Mark's Reviews > Scum of the Earth

The dedication says it all

'To the memory of my colleagues, the exiled writers of Germany who took their lives when France fell;'

This is a book double edged in its title. 'The Scum of the earth' initially seems to refer to the people interned by the French government at the beginning of the Second World War. This was the way in which they were collectively spoken of by politicians and the press as they desperately sought to shore up the rotten edifice of France. However, as the account continues and the betrayal and crass stupidity of the authorities and the disingenuous cowardice of those in power unfolds, the title switches in Koestler's mind and indeed in the mind of any right thinking reader to crown the ruling class of France in all its traitorous, heartless guilt.

We journey through the first 18 months of the war being led by the experiences and raging anger and frustration of Arthur Koestler a Hungarian writer who through his experiences in the civil war and its aftermath in Spain has both a hatred of Fascism and of the totalitarian expression of Soviet repressive communism. He looks with a piercingly horrified look at the betrayal of the French Authorities and I found myself again and again shaking my head in confused horror as the ruling class abrogated any responsibility to justice or decency.

Many of the men and women rounded up by the military and police were people who had expressly fled from the repression and viciousness of the growing power of Nazism in Germany. They had sought, and thought they had found, a safe haven in France. With the outbreak of war they were betrayed by the very people with whom they had sought refuge. Refused permission to join up to fight for France they were then accused of undermining France because they were not fighting.....Orwellian doublespeak, doublethink, doubleinsanity....and imprisoned and then as the Germans swept across Europe and into France the 'New Government of France' not only did not help these opponents of the Fascists France had previously declared war against but handed them over, dossiers and all, to those very invaders.

The amazingly moving thing is the book was written in January-March 1941. The copy I read was that first edition, the book I was holding in other words was first read by a man or a woman who had no idea whilst they turned the pages whether this was the last cry of a dying hero or the courageous growling of a beast regaining strength to re-enter the fight. I read it as a history of over seven decades ago, though still raw enough and embittered with Koestler's sense of betrayal and agonized frustration to exhaust me, but I knew that the courage shown by so many in this book, their sacrifices and their decency, did win out in the end but I also knew how many of those people disappeared into camps and ovens and pits and were never heard from again.

It is a book of fury and sadness intermingled with flashes of overpowering compassion and goodness. All life is here, as the cliché goes, but from Koestler's vantage point, a Canute-like figure standing out against the seemingly unstoppable crashing waves of Nazi Germany, the milk of human kindness is rankly curdled and vile.

He writes lovingly and movingly of individual characters, people of courage and nobility, the true tragedy of the book is many if not all of those thus acclaimed would almost certainly have been tortured and murdered by the Nazis as they were, almost without exception, still imprisoned as the Nazis arrived.

As I read the book I fell in love with his skill as a writer. He has a great flair for extended metaphor. His use of imagery and words is startling and though some may appear overblown, when you consider he was writing what might have been a eulogy for European civilization (as it must have appeared at the darkest time of 1941 when only the UK stood out free against German occupation and power), he can surely be forgiven.

When area after area is subjugated:-

"And so another lump of Europe's bleeding flesh would be thrown to the monster to keep him quiet for six months - and another lump next spring and another next autumn. And, for all one knew, in due time the monster might die a natural death of indigestion"

On the spineless capitulation and lack of leadership of the Authorities:-

"If a nation is a body, the working classes are its muscles and sinews. By cutting them, the body becomes paralysed - a helpless bleeding prey to be stamped on by the boots of the goose-stepping conqueror"

Of the mindless Ostrich-like hiding from reality:-

"Utterly unconscious of what has happened. Sparrows chattering on telegraph wires while wire flashes telegram that all sparrows must die."

"As if the dark powers of history had chosen on purpose the loveliest season and the loveliest town on this planet to demonstrate their superiority over the powers of light"

Simple sentences which speak volumes

"The type of Frenchwoman who already as a bride has the future widow written on her face "

"They wore their martyrdom like a robe too large for them"

Two images which are brilliantly effective is his use of the Marianne figure of France now changed from a fresh faced hope-filled figure to a gnarled old crone scared to death of her people and 'waiting for the barbarian prince to save her'.

And secondly of the exchange by modern day rulers of the antiquated scapegoat for a dragon. How all governments of the time realized that the dragon 'Could receive one deadly blow after another but never completely die.....it could be re-baptized and consisted, so to speak, of interchangeable parts' and thus the unscrupulous government could keep re-launching the horror and thus re-panic its citizens into the corner in which they wished them to cower.

An extraordinary piece of writing, an almost unimaginable betrayal. Something that shouts out 'Lest we forget'.