May '68--Sorbonne

          --So you see, I don’t know.

          --Slowly, slowly.  What is it exactly they want you to do?

          --I just told you, said Richard resentfully.

          --Well, tell me again.  Uncle Max needs time to think.  The last I heard, you were supposed to go out to Nanterre to speak about Resistance Inside the Army, and I had many doubts on that subject.  I’m all in favor of bringing the good word to the students, but I consider it a very secondary priority compared with getting the word out to the GI’s.  And if you get sent to jail, bud, we’ll all really feel the loss.  I don’t want you to get swell-headed or anything--

          --Okay, okay.  That’s exactly what I’m asking you, Max.

          --I don’t know what you’re asking me.  I’m trying to find out.

          --I just told you.  Henri says Nanterre has been closed, and they’re moving the meeting to the Sorbonne.

          --Oh, the Sorbonne!  Well, why didn’t you say so!  I feel much better about the Sorbonne.  The Sorbonne is perfectly okay.  Sure.

          --It is?

          --Look, bud, I’ll give you a short lesson on French history.  Capsule size.  The Sorbonne is one of the oldest universities in Europe.  Along with Bologna, I think.  Bologna’s in Italy.  Both were established sometime in the 12th century.  Shortly afterwards--or at least by the 16th century, says Uncle Max, dismissing 400 years of history with a flicker--the students got--were given, theoretically, but possibly because of their own pressure on the authorities--they were given an independent status in many respects.  Now how this affects you is that the Sorbonne is the one place the police can’t go.  I mean, there is practically a four hundred year precedent.  Whereas Nanterre is a new creation and does not benefit from this tradition.  Maybe it does in theory, but it ain’t the Sorbonne.  At any rate, the cops were certainly out at Nanterre the other day.  Besides, it’s a big sprawling campus and who knows where it begins or ends.  Wide open to police cars.  But the Sorbonne is a building right in the middle of the Latin Quarter, and there has never been any question of the police blundering into it “by mistake.”  Or on purpose.  The inviolability of the Sorbonne is one of those traditions of French politics like not invading a church was in the Middle Ages.  A tacit agreement.  Like where you demonstrate.  The Left demonstrates in the Latin Quarter and around the Bastille and the Republique; the Right on the Champs-Elysées.  At various times in the past, before the last war, for example, the Right got control of the Latin Quarter--national fascist groups calling themselves the Camelots du Roi or Action Francaise, but after the Liberation, the Left students re-established themselves on what had been traditionally their home ground, the Latin Quarter--so named because students in the Middle Ages spoke or at least studied mainly from the Latin texts--and it’s been pretty much that way ever since.  The Right, of course, doesn’t put much emphasis on demonstrations.  Every 14th of July they drag out their armed might and march in front of the reviewing stands along the Champs-Elysées, but that’s about it.  Where was I?

          --You said it was okay if I spoke in the Sorbonne.

          --Sure.  I’m much less worried about you there.  We’ll see if you’re questioned about it the next time you get to the Prefecture to get your carte de séjour  renewed.  When did you say the meeting is?

          --It’s against imperialism.

          --I didn’t say what.  I asked when?

          --Oh, on May 3rd.  I think it’s a Friday.

          --Fine.  I won’t go myself, but it’s okay if you go.

                   §                                    §                                    §

          Richard had pretty much gotten used to the idea that there was nothing doing with Alex, June’s daughter.  He didn’t hold it against Henri, who was French and a revolutionary and a much more impressive character than he considered himself, especially to a young Franco-American girl.  His reaction was to start growing a beard and smoking Cuban cigars.  He didn’t really care as much as all that, but the first thing he asked Henri when he met him at the foot of the statue in the square before the Sorbonne was:

          --Is Alex going to be there?

Then he thought it hadn’t been the right thing to say because Henri answered very shortly that he didn’t know.  Richard wondered if Henri was mad he’d asked about Alex, and they walked down to the Sorbonne without speaking.

