Lefts & Rights

Reporting to the first Communist Party rally since the Reds' referendum defeat, Communist Secretary General Maurice Thorez sniped at his Socialist counterpart and late ally, Daniel Mayer: "Instead of making a common front with us against a reactionary offensive ... he prefers to break lances with 'bolshevism'. . . . These . . . tactics . . . will be deplored by all workers and anti-fascists."

Mayer had written in the Socialist organ, Le Populaire: "The nation no longer wants to read slogans which . . . recall the methods of totalitarian propaganda, f France] has nothing to gain from being exclusively aligned on Russian foreign policy. . . . We must not be cut off from the Anglo-Saxon world, nor from Russia either for that matter. . . . [But] the nation does not want Maurice Thorez to be premier."

While Communists and Socialists traded light lefts & rights, the new Rightist Republican Party of Liberty jolted some of its case-hardened reactionary supporters with a manifesto: "The [May 5] referendum victory, which calmed the fears of all Frenchmen loving justice and freedom, cannot in any way be interpreted as a vote in favor of a return to social conservatism."

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