The Friends of E. Armand

Friend, comrade:

It is now five years that our relations have been interrupted. And how much has happened since 1939! What has become of you? Will this communication reach you? Have you not had to seek refuge in a place quite distant from the locality where you received “l’en dehors”? Or perhaps you haven’t changed address and have passed through the troubled period we lived through without too much damage. Who knows, perhaps you are somewhere in Germany a prisoner, a deportee? Whatever the case, with this letter we are attempting to tie back together the broken thread of our relations with you.

Perhaps you want news of me? After the banning of “l’en dehors,” and following a short stay of three months in a hospitable cage, a stay due to the finding on my person a translation of a pacifist manifesto that wasn’t to the taste of the leaders of the period, I found myself sent to various concentration camps. I left the last of them in 1941, thanks to the intervention of comrades in the proofreader’s union. (In total ten wasted years vegetating in governmental jails. My time certainly could have been put to more profitable use.) As soon as I returned I strived, clandestinely and as far as was possible, to meet, especially in Paris, those of ours who were spared by the horrible torment. I succeeded in this up to a certain point.

I think that the publication of a periodical like “l’en dehors” is premature. I will only cite a few reasons. The need for an authorization. The rarity of paper. The cost of printing. The rise in postal taxes. Much has changed in costs since 1939. Nevertheless, we intend to have appear, as soon as this is possible, a review, a bulletin or some other periodical message aimed at maintaining between us the ties of friendship and camaraderie that the passing of time was not able to shake.

For the moment I limit myself to once again giving life and activity to our periodic meetings in Paris. You will find attached the expose of the theses and tendencies of this Center which, until further notice, will meet the last Monday of the month, at 7:30 pm at the office where, before the war, the friends and readers of “l’e.d” met.

Nevertheless we would like to know if, in case we start publication of a periodical (we have already chosen as its title “L’Unique”), we can count on your subscription. This would be useful to us, since the number of subscribers to a periodical can help it obtain a lowering of its postal taxes. We aren’t fixing the price of a subscription, since we don’t yet know the format, the number of pages, the frequency and the cost of the projected publication. Below you will find a subscription coupon.

You will also find a donation coupon, a donation aimed a permitting us to gather together some funds in advance so as to not find ourselves in financial difficulties at the moment we start up the periodical in question, or any other work of propaganda. It goes without saying that this donation is absolutely independent of the subscription coupon.

In good camaraderie and friendship: E. Armand