As for Henri, he had no idea at all of Richard’s preoccupations and had never been aware of his feelings for Alex.  At no time would it have disturbed him, and particularly not today when he had far more important things to think about.  He was one of the leaders responsible for the SO, the Service d’Ordre or guards of the JCR, the Young Communist Revolutionaries, a Trotskyist youth group composed mainly of high school and university students.  His preoccupations were about rumors of a fascist attack against the Sorbonne that very afternoon.  In fact, he had completely forgotten about Richard and that they had invited him to speak at their meeting on imperialism.  The original meeting for Nanterre on April 29th had been planned with Cohn-Bendit’ March 22nd group.  On April 28th, Cohn-Bendit, a German-Jewish national, had been arrested and menaced with expulsion from France;  he had, however, been let out the same night and a wave of meetings had engulfed Nanterre--in support of Cohn-Bendit, against police interference in student affairs, and against imperialism.  Then the University closed Nanterre completely, and all activity there, including the JCR meeting on imperialism, had been moved to the Sorbonne.  The fascists raided the F-GEL, the student government office, beat up a few isolated students they ran into on the streets, and then announced they were coming into the Sorbonne on May 3rd to stop the anti-imperialist meeting.  All the Left groups had organized a defense squadron and were not waiting in the courtyard of the Sorbonne for the fascists.  So Henri had forgotten about Richard.  If Richard had not called out to him as he was passing in the statue in front of the Sorbonne, he never would have thought of looking for him.

          --Well, come along, he said.  But there may be some trouble.

          He would have liked to explain in more detail, but his English was not up to it, especially when he had other things on his mind.

Richard wondered what the trouble was.  Max had said there wouldn’t be any police, and that was the only thing which would have worried him.  He didn’t want to get kicked out of France.

The courtyard of the Sorbonne was flooded with sun, and pretty French girls were sitting around against walls and pillars trying to get tan.  Guys were putting up posters and selling papers like Revolte and Jeunesse Avant Garde.  A loudspeaker system kept announcing a meeting which he supposed was where he was going.

          --That’s us, said Henri, pointing to two columns of young men lining the stairs going up to the second floor.

 They were listening to someone reading an article.  Henri saw that they were all ready, holding their helmets, some with long sticks at their sides.  He nodded at Volodar, recently out of jail himself after his unsuccessful attempt to blow up American Express.  Volodar was now recognized by all the defense groups as the expert on urban guerrilla.  A few nights ago at Nanterre, he had had a confrontation with one of the Chinese groups.  The Chinese group had wanted to put catapults on the roof and spread oil on the streets so that the police cars would skid.  These tactics had been used with great success at the University of Peking, they said.  In the beginning, the student assembly had been greatly impressed until Volodar had asked where they were planning to get the catapults and the oil.  These practical considerations had been dismissed light-heartedly by the Chinese, but the majority of the students had finally voted for Volodar and the Young Communist Revolutionaries to take charge of defense.  The Chinese had walked out of the meeting and no one had seen them since.  Henri looked around the courtyard, but he didn’t see any Chinese today either.  Typical, he thought.

          --Look, he said to Richard.  Let’s go over with the comrades.

Richard thought that was fine.  He didn’t know why they were all armed for battle, but it looked like a safe place to be.

          --And this agitation is not only against the interests of the majority of students but encourages provocation by the fascists.  As if this were not enough, these same pseudo revolutionaries are now trying to give lessons to the working class movement.  From time to time, they turn up in front of the factories and in centers for immigrant workers to give out leaflets and other propaganda material.  It is up to all of us to unmask these pseudo-revolutionaries because, objectively, they are agents of the Gaullist government and the big capitalist monopolies.

The Young Revolutionary militant stopped reading aloud.

          --What did he say?  asked Richard.

          --He was reading a letter in Humanité.  That is the Communist Party newspaper.

          --I know, said Richard.

          --It is a letter written by George Marchais, the Party secretary, against revolutionary groups.

          --The Communist Party isn’t for the revolution?

          --Hardly, said Henri.

          --So the JCR has nothing to do with the Communist Party?

          --They expelled us.

          --They expelled me too, said Richard.

But Henri had turned away to talk to a very young and very short girl who was telling him something very rapidly.  Richard caught the words fafs

and flics.

          --What about the police?  he asked.

          The small girl looked at him.

          --He’s an American, said Henri.

          --Should I go back again?  she asked.

          --I don’t think so.  Just stick around in case we need you for something else.

The small girl went over and joined the girls sunning themselves, their legs bare under short skirts or jeans rolled up above the knee.

