The Dove That Goes Boom

Like many another postwar Frenchman, Jean Paul David used to read his daily newspaper with skepticism, listen to his radio without confidence, and wonder with suspicion what the Communists were going to ask him to believe next. A husky, energetic Radical Socialist deputy, David resented Communist abuse of truth, decided to do something about it.

Last September he founded Paix et Liberte (Peace and Freedom), an organization dedicated to the single task of fighting Communist lies. Said David: "All Frenchmen know that for the last four years their country has been submitted to a gigantic offensive designated to pave the way for their conquest and enslavement. Frenchmen know that all means are used . . . and first of all the lie ... This is what we are here to expose."

From Slingshot . . . French Communists took the Goliath position, registered tolerant amusement at David's slingshot declaration of total psychological war on Communism. They were less amused one evening recently when a surprise Paix et Liberte broadcast came over the state-run radio at 8 p.m., France's peak listening hour. Hundreds of thousands of listeners heard David give French Communist Boss Maurice Thorez one of the roughest dressings-down that he had ever suffered. Paix et Liberte's free time on the air had been arranged by Premier Rene Pleven.

While the Communists were still muttering over the implications of this, David hit them again, out of his knowledge that Moscow had sent Professor Davidenkov, Russian heart specialist, to attend ailing Maurice Thorez. Next morning every registered doctor in Paris received a Paix et Liberte pamphlet. "A snub to the medical profession!" cried the tract. "Are French doctors unworthy or inefficient?" Yelped the Communist press: "Neo-Goebbelism . . . David is a Wall Street pawn."

Before the National Assembly last week was a bill to extend military service from 12 to 18 months. The Reds had fought it with the slogan: "Down with 18 months' service!" But their campaign melted away when Paix et Liberte countered: "Down with 18 months' service! We want three years' service, same as in Russia!" Then the comrades showed how badly they had been hurt. They decided that Paix et Liberte was so dangerous that it had better be ignored. Mention of it was banned in the Red press.

... To Cannon. His slingshot now grown into a big gun, David will pound the Communists daily over the government radio. He has a staff of researchers who cull the Communist press, mail lies and distortions they uncover to every non-Communist editor in France through their bulletin Defend the Truth.

David is reserving his own best efforts to exposure of "the greatest Communist lie of all--the lie that Communism seeks peace." This week 150,000 Paix et Liberte posters will go up all over France; on them Picasso's dove, featured in the Communist Stockholm petition, has been painted bright red. Under it are the words: "La colombe qui fait bourn!" (The dove that goes boom!). From the red bird's mouth dangles the olive branch, but its feet are the treads of a tank and its wings sprout guns.

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