FRANCE: Creamy for Communists

In unison, French Communists stood up in the National Assembly and cried, 150 voices strong: “Popular Front!” The other politicians in the divided Assembly, though they clapped their hands over their ears and refused to listen, could not entirely shut out the echoing, uncomfortable sound.

In the new National Assembly’s organizing sessions, the Communists politely withdrew their own candidate, aged hack Marcel Cachin, and made possible the speedy election of 71-year-old Socialist André Le Troquer as Assembly president (Speaker). Without their support, he had been a poor third in the voting.

Then came time for that oft-repeated ritual, the summoning of party leaders by French President René Coty to “consult” on the choice of a new Premier. Red Leader Jacques Duclos, the onetime pastry cook, came away murmuring creamily: “Universal suffrage, in placing the Communist Party clearly at the head of all other parties, gave us the right to demand [the premiership] for a Communist . . . The attitude of official circles seems to make this impossible for the moment. In this situation, I have proposed that the President call a Socialist . . .”

President Coty had already decided to do just that. The man he sent for was 50-year-old Socialist Party Leader Guy Mollet, the onetime English teacher from Pas-de-Calais (TIME, Jan. 23). After some tight dickering with his electoral ally, Pierre Mendès-France, Mollet settled on a Cabinet, giving Mendès the job of Deputy Premier without portfolio (instead of Foreign Minister, which Mendes desired). For Foreign Minister he reached instead into his own party for Good European Christian Pineau. 51, stepson of Playwright Jean (The Madwoman of Chaillot) Giraudoux and himself an author of children’s fairy stories. Mollet spurned the Communist support proffered (“Let no one think that I’m the man to prepare the future of Popular Front . . . I will never lead my party to suicide”), but seemed fated to get it anyway. Ultimately, said Communist Duclos complacently, “popular pressure . . . will force the formation” of a Popular Front.