          --What did she say about the police?  asked Richard.

          --She’s an estafette, said Henri.  We had her out to watch for the arrival of the fafs, the fascists.  But they do not seem to be coming.  It seems there is a police blockade on the boulevard, so the fascists turned back.

          --Why is there a police blockade?

Henri shrugged.

          --The police are all over the quarter these days.

Richard looked back at the two armed columns on the stairs.  They were all talking, and one of them was passing that Humanité article around.  Well, if they weren’t disturbed, then he wouldn’t be.  Of course, maybe Esther Fett had not told anyone but Henri about the police blockade.  It looked as if Henri had had the same idea because he started over towards the others.  Richard followed.  He heard Henri telling them what Esther had told him.  He could recognize the words flics and fafs and even some of the others.  His French must be getting better.  Another student arrived and said something quietly to Henri.  The armed revolutionaries all commented loudly and one of them handed the loud speaker to the student who repeated whatever it was to the entire courtyard.  Everyone started shouting.  Richard couldn’t find anyone who looked free to translate.  Henri was in the middle of the courtyard with a small group that seemed to be listening to a redheaded guy who took over.  People began dividing up into groups and sitting down and listening to whoever was explaining something at the moment, then questioning him, or getting up to speak themselves.  It was obviously a discussion of some sort but too complicated for him to follow.  He supposed it all had to do with Esther’s information about the police blockade.  But he didn’t think it could be too serious because the Service d”Ordre of the JCR had split up and joined various other groups.  They still kept their helmets and sticks though.

In the meantime he had lost Henri.  He picked out Esther Fett, getting to her feet with a bunch of the girls who had been sunning themselves before.  He went over to them.  They were all looking towards the entrance.

          --Anyone speak English?  he asked, trying a laugh.

The discussion groups suddenly all flowed into the center of the courtyard.  Some of the young revolutionaries had put on their helmets. Was there going to be a fight?

          --What’s happening?  he asked Esther.

          --The police.

          --Ils ont bloqué les portes.       

          He got that, loud and clear.

          --Will they come in?

They were in.  He could see them blocking the exits.

          --Look, he said to Esther.  I’m a deserter.  An American.  Un déserteur.  Je dois pas--

          --I understand, she said.  Come on.

Henri was lost in the crowd near the entrance to the courtyard.

          --Follow, said Ester Fett and Richard followed.

He followed her into the building, half-running after her around a circular stairwell.  It was deserted except for a tall and well-dressed man, striding towards them, who said something to Esther at once, shaking his head and gesturing angrily towards a closed door.  Esther cut him short and pushed Richard forward.

          --This is an American deserter, she said in French.  You must get him out of here with you before the police get any farther.

          --Is it true the police have entered the courtyard?  he asked.

          --It looks like it, she said.  I didn’t wait to see.  I want to get him out.  Can you take care of him?

          --I’ll try, said the man.  But the Rector has locked all the classrooms without telling any of us.  I couldn’t give my lecture.

          --Get him out a window then, said Esther, turned and disappeared the way they had come.

Richard wondered if he would ever see her again.

          --Come with me, said the Professor in English.

He started down the curved corridor at a half-run.  Richard ran after him.  They certainly run fast, these French people, he thought, but, of course they know where they are going. At the end of the corridor, the Professor pushed open a small door, and they found themselves in a sort of box with a door on each side and one high window on the opposite wall.  The Professor twisted the knobs of each door perfunctorily, one with his right, one with his left hand, and then turned to Richard.

          --Climb up and see what’s out the window, he said.  Here, I’ll make you a stirrup.

The Professor bent over, Richard put his combat boot into the clasped hands and hitched himself up into the window.  He smacked it with the heel of his hand, and it banged open against the outside stone.

          --What do you see?  asked the Professor in a strained voice.

          --Cops, said Richard.  They’re getting out of one, two, three, four, a lot of police vans.

          --Get down, said the Professor.

He opened his hands, and Richard slid down to the floor.

          --We’ll have to think of something else, said the Professor.  Follow me.

Turning quickly, he hurried out of the boxlike room with Richard sprinting along behind.  Back in the curved corridor again and out another door which led into the large stone vestibule void of people, the entire student population having by then erupted into the courtyard, the Professor, with Richard after him, pushed into a small space against the wall.

