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"Witness Sharikov, you are a Soviet citizen. Why didn't you return home after the war?" Tikhon Sharikov, eight years in Soviet slave camps, replied: "Does the cow go to the slaughterhouse unless she is driven?"
The Second Time. The court was convinced. Last week it found that the Communist weekly had libeled Rousset. Les Lettres was required to announce the bitter-pill news in its own columns and in ten other papers of Rousset's choosing, and to pay nominal damages to Rousset.
It was the second time in two years that Les Lettres had had to pay damages to a former Communist whom it had lied about; first was Victor Kravchenko, author of I Chose Freedom.
The trials had focused French attentionmuch as the trial of Alger Hiss had focused U.S. attentionon the true inner infection of the Soviet crusade. To millions of French people, fearful of war, still fearful of a fascist Germany, but indulgent toward Frenchmen who want to establish a Communist regime in France, the testimony of El Campesino was impressive: "I do not regret having fought fascism. But I firmly regret that once I wished to establish a Communist regime in Spain. The Soviet Union was the deepest disillusionment in my life."