Front page of Le Temps, 27 September 1940
Le Temps had been the paper of record for Frenchmen since before the Revolution and remained so after it. This extract deals with the beginning of the final stages of the Third Moroccan Crisis.
THE TIME HAS COME
Heroes... the Moroccan socialist needs our solidarity
We have watched Frenchmen oppressed.
We have watched fellow leftists murdered.
We have watched a Revolution be all but strangled in its cradle.
It is time to stop watching and to take
action.
What free man has not heard of the terrible insult being forced upon France in Morocco? As if the suppression of the Moroccan worker’s voice was not enough, the threat of war against any state that recognises the legitimate Casablanca government is a calculated attempt to provoke conflict with our labourers’ republic. It is time for Frenchmen to stand up and, if the Germans long so for conflict, give it to them. Our liberating fire shall pour across their borders and not even the most terrifying of reactionary ‘wunderwaffen’ shall douse it. Our Moroccan brothers
shall be freed. The German worker
shall know the paradise of the Totalised state. The world
shall see what we, the proud standard-bearers of the new France, are capable of.
We are ready. Our soldiers are ready. Our thousands of volunteers in Morocco are willing us on with one voice every day to take more direct action against the oppressive tyrant in Berlin. Each day the treatment of Moroccans, Chinese and – worst of all – our fellow Frenchmen in Alsace and Lorraine grows worse. Our fellow workers in Italy took action to free their brethren from the Papist yoke. Our Comrades in Britain know that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. [1] For too long the people of France have watched as evil occurs before our very eyes.
The time has come for action. The time has come for war.
[1] It is amusing to ponder what Edmund Burke would think of his quotation being appropriated by French Revolutionaries.