Everyone was watching the activity in the middle of the courtyard, discussing inflow voices.  They seemed to be surprised.  So was Richard.  A line of police had invaded the courtyard of the Sorbonne, turning it into a gigantic trap.  There was no room for a fight even if you could fight the police unarmed, which seemed to Richard impossible.  The Professor was talking to two of the girls.  Richard looked for Esther, but she was nowhere to be seen.  The three of them, the Professor and the two girls, were looking at him.

          --You see, I will explain, said the Professor quickly to Richard.  The police have decided to let all the girls go and just arrest the boys.  So we thought, the best thing is for you to leave with the girls.

          --The girls?  But how?  They’ll know.

Instinctively he put his hand to his growing beard.

          --Well, these two girls and some others will make a group around you.  You are not very tall--so bend down a little.  But you must go right away, very quickly, so you will be in a crowd--invisible.

The two girls got on either side of Richard and pulled him through the crowd of students.  Boys were already being coerced into groups on either side of the entrance.  Suddenly Richard found himself up against the police.  The students were suddenly blacked out behind a double line of cops in combat uniform with night sticks much longer than the ones the Army MP’s carried.  The two girls shoved him into the group of girls.  The police were trying to line them up preparatory to leaving, but the girls had gotten the word whispered around and kept doubling up around him. The double doors across the open archway were pushed back, and he could see lines of police extending out into the street.

          --Down, whispered one of the girls, and he bent over to her level, still not seeing how he would be able to get through unobserved.  Then they all shoved forward at once as they were herded towards the entrance, and someone let out a shout back inside the courtyard of the Sorbonne.  Richard wondered fleetingly if it was the Professor.  The police at the gate looked back over their heads, and the girls surged out onto the sidewalk, behind the line of police cars now moved up from the back, filtering through them up the rue de la Sorbonne.  Crowds of students stood just beyond the police line.  The girls began to tell them what was going on inside.

          --Get out of the quartier, said one of his compagnons.  There’s going to be trouble.

Richard did not need to be told twice.  He had already been a lot of trouble to everybody, and he didn’t want to land in jail after all their efforts to save him.  He wondered what the hell Max had been talking about, saying the police never came into the Sorbonne.  Anyway, he would try to make it to June’s place.  Before he disappeared into the crowd, all talking with the girls from the courtyard, he looked back down the street.  The male students were filing out under police guard and climbing into the police vans.  Richard swung into a half-running step in the opposite direction.

          At the corner of the rue Soufflot, the newspaper vendor next to Wimpy’s Hamburger Emporium hastily began taking his papers and magazines off the outside rack and pushing them any which way into his wooden shack.  A tear gas grenade exploded fifty feet away, so he threw the last lot across the counter, jumped in the back door, and slammed down the iron curtain.  Dispersed the width and length of the boulevard down to the Sorbonne, students were answering the grenades with stones and odd objects, including a sugar shaker from Wimpys, a work lantern from a building site, and something looking like a bicycle pump.  The tear gas was dissipating in a light breeze.

Richard stood watching until a line of police vans rounded the corner of the rue Cujas down into the rue Soufflot, full speed ahead.  The Fifth Arrondissement police station had blocked off the Place du Pantheon.  In fact, the end of every street seemed to be blocked, so Richard went into Wimpy’s to telephone Max.  No answer.  He wondered if Max was out there somewhere.  When he came up from the telephone booth in the basement, Wimpy had locked its doors.  There were no iron shutters, and so the people inside could see the people outside pressing up against the glass doors, trying to get away from the tear gas fumes the police had left in its wake.  But the glass doors remained locked.  After the police had passed, the waiters opened up to let customers out, but they were not letting anyone in.  Many people just stayed inside and finished their hamburgers.  The waiters refused, however, to take new orders.  Richard waited until the boulevard looked deserted and went out.  No traffic, a few people standing stunned on the sidewalk.  It looked like the aftermath of a battle.

