The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 8, 1927, Page 10

¥ A Communist Reply to Marshal Foch Marshal Foch, butcher-in-chief of the united allied command in the last part of the world war, recently gaye the Hearst press an inter- view which was charged with hostility against the Soviet Union. The following reply to Foch’s tirade is from Andre Marty, the noted French Communist who commanded the French battle- ship on service in the Black Sea that hoisted the Red Flag when her commander was ordered to fire on the Soviet forces im the early days of the Bolshevik revolution. Comrade Marty is now serving a sentence in a French penitentiary for anti-capitalist activities.—Ed. ak * + (Translated from “L’Humanite” by Leen Mabille). Prison of La Sante, Paris, August 24th, 1927. To Mr. Marshal Foch, Laie Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies. Mr. Marshal, You just gave an interview to the Hearest press regarding the statement you made in 1919 to the Ambassadors’ Conference, that “if the states sur- rounding Russia would receive ammunition and sut- ficient military means you were to once and for all destroy every single Bolsheviki menace.” Your of- fer was rejected, you said because “everybody was tired of war.” You are trying to make believe that if the Rus- sian revolution lives it is because the Ambassadors’ Conference refused to follow your suggestion. Permit me, Mr. Marshal, to recall to you a few facts, which, if they do not change your opinion, will at least be useful in enlightening the too many workers who read the capitalist press. * * * In February 1919, as the Allies’ Chief Commander, you did more than to arm the states surrounding Russia, executive agents of the Franco-British im- perialist gang. On December 18th, 1918, you made the 156th Division land upon Russian soil by force; then you accumulated arms and ammunition upon the Roumania-Ukrainian front, and upon the Black Sea border. Beginning April 1919 more than 100,000 Roumanian, Serbian, Polish, White Guard Russian, Greek and French soldiers, supported by more than 60 battleships of every size surrounded Revolution- ary Russia in un iron vise, and Clemenceau con- tinually repeated that in six months he would erush the Bolsheviki. The French capitalists, their ministers and mili- tarists of whom you were the chief at the time for- got one thing: that before you could assassinate the Russian Revolution more than tanks, airplanes and heavy cannon are necessary; you must have soldiers and sailors who would obey you, Certainly you did not neglect to arrive at ‘this point. You employed lies. Thus, on Dec. 8th, 1918, the general staff (Orient Army, Order No. 6224-3) announced to the 156th Division that their transfer from Salonica to Odesso and Sebastopol was not fer purposes of war, but so that they would be quar- tered under better conditions. Once the transfer had been accomplished the “Allied Army Bulletin” and other papers of the same sort repeated the most fantastic stories about the Russian Revolution: community of women (prostitute), invention worthy By ANDRE MARTY of your tools, the betrayal of the German imperialist agents, Lenin and Trotsky; the torture and mas- sacre of prisoners by the Bolsheviki and other stu- pidities of that sort. You employed torture; your police under General d’Anselme, high director, commander in Odessa mur- dered dozens of revolutionary workers, as an ex- ample, Lastotchkine, the president of the Bolsheviki Party was drowned by your police April 5th, 1919, after being tortured 15 days, sticking needles under his finger nails to make him speak. You used as- sassination: your officers surpassed their White Russian friends by slaughtering any person sus- pected of Bolshevik propaganda. Among many cases I will cite the crimes of March ist, 1919, in the course of which eleven persons were massacred, among them three young girls and our comrade Jeanne Labourbe. You used mass slaughtering as on the night of March 10th, 1919 where Admiral Legay bombarded Kherson killing more than 100 women and children; as on April 29th, 1919 where Colonel Trousson (made general by Herriot of the League of the Rights of Man) slaughtering with machine guns a quiet parade in the streets of Sebastopol, killing French sailors and Russian workers, among them a young girl by the name of Mouraeheva Thais. At night you shot proletarian fighters, as those French soldiers of the 19th regiment of artillery whose names you-are yet hiding, your court martial having sentenced them by the dozens to Devil’s Is- land. And anyway, nothing stood in the way of the meral force of the social revolution—none of your plans could step the class