On the Isle of Beauty

"Democracy," runs a European saying, "is when there's a knock at the door at 5 in the morning and it turns out to be the milkman." But the fists that hammered at the doors of nearly a thousand homes in France between 5 and 6 one morning fortnight ago turned out to be those of French policemen. Once inside, the cops informed their victims--refugees from a score of nations--that they had 20 minutes to dress and pack for an enforced trip to Corsica. At the request of Soviet officials, the French government had decided to clear Metropolitan France of "potential assassins" before Nikita Khrushchev arrived in Paris. And presumably they would now have to wait out Khrushchev's postponement as well.

By far the greatest number were aging Eastern European propagandists and journalists, who hardly seemed threats to anyone.* In Corsica, touted by French tourist agents as "the Isle of Beauty," the involuntary vacationers found themselves ensconced in resort hotels opened, by police order, a month before the normal tourist season. In their dark suits and berets, playing cards, smoking, engaging in the familiar polemic dialogues of expatriates, they transformed a cheerful, terraced Mediterranean cafe into the atmosphere of a coffeehouse in Bucharest. The internees' expenses were paid by the government; much of the time the weather was warm enough for swimming; and in Porto, one fatherly gendarme captain even saw to it that a group of interned students kept up with their homework. But none of this could ease the bitterness of men and women who had been labeled "dangerous anti-Communists" and yanked away from their families without apparent rhyme or reason. One, shaken by the experience, died shortly after reaching Corsica.

The Logic of Wonderland. In Choisy-le-Roi, near Paris, police had ignored refugee Soviet Engineer Taras Hryciuk, instead hauled off his daughter Tamara, whose crime seemingly consisted of being president of the Ukrainian Students' Association in Paris. Father Dragoun, rector of the Croatian Catholic Mission in Paris, was sure that his offense had been officiating at a memorial mass for the late Cardinal Stepinac.

A kind of Alice-in-Wonderland logic was visible in the arrest of scores of teen-age Hungarians--many of whom had left Hungary as children, had no politics now, and added gaiety to the exile gathering by singing songs and dancing the czardas. But no brand of logic served to explain the internment of a clutch of former Spanish Loyalists for whom the only important enemy remains Generalissimo Franco. "I am absolutely not interested in Khrushchev," spat one of the Spaniards, a remark that could equally well have been made by the three interned Nationalist Chinese consular employees or the former Royal Albanian Army officer turned house painter. Among the Spaniards was famed peasant General Gonzales, known as "El Campesino." who. after quarreling with his Communist comrades of the Spanish Civil War was imprisoned in the notorious Vorkuta Arctic Circle prison camp, from which he later escaped. Said he angrily: "We who are here are the true friends of France. It is Khrushchev who is the enemy of France."

Whose List? At week's end in Corsica's bistros, octogenarian Russian political theorists, pedantic Czech professors, and plump, Ukrainian-born French businessmen were still wondering just why the cops had singled them out. Most were convinced that the French had operated from a list of names supplied by the Soviet secret police, and one said bitterly: "This is the kind of courtesy that only a dictator can offer to another dictator." Because of the high percentage of ministers and former ministers of exiled Eastern European governments among the internees, the consensus was that the Russians had used the Khrushchev visit as an excuse to deliver a blow to the last genuinely passionate opposition to the status quo in Eastern Europe--the vocally anti-Communist Assembly of Captive European Nations.

For less politically minded exiles, many of whom worked in trades dominated by Communist unions, there was the danger that there would be no jobs waiting when they got back from Corsica. For others, long residents of France, there was the fear that the new entry, "Expellee," on their identity cards might end all hope of ever acquiring French citizenship. Reflected one Yugoslav internee who had been living in Britain when Marshal Tito visited there: "The British simply got all us Yugoslavs together and told us they didn't want any trouble from us. There was no trouble. That is the civilized way to do things."

* A few others, considered "more dangerous," were sent to a pair of small islands off France's northwest coast.

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