Foreign News: Revolution by Law

In Paris last week General Charles de Gaulle made his first full-dress political speech in France. Beside him on the Palais de Chaillot’s flower-banked rostrum was Foreign Commissioner Georges Bidault, Catholic history professor who led the underground’s National Council of Resistance.

Before De Gaulle sat a decorous audience composed chiefly of mothers who had lost sons in the war. At hundreds of loudspeakers the French in Paris listened, hoping to learn, after 18 days of liberation, the outlines of the future. They heard a decorous and tactful speech. Said De Gaulle:

“It is certain that the great majority of our citizens consider that sweeping reforms must be carried out in the working of our institutions, and neither in law nor in fact is there any other means of rebuilding our democracy than to consult the real ruler—the people of France. The moment that the war permits, that is to say when our territory is completely free and our prisoners and deportees return to their homes, the government will invite the nation to elect by the universal vote of every man and every woman its representatives, whose reunion will constitute the National Assembly. . . . The government will place in the hands of those mandatories the provisional powers which at the moment it assumes. . . .

“In order to resume the principles on which France proposes to base her national framework we can say that, while assuring the maximum liberty to the people and favoring individual enterprise, the future must assure that private interests must always give place to public interests and that national assets should no longer be exploited for the benefit of a few, and that cartels, which have weighed so heavily on the workers and even on state politics, should be abolished once and for all.”

Example to the World. Foreign Commissioner Bidault was more forthright. He said: “We are going to have a revolution, and France is going to give an example to the world of a new revolution—a legal one.”

The materials for a revolution, legal or otherwise, were certainly present in France last week, for in the nation the forces of the right and the left were pretty evenly divided—though the balance had tipped to the left.

The division in the country was reflected in the government. In De Gaulle’s Cabinet were two Communists, grey, wiry Air Commissioner Charles Tillon, handsome Health Commissioner François Billoux. But the Cabinet also contained two right-wing extremists, the young, athletic Commissioner for Prisoners and Deportees, Henri Frenay and Transport Commissioner René Mayer, a onetime Rothschild confidant.

The new government combined not only divergent political views, but divergent remnants of the old Algiers government and the Resistance. The Resistance had nine representatives. There were eleven survivors of the Algiers regime.

Split in Two. The National Council of Resistance was split in two:

¶ The Front National was strongly leftist. It included Foreign Commissioner Bidault’s Catholic party, labor unions, businessmen’s associations, professional people. Its military organization was the Franc-Tireurs Partisans (F.T.P.), the Communist-controlled section of the F.F.I.

¶ The rightist Mouvement de Libération Nationale grew out of the union of three Gaullist groups in southern France. Its military organization, the Corps Francs de la Libération, was second in importance only to the Communist-controlled F.T.P. in the F.F.I.

Army v. F.T.P.? How long could General de Gaulle keep these conflicting forces working together? The right was discredited, but it still possessed great strength.

The moderate left, the left of the “revolution by law,” was ruling France. The Communists were supporting it as long as it moved leftward. Now they were for nationalization of industry. So were De Gaulle and Bidault. But the Communists were strongly opposed to incorporating the F.T.P. in the new French Army. (So far De Gaulle’s decree dissolving the F.F.I, has not been enforced.) But the Army was growing rapidly. If it should be used against the F.T.P., there might be trouble.

Meanwhile France waited for its vote; elections were tentatively scheduled for three months after V-day. To many a Frenchman the result seemed a foregone conclusion. Said one anti-communist businessman: “France will go socialist.

The property sense has largely disappeared in these four years. After taking orders from the Germans, we will take orders from our own government that we would never have accepted before. For example, the order to pay workers a dole when factories had to close. . . . Five years ago we would never have accepted it.”

But General de Gaulle was well aware that internal politics are directly connected with foreign policy. Ever since liberation the French have been bursting spontaneously into the Marseillaise on streets and public squares. De Gaulle proposed that France should sing its national anthem on a wider stage to a bigger audience. On a swing around France last week he raised the question of France’s role in Europe’s affairs. In Lyons he said: France must be great. “She must be able to tell her friends: ‘I am one of you, I am among the victors as you are. I have well deserved it and I claim my place.’ “