Anastasie

When a Frenchman, over his hot brioches and chocolate, unfolds his morning paper to stare at gaping columns of white space, he shrugs and murmurs philosophically : "Anastasie!" A haggard, black-gowned, crotchety old maid, armed with an immense pair of shears, Anastasie is a characteristic creation of Gallic wit. She personifies the tightlipped, prudish silence clamped on the French press in wartime.

A veteran of World War I (named after St. Anastasia, who had her tongue cut out for resisting the advances of Roman Emperor Valerian), Anastasie was revived by a French satirical weekly, Le Canard Enchaine, when World War II began. She presides over the crowded corridors of the Hotel Continental in the Rue de Castiglione, home of Jean Hippolyte Giraudoux's Ministry of Information.

From the Continental come terse, dry bulletins issued by the Army General Staff, and cunning propaganda stories (of plots to restore the Kaiser, failure of German food supplies) concocted by Playwright Giraudoux himself. There, too, in sumptuous rooms that once housed U. S. tourists, censors sit poring over proofs of tomorrow's papers, ferreting out lines that might give information to the enemy.

British papers, still sold in France, are avidly read for news suppressed by French censors. The London Times and Daily Telegraph run to 16 pages, censored before they are set up in type, without those mysterious omissions that irritate readers of the French press. A typical French daily has only four pages and contains virtually no news except Army communiques. To fill out the sparse fare supplied by the Ministry of Information, editors translate dispatches from British papers.

So bitterly outspoken against censorship were Britain's publishers in the first weeks of the war that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was forced to separate censorship from the Ministry of Information, reorganize both. But the French press, except for sly references to Anastasie, is not even allowed to point out the censor's errors. Parisians are still chuckling over a critical essay: titled "Censure et Propa-gande" that appeared lately in L'Europe Nouvelle. The whole article was a blank, and bore the legend: "Censure."

When Leon Blum, onetime Premier of France, was attacked as an "unconscious" German agent by the reactionary Paris Matin, he wrote an answer for his own Socialist daily, Le Populaire, that began: "We don't see how censorship could prohibit us from making a legitimate reply." The rest was censored. Next week Editor Blum tried a trick that worked for Georges Clemenceau in War I: he sent copies of a censored article by mail to members of the Chamber of Deputies. They were seized by postal censors.

French editors are especially chagrined because they cannot publish photographs taken under the eyes of French military authorities at the front. The same pictures appear in British journals which are read in France; but they cannot be transmitted to any neutral country. Telegrams and cables, no matter where they originate, are censored. A suspicious wire from Amsterdam to the Paris office of the New York Times had its first three lines deleted. They read: "Grover Whalen arrived at The Hague from Brussels and says he is satisfied with the results of his talks in Switzerland, France and Rome. . . ."

Le Canard Enchaine waged a valiant fight against censorship during War I, but in War II, beyond reviving Anastasie, it has made only a half-hearted effort to combat the censors. Most effective when it burlesques the propaganda bulletins of the Ministry of Information, in a recent dispatch (ostensibly from Zurich) Le Canard Enchaine wrote: "Profound confusion reigns along the part of the Siegfried Line that borders on the Rhine. The river has left its bed and its waters have inundated the German fortifications, which resemble a vast lake. The French bank of the Rhine, however, is perfectly dry, the river not having overflowed on that side."

Another satirical weekly, Le Merle, has taken the place of Le Canard Enchaine as a censor-baiter. Written at the front, edited in a motorcar between the Maginot Line and Paris by Mme Eugene Merle (widow of its founder) so violently does Le Merle attack the censors that it usually appears with more white space than text. But its circulation is soaring.

One Paris daily whose courage has surprised its readers is L'Oeuvre. Since war began it has carried more blank columns, more intelligible fragments of censored news than any other sizable French newspaper. L'Oeuvre is famed for its cryptic manchettes: editorial boxes (known as "ears" to U. S. newsmen) at the head of the front page, next to the title. For days at a time L'Oeuvre comes out with its manchettes vacant.

Last week Anastasie hiked up her skirts, took shears in hand to censor a report submitted to the Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies by brush-bearded, 59-year-old Deputy Leon Archim-baud, who looks like Leon Trotsky. Only one line of Deputy Archimbaud's report was quoted in the French press. Most Paris dailies did not even mention that he had made it.

Spokesman Archimbaud tore into the whole setup of France's press relations, pointed out that: 1) paper costs had risen 30% since war was declared, were expected to go higher; 2) French newspapers had lost between 80% and 90% of their advertising revenues; 3) their circulations were failing for lack of news interest. He complained bitterly because radio could broadcast dispatches that were censored in the press, because newspapers were forbidden to print German speeches heard on the air by "hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who peddle them in whispers."

Concluded Leon Archimbaud: "Unless a decision is made quickly, six months from now the majority of French newspapers will be well on their way to disappearing. . . . The press will become the privilege of a few." While writers like Leon Daudet in L'Action Franc,aise, Clement Vautel in Le Journal cautiously applauded, rumors floated about Paris that Jean Hippolyte Giraudoux may soon be relieved of his post as Information Minister, replaced by Jean Mistier, "Father of the Radical-Socialist Party," head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

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