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pact for mutual defense, aimed to buttress European democracy against fascism.

But the Popular Front, a coalition of all Democratic parties, all peace-loving and progressive forces, initiated by the powerful Communist Party of France to defeat fascism and to maintain peace, enabled the French people to hurl back the first assaults of French fascism in its attempt to seize power in 1934. It was this force that has saved France for democracy, steadily improving the living standards and strengthening the organization of the masses.

From the beginning, the outstanding leaders and organizers of the Popular Front movement in France clearly understood the necessity of forging a strong link between the Democratic people of France and the peoples of the French colonies struggling for national emancipation against French imperialism. In fact such an alliance between Democratic France and the colonial peoples was from the outset regarded as a central point in the whole program of defense of democracy, against the common fascist enemy within France itself and without.

Maurice Thorez, General Secretary of the great French Communist Party, which more than any other force contributed to the organization of the People's Front and the formulation of its program, clearly stated the attitude of French democracy toward the colonial peoples:

"Hitler may think he insults us by speaking of our people as contaminated and bastardized by the Black Race. We are proud to be sons of the great French Revolution, which freed the slaves in the colonies and made the Martinique Negro a French citizen, the equal of the peasant of Burgundy and the Parisian artisan." (Report of Maurice Thorez to the Ninth Congress of the French Communist Party.*)

Has the People's Front benefited the colonial peoples? In
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* Maurice Thorez, France of the People's Front, Workers Library Publishers, New York

answer to this question, we have but to quote the facts, as given by outstanding leaders of the liberation movement in France's North African colonies.

Du Kaddour Bel Kaim Arab Secretary of the Communist Party of Algeria, speaking at the same Ninth Congress, said:

". . .Before the People's Front government, our people did not enjoy any political or trade union freedom. Before the People's Front government, we did not have the democratic right to organize the Algerian-Arabian workers for better wages, which would enable them to improve their miserable conditions. The agricultural workers were making four france per day. The dockworkers were making hardly 18 to 20 francs per day. Previous to the victory of the People's Front, we were not allowed to organize ourselves in trade unions, nor in the Communist Party. . . . Since the victory of May 1936, we have the right to organize, the right to belong to the Communist Party. The Moslem Congress, which made history in our country, was marked by the presence of 6,000 delegates… Social legislation, increased wages, the 40-hour week, paid vacations, have already been obtained."

Quoting from an Arab paper, he continued:

"All these gains that we have made are due in great part to the action of the popular masses of France. They are the ones who gave us the government of the People's Front and it is through them that we have obtained all this."

The representative of the Tunisian Communist Party declared, at the same Congress:

"At last Tunisia has begun to breathe. The People's Front has been first of all an era of freedom; it brought about the repatriation of the comrades who were exiled in Romada, and the freedom of our political prisoners. The trade unions which up till 1935 numbered 3,000 members, now with the advent of the People's Front have a membership of 50,000 of whom 35,000 our native Arabs. . . . Wages have been increased to a great degree. Collective contracts have been a guarantee against the arbitrary rules of the employers that existed previously. Increased wages have heightened the dignity of the Tunisian workers and this increased dignity has made a great impression upon the workers themselves. The People's Front has cemented a great hope in

Transcription Notes:
"Franco-Soviet" completed on previous page france = francs misspelled