THE NATIONS: Flight of the Dove

• Share

(2 of 5)

At Wroclaw (formerly Breslau) in Poland in 1948, a "group of French and Polish intellectuals" held the World Congress of Intellectuals. Many men of good will attended, to hear Russians like Alexander Fadeyev, secretary general of the Union of Soviet Writers, lambast America. Some, like British Scientist Julian Huxley, returned to complain in apparent bewilderment that the congress "preached war, not peace." The congress paid no attention, elected a permanent International Committee of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace, and planned national branches to hold other peace meetings.

Next, there was the "Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace" in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria in March 1949, where U.S. left-wingers applauded the U.S.S.R.'s "fight for peace." Cried U.S. Playwright Clifford (Waiting for Lefty) Odets: "I cannot blame the Soviet Union because an apocalyptic beast is running loose in our world today, and its name is money, money, money."

In Berlin, the airlift planes droned on, balking the Reds' attempt to starve the city. The Chinese Communists marched toward Nanking.

The Emblem. Not until the spring of 1949 did the dove achieve bodily form. As the World Peace Congress met in Paris, Communist Poet Louis Aragon went to Pablo Picasso, who likes to say, "I came to the Party as to a fountain." Aragon wanted an emblem, and his eye fell on a lithograph of a dove on the wall. "Ha," said Aragon. The World Peace Congress, after hearing Baritone Paul Robeson assail "the slanders of the American mercenary press," happily adopted Picasso's dove and happily applauded Fadeyev's attack on the makers of the North Atlantic Pact. "We, the people of the world, shall punish you severely," cried Fadeyev in his most peace-like manner.

At Paris, the World Peace Congress found a title ("The Partisans of Peace") and "elected" a permanent bureau, which comprised the men who have fronted for the peace movement in its various titles ever since. France's Frédéric Joliot-Curie, president of the Communists' World Federation of Scientific Workers, was president.

Forth from the Paris conference flew Picasso's dove, to breed wondrously. The dove was plastered on posters, stamped on ash trays and handkerchiefs, brooches and earrings. Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Poland and Russia put it on postage stamps. It was stamped on tickets to rallies in France and on banners to fly over the rallies; in Belgium, they made it out of spaghetti and macaroni for sale to peace-lovers. On U.S. automobiles in France, little dove stickers appeared, with the words "American, go home. We want peace."

The Moonbeam & the Wind. The bird's finest hour came when French Communist Pierre Gamarra turned it into a charming fable. The wind and a moonbeam visit Pablo Picasso in his home on the Riviera. They beg him for a bird, big and strong, to carry a little girl to Wonderland. "To Wonderland?" asks Picasso, rubbing his chin. "What's wrong with this little girl?" "She's afraid of war," whispers the wind. Whereupon Picasso seizes his pen and draws a white dove.