Lucien REBATET. L.A.S., Paris 22 February 1972, to Pierre Viansson-Ponté 2 pages in-4 at his address 33, rue Le Marois. Controversy with the editor of Le Monde over the death of Pierre Overney (1948-1972, Gauche prolétarienne militant, killed by a Renault security guard). He doesn't call him "dear colleague" even though I've been in the business for 43 years. I am Lucien Rebatet, the 'enraged' fascist, the author of Les Décombres. Which does not prevent me from being your attentive reader, with the differences you can easily imagine. For him, as for Jacques de Montalais, and contrary to what Viansson-Ponté wrote, "the real people responsible for the appalling death of the young René-Pierre Overney are Maurice Clavel and Jean-Paul Sartre. [...] It was obviously not Sartre who put a revolver in the hand of the warden Tramoni. But the campaign of provocation and incitement to violence that he had been waging for months against the Régie Renault and at the very scene of last Friday's tragedy could only result in bloodshed. So you relieve Sartre of this responsibility. And yet it was on the basis of this reasoning, which seems so bizarre to you, that my friend Robert Brasillach and I were sentenced to death by the courts, and Brasillach was shot. For all our writings during the Occupation, which were considered to be calls for direct action and treason. I've claimed this form of responsibility very loudly, acknowledging that, for example, I had encouraged many young people to join the L.V.F., to join the militia. I often drew a distinction between the convictions of police officers acting on orders, which I felt were unjust, and our convictions, which I felt were normal in revolutionary times. [...] It is to our honour as writers, journalists and intellectuals to take full responsibility for the often serious consequences of the ideas we put forward and the feelings we arouse. To spare Sartre the prison he deserves a hundred times more than the petty Maoist thugs, you are depriving him of this honour"... Etc. Attached is Pierre Viansson-Ponté's L.S. reply, 2 March 1972 (2 p. in-4 typewritten on Le Monde letterhead).