Foreign News: Marty’s Mutiny

Recently a weary crew of French soldiers, repatriated from Spain, paraded from a Paris railroad station to the Bastille. At their head was a stocky, popeyed member of the Chamber of Deputies, André Marty, who had been away in Spain most of the last two years fighting with Leftist International Brigades.

After the parade, Marty resumed his seat in the Chamber, expected to resume his post on the Chamber’s Army Committee. But last week a petition with 50 signatures was produced which denied him the Committee post. Deputy Marty’s military record, not in the Spanish People’s Army but in the French Republic’s Army and Navy, was exhumed and used against him. An unusual one, it is:

In 1919 the torpedo boat Protet was ordered into the Black Sea to protect French nationals from Bolshevist attacks. One day the Protet was ordered to fire on Russian towns to break Red morale. Second Officer Mechanic André Marty persuaded his fellow sailors to refuse to bombard defenseless citizens, threw his superiors in the brig, hoisted a red flag in sympathy with those on shore. For his mutiny André Marty was sentenced to 20 years at hard labor, of which he served three.

The years 1928-31 he also spent in jail, this time for inciting disobedience in the French Army. France and Russia are still technically allies. But by last week the French Rightists were unwilling to trust highly salable military secrets to such a friend of the U.S.S.R. and enemy of French military discipline as André Marty.