                §                                         §                                § 

                                                                                         

          Henri was one of the first to be evacuated from the Sorbonne into the police van.  Once he had seen that the police were blocking the entrance, he had rejoined the Service d’Ordre and mustered them into a double line facing the police.  Volodar and he had then taken their places in the center of the line.  They had decided not to attempt a riposte which, inside the courtyard, would have amounted to a suicide action.  Since the administration had locked all the lecture rooms, an effective action would have been impossible even if the courtyard had not been jammed with students.  Three militants from other revolutionary groups were also there:  someone from another Trotskyist group, and a Maoist, and Cohn-Bendit from the 22nd of March. Volodar came back and said that all the girls were going to be released and the boys taken to jail. The first line of police then moved forward and split the Service d”Ordre into two groups in order to let the girls through.  Henri saw Richard leave with them and then was pushed forward himself and marshaled out with one of the first groups of men.  A line of police vans, grilled like crab baskets, were waiting at the curb.  The students were being loaded on in groups of twenty.  No identify check.  That would take place at the police station.  The door slammed, and the car set off, siren wailing as they left the Latin Quarter.

          --Where do you think they are taking us?

          --Down to the Prefecture.

          --More likely Beaujon.

Beaujon was a disaffected hospital in the West of Paris, habitually used for parking demonstrators.  Henri had spent some eight hours there when he had been arrested during the anti-Humphrey demos a year earlier.  From the route the police van was taking, it looked like the same thing this time.  One of the students next to the grilled door in the back remarked that if they were being taken to Beaujon, they were the only ones.

          --What did you say?  asked Volodar.

          --The other cars must be taking a different route.  There’s no one following us.

          --All right, said Volodar.  Listen.  There are two of them and twenty of us.  We’ll make a lot of noise as if we’re fighting back here--start the whole van rocking.  Go right on, even when they stop, and one of them will come back here with his club to quiet us down.  We’ll jump him and get out when he opens the back.

          --Do they have guns?

          --They won’t use them.

Fifteen minutes later, an empty police van was abandoned on the street.  There was not a cop or a student in sight.

                   §                                    §                                    §

          --But who is fighting in the quarter?  asked Henri/

          After liberating themselves from the police wagon, he and Volo had gone underground into the nearest metro, emerging in the thick of a battle in the Latin Quarter.  More than a thousand students overflowed into the streets, grouping themselves at crossroads and corners as they approached the police lines.  These did not advance but left a street length of no man’s land between themselves and the students, sporadically throwing tear gas grenades from behind their own front lines but not taking advantage of the cover to push forward and clear out the other end of the street.  The students had made chains to relay paving stones up to their own outposts who were dispersed along the store fronts and, under cover of the porte cochères, catapulted stones at the police.  Every now and then a policeman would fall and be pulled back to be replaced by one of the second line reserves.

          --It’s like knocking over ten pins, said Volodar.  But I wonder who the hell is organizing it.

They walked through the quarter, looking for other Young Revolutionaries.  At the corner of Wimpys and the Boul´ Mich, they ran into a group of comrades who also had broken out of a police van/  They were all very set up, but none of them could figure out who was organizing the defense of the Latin Quarter.  Someone thought the Chinese might have surfaced, but no one recognized any of them.

          --We’d better help them, whoever they are, said Volodar.

For the next two hours, they joined the guerrilla groups against the police.  During a calm moment, Henri asked the student passing him paving stones what group he was in.  He got a laugh.

          --What are you?  asked the student.

          --JCR.

          --Then you must have been locked into the Sorbonne.

          --They arrested us, said Henri.  But we took over the van and broke out.

The student laughed again.

          --Well, while you were all being arrested, he said, some girls came out and told us what was going on.  So most of us thought we’d better get the police out of the quarter.  Now, if you’d all been here, you would have ordered us to avoid provocation and told us not to try and take on the police, and we probably all would have gone home.  But left to our own devises, we just started depaving the streets and throwing the stones at them and look--they can’t move.

          --They are probably waiting for orders.

          --Well, we’re not, said the student.  That’s the advantage of on the spot action.

          --What are you, an anar?  asked Henri.

But just then a tear gas bomb ricocheted out from the police block at the other end of the street, and he never got an answer.

