FOR AND AGAINST

We should not, however, only talk about the "sidis" when they are talked about. All these times, the sidis have been wise, as wise, in any case, as all the other citizens. Let us take advantage of this good moment to talk about them calmly...

The "sidis", obviously, do not have a very good press in our country. It must be admitted that some of them, natures too rough, too wild, too ardent, have committed such serious errors that public opinion could rightly be alarmed... But if the "sidis" have committed errors against us, that is no reason for us to commit errors ourselves against them, against all of them...

It seems that we sometimes commit some of them. A woman, Mrs. Malté de Sémo, widow of Mohamed, who defended her unfortunate brothers, went to do an investigation in Champagne on the conditions in which the native workers live... Her investigation, which seems sincere and thorough, reveals some distressing facts...

First, the "sidis", who are often criticized, and for good reason, for being of very relative cleanliness, cannot be clean. They live, "penned like cattle, by fifty, by a hundred, in filthy sheds or barracks where the least basic hygiene is impossible"... No windows, no washbasins, straw mattresses eaten away by vermin. That is all that is offered to them for shelter... It is appalling, said Mrs. Malté de Sémo.

The response was invariably: They would be even worse off at home!… And that is an answer that is not one, and it is an excuse that is not valid, and it is a reason that is simply stupid and odious…

They are not in the bush of Kabylie, the "sidis", when they work in Reims, or in Bar-le-Duc, or in Puteaux... They are in a civilized country... It is therefore our duty to initiate them a little into our civilization, to teach them to be clean and civilized... It is not because they are "sidis" that they must be covered in lice…

There is something else, something else that is even more serious, which reveals on our part as much frivolity as improvidence... We bring these "bicots". We throw them on the pavement of our cities. A factory employs them... Then, after six months, the factory, no longer needing them, fires them. So no one cares about them anymore. They are left to wander, starving unemployed people, in the suburbs and the countryside... They have no job. They have no union. They have no support. They do not speak French... They hang around, like lost dogs, and die of hunger... In Reims, for example, more than two hundred "sidis" are unemployed and running after a crust of bread... Is it fair?... Is it decent?... Do we not, civilized, have some duties towards these unfortunates less civilized than us?...

We should not have called them to our home... or, having called them, we must watch over them a little... We must show them that civilization is not a word that means either exploitation, or indifference, or vermin, or misery...

Maurice PRAX