Description

AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT (introduction) and FULL TYPESCRIPT from Paul Éluard's speech at the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wroclaw - Salle de la Mutualité, Paris, 23 November 1948.

"I was asked to read you a poem this evening. Peace and the desire for peace are certainly pure material for poems. And the courage of men who fight for life,
for the future. But barbarity is less so. And yet these are the examples of that barbarity that I want to list here this evening, where they belong, because xenophobic agitation is one of the greatest factors in the preparation for war.
I'm quoting at random. And I would point out to you that the workers referred to here are essential to maintaining the current level of French production. I will pass quickly over the arrests and expulsions of leaders of organisations and official representatives of the People's Republics."

Éluard cites a number of arbitrary arrests of Romanian, Polish, Czechoslovakian and Italian citizens or sympathisers; Jeanine Tillard threatened "of torture if she did not confess that she was receiving money from the Cominform"., "six other people from the Romanian Colony of Paris whose only crime was to be Romanian nationals", "several Polish miners, arrested on 20.10. 48 at Stiring-Wendel, were locked up in the Forbach prison, without any reason being given for their arrests."
"In the light of this repression, it is worth pointing out that the 57 names on the Carmaux Resistance Monument include 24 Poles, 3 Italians and 9 Spaniards.".

"At this moment, a foreign general staff, a war general staff, is being installed in France, at the gates of Paris. Against it, we ask all the intellectuals of France to rise up and side with the immense army of the workers, united in the struggle for peace and progress, because it is the true army of peace, the strongest of all armies. "

The autograph introduction contains numerous erasures and corrections and the words "...". Send a copy to Françoise Leclercq 36, rue Montpensier Paris"Françoise Leclercq (1908-1983) was a member of the French Communist Party and a member of the French Resistance.Union of French Women.