          §                                     §                                    §       

Radio Report from the ORTF:

Last night  seven of the students arrested in the Latin Quarter on Saturday were condemned to suspended prison sentences.  The leaders of the uprising, Jacques Sauvageot and Daniel Cohn-Bendit were detained for interrogation.  They have since been released. SNESUP (Section Nationale de l”Enseignement Superior) and UNEF (Union des Etudiants Francais) have both gone on of strike.  M. Frey, the Police Prefect, has forbidden all demonstrations.  Since then, the police have been trying to stop a number of spontaneous demonstrations in the Latin Quarter and at present are maintaining their forces of order in place.  Despite the interdiction, a demonstration was called by UNEF  and SNESUP in the Latin Quarter for 18:30 this evening.  All day long, thousands of people have been assembling in the streets of Paris, not only throughout the Latin Quarter but also at the Châtelet and other points on the right bank.  Violent encounters with the police have taken place on the rue Saint Jacques, Place Maubert, and the Faculty of Science.  At 18:30, a cortège of 10,000 people left Denfert-Rocherau and engaged in a ferocious battle with the police and the CRS on the rue de Rennes, Boulevard Saint Germain and Place Maubert.  The “enragés” are now invoking this action with pride, as well as identifying themselves as “groupuscules.”  M. Samy Frey has qualified these demonstrations as “spontaneous.” Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the German anarchist, has posed the question: “Is the bourgeoisie beginning to be afraid?”

Earlier in the afternoon, the gauchistes called a meeting at the Science Faculty.  Several thousand students formed a cortège along the quays, up to the Boulevard Saint Michel where the police and CRS blocked the quarter.  They threw incendiary bombs, and the demonstrators were momentarily dispersed by tear gas.  One of them at least, Christian Federation of Revolutionary Students, was wounded.  The demonstrators nonetheless regrouped on the Boulevard Saint Germain and organized what can only be described as a counterattack.  Cars were used to construct barricades; human chains were formed to pass paving stones to the front lines where barricades were erected.  The students seemed to have obtained pith helmets.  On more than one occasion, hand grenades thrown by the police were caught or, at least, picked up by the students and thrown back at the police lines, wounding several men.  This violence has not been approved by all the student groupuscules.  The Union of Communist Students, the UJC (the Union of Young Communists), and the Union of Young Marxist-Leninists, a Maoist group, as well as the Federation of Revolutionary Students, a Trotskyist group, have publicly dissociated themselves from this action.  At 17:30, most of the groups retreated to Denfert-Rochert where, at 19:30, a cortege of over 10,000 students returned to Saint Germain des Pres to continue the battle.  Without exaggeration I can assure you that it was a real battle, picturesque in some ways, with lines of students, like Chinese peasants building a dam, passing paving stones to their guerrilla vanguard.  Many of these students have spent time in Cuba. The question of their activities there is being looked into by competent authorities.  The CRS was forced to retreat several times. The majority of demonstrators dispersed at 22 hours.  Sporadic fighting continued in the quarter until 1 a.m.

According to official estimates, 345 police were wounded.  The renowned youth culture which we had not heard too much of in France up until now seems to be at the heart of these demonstrations.  Today especially, the great majority, I might almost say all of the demonstrators were young, the larger part are manifestly students, although young workers and even some high school students seemed to make up a certain part, under the direction, however, of the University students where the extreme left groups have announced daily demonstrations until their demands are satisfied.

          Jacques Sauvageot, one of the student leaders of UNEF, has presented the following demands on behalf  of the students--the “enraged” students as people are beginning to call them:  1) cancelling of administrative and judiciary sanctions against the students; 2) removal of the police from the Latin Quarter; 3) reopening of the University.  He has been quoted as saying that the students did not want violence, but that past experience has taught them that if they stand still and wait, the initiative passes out of their hands and into the hands of the government.

And now for a summary of late news events:  well, the agitation around the closing of the Sorbonne continues, as most Parisians who have been following events on radio and television are aware. The demonstrations seem to be attracting more and more people, as we shall see shortly.  In fact, the fight is still raging on the rue de Rennes and the rue d’Assas.  But first for some official announcements:

          George Séguy, secretary of the CGT, affirms that the festival of young workers, planned for the tenth of this month, will be maintained.  Séguy has issued a statement of solidarity on the part of these young workers with the students and teachers now contesting the government decision of May 3rd to shut down the Sorbonne.  Mr. Séguy’s statement said, in part:  “This tradition of solidarity is the reason why we have no tolerance for those troublesome and provocative elements who accuse the working class of being dominated by bourgeois ideology and, what is worse, have the pretension to try and teach revolutionary theory to the workers  and divert the working class struggle from its true goals.”