conscious awakening of thousands of workers dressed up as sailors and soldiers. * * * You dare to pretend that if the Ambassadors’ Conference would have listened to you, you would have crushed the Bolsheviki? Is that so? The 58th infantry tegiment and the 2nd R. M. A. did receive the order to take possession of Tiraspol on the 2nd of February 1919. But you had to send back those regiments to’ France very quickly and. after taking the arms from’ the soldiers you sent them to Merocco for punishment. When in March your friend Grigorieff attacked Kherson, did not two companies of the 176th regi-, ment refuse to march and had to-be brought back to Odessa. . i ‘4 : It is too bad, Mr. Marshal that on April 5th, 1919, you did not witness the evacuation of Odessa when the 15th regiment of artillery, the 2nd regiment of Genie, and the ist R. M. A. wrote glorious pages into the history of the revolutionary movement. You would have seen 'the glorious French army fra- ternize with the Red Guard, you would have been able to admire the magnificent spectacle given of entire companies marching in front of the Odessa Soviet with guns reversed and singing the Inter- nationale. And yourself, Mr. Marshal, would have done the same thing that the officers of your Orient Army did, some of whom took the nearest boat and others running to Akkermann while French bullets whistled by their ears. A few days later in Bendien, the 4th and 8th Colonial Regiments refused-—as did those of Arch- angel—to fire a single shot on the Red Army. Then you thought about sailors because they were not in direct contact with the Russian Revolution. With them it was not long! April 16th it was the Battleship Protet (Andre Marty was officer); April 20th in Sebastopol the squadron mutinied; the biggest battleships as France, Jean Bart, Vergniaut, Justice, hauled up the Red Flag; the isailors landed and demonstrated with the workers. April 27th in front of Odessa, it is the battleship Walbeck-Rousseau, on board of which I was imprisoned, which’ in turn joined the revolt. And then the Buirix—in every ship without a single exception there was revolt, The fire gained the Mediterranean Sea. In Con- stantinople May 1919, in front of the terrorized efficers the sailors of the Battleship Jean Bart demonstrated in the city singing the Internationale, and the Young Guard. At Itea in Greece it was the battleship Guichen which mutinied. The officers were only able to maintain control of the boat with the help of colored soldiers, At Toulon, France, June 11th, the Flagship Prov- ence refused to start out for the Black Sea and turned its guns toward the Naval General Head- quarters. For two days the sailors held meetings in the city and were masters of the situation. It needed two regiments of cavalry and thousands of horse gendarmes to prevent them from opening the Arsenal Navy Prison, At Brest, Cherbourg, Rochefort, Bizerta, the same manifestations were repeated till August and the government handled them only by sending the sailors back to their families. It was with these men that you were trying: to crush the Russian Revolution? Really, Mr. Marshal, if vou had been at Odessa and tried to conduct things the way Clemenceau and Poincare did, it is probable that today I would not be writing polemics with you, but you would be in the Pantheon, insult- ~ ing by your presence the memory of Jean Jaures. * a * One thing we know, and that is your ‘declaration was inspired by your government of big capital and constitutes a menade against the UnSS: R : I believe that the time of Gallifet, Thiers, and other butebers of the Paris Commune is passed, and it is useless for you to try to imitate them. And as you address the French imperialist menace, (whose representative you are) to the U. S. S. R., remember _ that ‘we are tens of thousands of ex-fighters from Russia and the Black Sea who will right now double our efforts to arouse the workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors, against the war that you are preparing at the order of the French capitalists and the so-called socialist government. And the day on whieh: you will again try the crime of 1919 we will do everything with the entire support of our Com- munist Party, for this time the soldiers anu sailors will not only refuse to march against their Russian brothers, but will put their arms in the service of the workers and peasants in order to crush by social revolution your capitalist regime of dirt, blood and war. Receive, Mr. Marshal, my anti-militarist and rev- olutionary salute, ANDRE MARTY. Communist Deputy in the French Parliament, now in jail in La Sante, Paris, Amsterdam and the Italian Proletariat (Continued