FRANCE: The Page of Progress

As Frenchmen last week examined the results of their two-week electoral spree, they seemed to have the slightly dismayed air of a finger painter surveying his own handiwork. They knew what they were voting against (the old gang), but were now surprised by what they had voted for. Even Charles de Gaulle himself had not wanted the kind of right-wing majority he got. He had insisted on a single-constituency method of voting that was presumed to favor familiar names (principally the Socialists and Radicals) over a grab bag of unknowns styling themselves Gaullists, some of them able, many not.

With the results in, there was much clucking about the underrepresentation in the new Assembly of the Communists (ten seats) compared with the 188 for the new Gaullist Union for the New Republic, when both parties in the first round polled about the same number of votes. Yet the Communists (who in the old days gained unfairly through proportional representation) had in fact suffered a drop of more than 1,500,000 votes—possibly the most important manifestation of the election.

But the change in electoral methods was just as devastating to the Roman Catholic center and to the Socialists, both of whom held their old voting strength yet lost heavily in seats. Socialist Guy Mollet, who helped bring De Gaulle to power and hoped to become Premier, now grumpily said that his Socialists would vote for De Gaulle as President and then go into opposition. The big factor in French politics was now Jacques Soustelle’s U.N.R. The results:

Old New % of Vote

Seats Seats 1st Round

Communists & allies 145 10 18.9

Socialists & assorted left 88 42 15.5

Radicals 56 13 4.8

Left Center 18 22 6.7

Catholic M.R.P. 71 57 11.6

Right-Wing Ind. (Pinay) 94 132 19.9

Extreme Right (Poujadists) 52 1 3.3

U.N.R. & others 16 188 17.6

On paper, the U.N.R.—in affiliation with Pinay’s conservatives and 71 right-wingers elected in North Africa—will form a right-wing Assembly with a passion for seeing that Algeria remains French. Premier Charles de Gaulle, who was above the battle while the elections were fought out, stayed above it when the results were in.

Off to Algeria. After a four-hour Cabinet conference last week, he enplaned for Algeria, his fifth visit to the war-torn territory since taking office. Before leaving, he created the post of Inspector General of National Defense as a niche into which General Raoul Salan, the Algerian commander in chief, could be gracefully moved. Salan’s position of power will be diluted into a two-man job. The civilian functions will go to a brilliant civil servant, Paul Delouvrier, 44, the financial head of the European Coal and Steel Community, who recently completed a fact-finding tour of Algeria for De Gaulle.

The military in Algeria will be taken over by General Maurice Challe, 53, a fiery patriot after De Gaulle’s own heart. After the French collapse in World War II, Airman Challe distinguished himself in the resistance by personally leading and executing “most delicate and dangerous” missions. He is credited with having obtained for the Eisenhower headquarters before D-day the order of battle of the German Luftwaffe, the placement of flak installations and of the main dispositions of the German army. Characterized as a man “who always happily chooses the most perilous posts,” General Challe is a dedicated Gaullist.

Cheering Bedouins. Landing at Constantine airport with Delouvrier unobtrusively at his side, De Gaulle stressed the civilian aspects of his Algerian visit. He gave General Salan only a perfunctory handshake, but hobnobbed enthusiastically with steel experts in Bone, oilmen in the Sahara, land-reclamation officers in the Moslem villages. At Touggourt, an oasis in the desert, De Gaulle told 15,000

Bedouins that he hoped “the laggards still concerned with civil war may finally realize that the page of combat has been turned. Now it is the page of progress, civilization and the brotherhood of man.” At week’s end Premier de Gaulle flew back to France, where his election as President of the Fifth Republic on Dec. 21 became only a formality when his respected friend, 76-year-old President Rene Coty, announced that he would not run.