After our intervention at the press conference held at the Ritz by [Charlie] Chaplin, and the partial reproduction in the newspapers of the tract entitled No More Flat Feet, which revolted against the cult that one communely rendered to this director, Jean-Isidore Isou and two of his followers who grow old underneath the harness have published in Combat a note disapproving of our action in this precise circumstance.

We have appreciated the importance of the works of Chaplin in their time, but we know that today novelty is elsewhere and that "truths that are no longer amusing become lies" (Isou).

We believe that the most urgent exercise of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when they represent freedom.

The provocative tone of our tract reacts against unanimous and servile enthusiasm. The distance that certain Lettrists, and Isou himself, have been led to take in this case only betrays the always renewed incomprehension between extremists and those who are no longer extremists; between us and those who renounce "the bitterness of their youth" so as to "smile" along with the established glories; between those more than twenty years old and those less than thirty years old.

We only claim responsibility for a text that only we have signed. We have not disavowed anyone.

The diverse expressions of indignation are indifferent to us. There aren't degrees among reactionaries.

We abandon them to the anonymous and shocked crowd.

(On 2 November 1952, this text was refused by Combat, in violation of the terms of Article 13 of the Law of 29 July 1881. Eventually published in Internationale Lettriste #1, December 1952. Translated from the French by NOT BORED!)