot of money ut of it, His chimney was metallic, and had all the mod- ern improvements possible to chimneys, and used waste products and by-products and cin- ders. It was an “integral combustion” chim- ney, he said. But having noticed on his one visit to the factory that the smoke was -as- phyxiating half the town, this personage had approached the prefect and the under-prefect, the deputy, the senator, and the minister, to choke off in advance any interference with his chimney. Tuesday, as they had said, the people came for the mayor’s answer. They waited, gently grinding their teeth because of the cinder- dust. “There are higher interests,” he said, “Well then?” “There are higher interests.” _ He had said, he too—the phrase which the others said, which they have said since the world has been a world, or rather since the appetites of the mighty have not dared go en- tirely naked, and have had to cover themselves with words. He had said the phrase that makes wars, and great misery and incaléulable slavery—and which is a lie. For that business of the chimney was exactly in miniature, the great business of capitalism over the world. They didn’t move. One said: “This superior interest. . . .. it’s just not a superior intérest at,all; riches, dividends. The poor. the masses of poor people.” Briefly, he served up to the mayor, so té: speak, old scraps of himself. But the mayor said: “What's all that stuff and nonsense?” Well, at last they had to walk out on their feet; dragging across the door-sill of the may- or’s office their neatly polished shoes, their wooden sabots, their bare feet calloused by the roads. LJTTLE things happened. Then the big things. There was a fine to-do, that morning. There was talk of a loan for military constructions, and the under-prefect sent: to say that public opinion must be felt out. . The town hall was full. The gentleman was there. He didn’t have much hope in this muni- cipal council, knowing the ways and the ges- tures of the new mayor. But you have to do him the justice of admitting that he returned to the attack with the persistance of a clock, and really tried in every way to ram resigna- tion and passive obedience into the people. The audience thought, looking at this gentle- man: “Look out! There'll be an uproar.” The first to talk was young, and spoke his thought crudely: ,:).. .. “They want to use up the money of the whole world in this dangerous nonsense, Let them fight it out among, themselves, these gentlemen!” fines ‘ane ica 4 me “And our country! What will you do with our country?” cried the. new, mayor. ot The young man: “They put up that word, Our Country, for all to see; and then’ they’ make a republic with a clean face and a dirty body.” ms “Over the republic is France, bandit!” thuny i a o st tt lg b si L G is V a OY Vas-aod Lorri _, “France is the French;” replied the pane and little non-plussed. “It's menyy" ..). you. said that. ... .” roeane ater “Not at all, that’s nothing to do with it! France. is something entirely apart, for which all Frenchmen must sacrifice themselves to the end.” , Dramatic moment! . And what was terrible about it, and stuck in everyone’s gullet, was that he said: “I, who have always told the truth, . .” He used that to shut them up. ‘ He adjourn-