          A statement along similar lines comes from members of the CFDT, reproving the call for violence on the part of the fascist organizations but, at the same time, refusing all solidarity with those groups whose, and I quote: “Incoherent actions compromise the chance for real reform.”  Force Ouvrière has also reproved the irresponsibility of the recent violence.  General de Gaulle has declared in a short statement to the press that “we will not tolerate violence in the streets.”

These unanimous opinions coming from such different sources have discouraged many of the groups hitherto participating in the demonstrations, confined until today to the Latin Quarter.  Thus UNEF was the only organization to sponsor today’s demonstration which began at 18:30 at Denfert Rocherau and has not yet terminated. Over 50,000 demonstrators walked from the Latin Quarter to the Arc de Triomphe and down the right bank before regaining the Latin Quarter.  We will now switch you to our correspondent on the rue d’Assas for a firsthand report of the encounter with the police.  Are you there, Jean?  Jean?

          CRASH!

          --Jean?  Excuse us, ladies and gentlemen, we seem to be tuned into the rue d’Assas, but we haven’t yet been able to locate Jean Dutiller, our ORTF--

          SCREECH!

          --Jean?  BLURP wackety wackety wackety--Hello, Maurice?  Maurice?  Am I tuned in?  Yes, I am tuned in.  All right.  This is Jean Dutiller--

          --Go ahead, Jean Dutiller.  This is Maurice Dupont.  Are you all right?

          --Ha ha.  I think so, Maurice.  No broken bones.  All right, now we have found each other, I will bring you my observations from the rue d’Assas where I am for the moment standing in front of a cafe.  The police threw a hand grenade near our radio equipment just now which is why you didn’t hear us right away, but Pierrot and I have just moved to a more protected area behind the student lines.  Impossible to get near the police, and I don’t want to lose my equipment.  Pierrot tried to talk to someone over there a little while ago, but I guess his hair is too long.  Ha ha.  Anyway, the battle is about equal, and so I think we will stay with the students.

          --Is there much violence over there, Jean?  Could you tell us something about that?

          --Gladly.  Yes, I would say--

          WHEE bob bob bob--

          --Ha ha.  I see I don’t need to add to the sound effects.  The police are using every means in their power to disperse the students, but the students seem to be very well-organized.  I would like to add, for myself, that I accompanied the demonstrators all the way up the Champs-Elysèes to the Etoile before coming on duty earlier today, and I was very impressed by the order and discipline shown by these 50,000 and more people.  No violence there.  Since we are having a minute or so of calm now, I’ll give you a little example:  it is after midnight, and so I’ll risk it.  Ordinarily not many people are still tuned in, but, of course, tonight is exceptional.  Anyway, when we got to the Etoile, there were some very young students who wanted to desecrate the Tomb of the Unknown soldier in a very childish way--I think you know what I mean--

          --Yes, yes, but I don’t think--

          --No, that’s all.  They were told by the vast majority that that was stupid and not the reason for the demonstration. Really very interesting how a crowd of such size disciplines itself.  Of course, most people have gone home now.  In fact, I think the students here would all have gone home long ago--after all, they have been marching for almost ten hours and most of them were out in the streets from the damp dawn, but the CRS began attacking people as they split up into small groups.  These young men and women--ah yes, the feeble sex is well-represented--

          --And not so feeble, I would assume, do you agree, Jean?

          --Oh yes, the girls as well as the boys refuse to run away or stay to be arrested, and so they have organized defense groups, several groups-              WHEE WHEE WHEE crash tinkle tinkle tinkle--

          --There goes the cafe window.  I think we’d better move again.  That’s all for now, Maurice, this is Jean Dutiller signing off for the evening.

          --Thank you, Jean Dutiller.  I think you have given our listeners some idea of the situation, and I will conclude with the latest  developments in today’s--I mean, yesterday’s--or really tomorrow’s events:  a call for a general strike from UNEF, a call issued to all French workers to join the combat.  Good night, ladies and gentlemen, this is Maurice Dupont, signing off for ORTF.