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Unlike the British, the French Government put up with little peace nonsense, whether from the literati, the Fascists or the Communists. Last month all Communist newsorgans were shut down and the Communist Party, which polled 1,200,000 votes in 1936, was dissolved. Fortnight ago Premier Edouard Daladier officially ended the Parliamentary session, thus also officially ending the period of immunity from arrest of 72 former Communist deputies, 53 of whom had formed a Workers' and Peasants' Party. Unfortunately, these deputies had also signed and sent a peace letter to Chamber of Deputies President Edouard Herriot which the French Government suspected of being "defeatist propaganda."
A great "Red" hunt was ordered and by last week many Communist deputies and other prominent French Communists (plus many obscure ones) had been arrested, indicted or were being hunted. The most prominent ones were still in hiding, however. French Communist Secretary General Maurice Thorez, sent to the front with an engineer regiment, got a 24-hour furlough, took French leave and made a separate peace. Colorful Andre Marty, who once led a French Navy mutiny in the Black Sea and fought with the Spanish Loyalists, was thought to have disappeared to Russia. Deputy Jacques Duclos, an experienced fugitive from justice, could not be found. Also under indictment was onetime Air Minister Marcel Déat, dissident Socialist and prominent French defeatist who last summer wrote a tract called Die for Danzig? This time he was accused of having signed one called Immediate Peace.