Foreign News: FRANCE

First Step

Was it a tocsin? Last week the French government, prodded and pushed on by the Resistance, took control of one of France’s biggest industrial enterprises—the Renault automobile plant (peacetime employes: 34,000). Next it nationalized the coal mines of the Pas-de-Calais and Nord departments. Soon, it announced, some 50 major plants.would be controlled by the Government.

This, explained Minister of Information Henri Teitgen, was not confiscation; it was merely a step to get French industry back into production. Later a commission would examine the books, confiscate war profits, bring charges. . . .

Cried the Resistance newspapers: “Not enough.” They called for further confiscation, nationalization of heavy industry, more vigorous motion against collaborationists. Louis Renault, 67-year-old founder of the confiscated auto plant, was in jail as a collaborationist (TIME, Oct. 2). What would be done with industrialists like André Citroën, France’s No. 2 auto magnate? He had stood firmly with the Resistance, had bought farms to provide his workers with food, and had sent many of his best workers out as farm laborers so that the Germans would lack skilled mechanics.

In Valence, meanwhile, Resistance leaders from eleven departments, calling themselves the “Congress of Disillusioned Maquis Fighters,” met and voted a resolution: “Let the Government remember that … we represent the people and we will defend the interests of the people with ferocious tenacity!” Another meeting, scheduled for the “Popes’ Palace” at Avignon this week, entitled itself the Etats Généraux—the name of the body whose meeting began the French Revolution. Was it a tocsin?

Charles de Gaulle seemed to think it was. On the Place de la Republique at Lille, in the heart of a coal-mining district, he cried: “. . . The collective people—that is the state—must take over the direction of the great sources of common wealth. . . .” Roared the crowd: “That’s what we want.”