Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, Acting Commissioner for Foreign Affairs
Commune of France
Europe smolders, but a red sun shines through the clouds.
Millions languish, imprisoned by fascists and Hitlerites, Quislings and Boulangists in the manner of the traitor Pétain. But they, like many in the Popular Front for National Liberation, have endured, even though their names invoke a visceral horror simply in their uttering.
Auschwitz. Dachau. Buchenwald. Mauthausen. Drancy.
France will not tolerate any longer the notion of so many going longer without a return to their ancestral homes. We cannot, when even the brave General de Gaulle was forced apart from
la patrie, leaving the Resistance to fight on its lonesome. We, birthplace of the very notion of the Commune, light of liberty, find this idea to be anathema to the notions upon which we have restored the Republic under a new name and stronger form, those of
Liberté égalité fraternité -- ou la mort. We declare the inception of the International Prisoners Repatriation Fund.
The terms of this are simple. Any may submit to Paris a name or list of names, and the funding will be sought to not only liberate those prisoners of conscience - political, religious, or those imprisoned by discriminatory laws - and their release will be negotiated with and their return -or departure to a country of their choice- sought immediately. Those individuals who submit a name and find their brother or sister in the human struggle released will find their own immortalized on a slab of marble in front of Palace of Versailles, may its ignoble origins find redemption. Those nations who provide funding of their own will be remembered as not only a friend of France, but the world, and while the notion of seeking ulterior benefit for such an action is repugnant, we point out that no state, liberated or bourgeois, could do with less goodwill than they already have. Should they wish to be involved, our door is forever open.
This act will be done without regard for the most basic of considerations on the matter of politics. If they have not marched under the black banner of fascism, our capital welcomes even corrupt monarchs made destitute and the frocked revealed to be wicked. Let the red flag be the signal for international liberation and shared humanity under the law as Paris resumes her custodianship of democratic movements! This is set into motion immediately by proclamation of the Consultative Committee of the Popular Front for National Liberation.
In this moment we prove that the choice truly is socialism or barbarism.
Long live the Commune.