from page 5) Nor did the G. C. L. forget about the agricultural laborers, It took steps to restore their union and to publish an illegal organ for the rural proletariat. Taking timely notice of the state of unrest that was growing in the rice zones of Northern Ttaly, the G. C. L, started a special paper for the working wo- men in the rice fields. And it was largely as the result of the work of the G. C. L. and the agricul- tural laborers’ union that strikes of working women broke out in the rice fields of the provinces of Vercelli and Novara. (On the eve of the strike the union had distributed about 20,000 manifestoes). There was also restored the Union of Poor Peas- ants, and so on. 3 7 Without confining itself to the narrow sphere of purely national questions, the G. C. L. responded to all international events of any consequence. It sent greetings to the Brussels Congress of Oppressed Peoples; it takes a stand upon the question of the war menace and the defense of the USSR; it is- sued a manifesto on the occasion of the murder of Comrade Voikoff in Warsaw, and in its press it car- ries on a campaign in defense of the Chinese Revolu- tion. It addressed the American consulate in Rome on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti and so forth. Thus, the G. ©. 1. has proved itself to he the successor to the best traditions of the Italian Labor Movement, and the only trade union organization which, in line with the Communist Party, wages an untiring fight against Italian fascism and capital- ism, a fight that is beset with many sacrifices and dangers. This role of the G. C. L. has been recognized by all the advanced elements of the Italian proletariat. Proof of this will be found in the fact that the illegal press of the G. C. L. has the widest circula- tion among the masses notwithstanding the fact that the reading and keeping of illegal literature is severely punished by the fascists. It should also be noted that the publications of the G. C. L. are eagerly bought by the workers, so that the G. C. L. press'is able to run almost without deficit. The attitude of the workers towards the G. C. L. _was formulated in speeches made before the con- ference on February 20th both by Maximalist and reformist workers, as well as at factory and work- shop conferences throughout Italy. Everything that is honest and militant in Italy, and among emigrant Italian workers abroad, adheres either organization- ally or ideologically to the G..C. L. It should also be observed that among the members of the lead- ing central and local trade union organs everywhere, along with the Communists, there are also workers of other tendencies and of no party affiliations and that among the victims who suffered for the G. C. L. are both Maximalist and reformist trade union work- ers, whilst some of them have previously occupied prominent positions in the old G. C. L. Thus, common struggling and common sacrifices are welding together the workers of the different ‘cadencies, creating a genuine militant united pro- —t 6 a lesa SS Te men letarian front. The vanguard of the working class looks with both pride and hope upon its G. | oe as upon the augury of victories to come in the battles against fascism and the bourgeoisie. Yet this is not the way the G. C. L, is looked upon by the Amsterdam crowd. : Refusing to recognize the legality of the dissolu- tion of the G. C. L. announced by a band of traitors, and scouting the idea that tHe leading organs of the G, C. L. might be transferred abroad, far away from the masses of the workers, the Milan Cenfer- ence, convened with due observance of all the re- quisite formalities, had full reason to consider itself the only legitimate spokesman of the masses of the workers entitled to speak on their behalf both in Italy as well as abroad, and also before the Anmster- dam International to which the G. C. L. was hitherto affiliated. The Milan Conference therefore resolved to get in touch with Amsterdam, and together with the latter to organize the preliminaries for aG. OL. convention for the purpose of electing a permanent executive, and disposing of the most urgent problems of the irade union movement in Italy. It was fur- ther decided to send a delegation to Amsterdam to regulate all questions arising from the conference’s decisions. The Italian comrades acted in this manner because they did not consider it expedient to alter -the attitude of the G. ¢, L, towards Amsterdam without a decision to that effect by its regular con- vention, and also because they deemed their stay in the ranks of Amsterdam useful for the unity cam- pajzn of the international labor movement. ‘READ THE DAILY WORKER EVERY DAY