La Quatrieme Republique

The Fourth Republic was born. Some 24,000,000 Frenchmen and Frenchwomen trooped to their country's first free election since 1936. By a resounding majority they chose a Constituent Assembly by the Left, ordered it to frame a new Constitution, approved a strong executive interim government.

France had come to this crossroads through the ordeal of defeat and occupation, and through the explosive tensions of liberation. She had tasted the bitter truth in the words of Lord Grey of Fallodon: "Bad as despotism is, doomed as it is to work its own ruin, the first fruits of its overthrow are not love and liberty." Now, in democratic fashion, France registered her choice for the future.

By her vote France also gave a solid mandate to middleway socialism. Of 596 seats in the new Assembly, the Socialists and the moderate Popular Republicans, who form France's biggest political bloc, held 60%. By voting for a strong executive, the electorate showed its support of Provisional President Charles de Gaulle. But this swing seemed also a rebuke to the General, a demand for a speedup of the socialistic reforms drafted by the underground and tacitly approved by his Government in the early days of liberation.

Out of Catastrophe. The France that did all these things is still far from actual socialism. Nationalization has progressed no farther than the coal mines and a few large plants (autos, airplane engines). Labor's voice in management is small. Full state planning of the nation's economic life has been hampered by economic dislocation, by ideological differences and by General de Gaulle's professed unwillingness to proceed without a clearer man date from the people.

It will take many months and years to repair France's 1,500,000 destroyed buildings, 2,000 wrecked bridges, 2,400 miles of torn railway, and all the other injuries to docks, fields and plain people. Raw materials and manpower are sorely lacking. The harvest (leading crops : wheat and sugar beets) has suffered from drought and from the thousands of still-buried German land mines. Inflation corrodes all progress and apparently will not be banished until the franc is devalued, a measure from which officialdom shies. But, de spite the vast inertia which grips France's economy and the French public as a whole, some signs of recovery are visible.

Coal production is up to 134,000 tons monthly, from a low of 40,000 tons just after liberation. Like plasma in a wounded body, the increase in coal is making itself felt in chemicals, metals, textiles and other basic industries. Railways now carry 65% of their prewar tonnage. The merchant marine (partly salvaged) is halfway back. A symbol is the rebuilding of Oradour-sur-Glane, the Lidice of France. Once again, amid the rubble marked simply "REMEMBER," the little town has its mairie, school, post office, shoemaker and bakery.

Bread will no longer be rationed after Nov. 1. Cake is available again at the patisseries. Tobacco rations are up 50%--although the daily supply is still only five cigarets per smoker. Taxis are trickling back to the boulevards -- although only holders of priority cards, such as expectant mothers and war invalids, may ride. The clothing supply is tight, particularly for men: next year there will be a new suit for every third Frenchman, an overcoat for every tenth. But soap is no longer sand-and-clay; it lathers.

Out of ferment a new political brew and a set of new political meanings have emerged. The 30 different factions of a year ago have boiled down to three main groups:

The Left, a strange & wonderful thing not to be confused with the prewar '"Left," is led by the Communists, supported by the top cadres of the powerful trade-union federation, CGT. They represent, by last week's returns, approximately 30% of the electorate. In the new Assembly, they hold twice as many seats as they did in the prewar parliament.

As usual, the Communists excel in organization and discipline. They support the Socialist-inspired "revolution by law." but they oppose the Socialists who are conducting it. They have also become General de Gaulle's severest critics, accuse him of seeking personal power, find fault with his foreign policy because he now finds fault with Russia. They opposed the General on the issue of a stronger executive arm. They lost. The "No" vote they promoted (34%) is the measure of the Provisional Government's opposition.

The Communist boss is husky, eloquent Maurice Thorez, 45, onetime coal miner, who spent most of the war years in Moscow. Last week he turned his heaviest oratorical guns on the Gaullist-Socialist idea of a western bloc. Such a bloc, he cried, ''would be opposed by the other [eastern] bloc and lead toward new conflicts, toward a war of extermination with atomic bombs. . . ."

Pink, squat Jacques Duclos, 50, veteran of the GPU, is No. 2 Communist. Last week he blared the party's new line: "We are the champions and defenders of the middle class." Other Communist leaders: ruddy, rotund Florimond Bonte, 55, clerk's son and charter party member, is the Communist foreign affairs expert. Tall, devious Andre Marty, 59, an International Brigadier in the Spanish Civil War, is the party hellion.

The Center is now occupied by the victorious Socialists and Popular Republicans (Mouvement Republicain Populaire). From them De Gaulle gets solid but not uncritical support. Last August the Socialists rejected fusion with the Communists by an overwhelming convention vote (10,112-to-274); thereby they won the support of shopkeepers, artisans, farmers and other petite bourgeoisie. The MRP, emerging from the Resistance, combines Christian and Socialist principles, appeals to the Church and to women (who voted for the first time in French history in the September cantonal elections and who now compose 53% of the electorate).

Aging (78), analytical Leon Blum, ex-Premier and head of the 1936 Popular Front, came out of a German concentration camp to resume the leadership of the Socialists. Says he: "We have at this moment many friends, even a few too many. We are not the saviors of bourgeois capitalism."

Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, 46, the brilliant, convivial professor of history who became head of the Resistance, is No. 1 man of the MRP. Many Frenchmen, less interested in politics than in the quest for security and decency, look to Bidault for leadership. The Communists, sensing and fearing this appeal, fume that the MRP is a "Trojan horse full of Catholic Fascists. . . ."

The Right, now discredited and feeble (10% of the electorate), includes what used to be France's great left-of-center party, the Radical Socialists. Never radical or socialist, this time the party stood for a return to the Constitution of the Third Republic. Its old leaders are of prewar vintage: portly Edouard Herriot, 73, and bull-like Edouard Daladier, 61. During the campaign, ex-Premier Daladier was heckled with Leftist cries of "Munich!" and barrages of eggs and tomatoes. Also on the Right: the anemic Federation Republicaine and Alliance Democratique; many of their prewar leaders were tainted by collaboration.

Le Grand Charlie. Above the factions still stands General de Gaulle, a politician without a party. No other personality rivals him in prestige and authority. He is as arbitrary, difficult, downright contrary as ever. But to most Frenchmen he is still The Symbol, the man who saved France's honor. His paramount interest is foreign policy--i.e., the restoration of French grandeur abroad--and in this he has his country's backing.

But in domestic policy General de Gaulle has moved slowly. The reformists wonder if he has neglected the promised revolution or if he ever had his heart in it. Having argued that a provisional government cannot make drastic changes, le grand Charlie now has France's order to speed up.

The People. As they registered their judgment upon the parties and politicians, plain Frenchmen and Frenchwomen thought and talked mostly of their own countless needs and difficulties. A little more food, a little warmth, a little hope--these were the real wants of the real France.

Said a building worker, half-idle for lack of plaster, wire, glass and other materials: "All the politicians do is promise much and talk much and deliver little. . . . One must get a priority to get a priority to get anything at all. . . ."

Said a foreman, disgusted by black market profiteering: "So the rich get fatter, while the poor"--a snap of the fingers--"get pouff!"

Said a taxi driver's wife: "In my 45 years of life things have always been bad and always will be." Said a cobbler's wife: "Things are a little better."

Said a clerk, vaguely frustrated by the hardships of liberation: "C'est au plus debrouillard--the chiseler is the guy who gets ahead."

Said an electrician, disgruntled because his wages could not keep pace with prices: "But we still have France, thanks to De Gaulle, and we are alive, thanks to the Allies. . . ."

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