Scuffling

For an hour, lean, pale Admiral Andre Marquis and grim Admiral Jean Marie Abrial had been waiting in the dock. The public that jammed the somber, oak-paneled Salle des Congres at Versailles--where the High Court has been trying Vichy officials--had been buzzing with impatience. Since 2 p.m. the Court had been ready to proceed with Admirals Marquis and Abrial, accused of conspiring to keep the French Navy out of Allied hands in 1942.* But eleven of the 24 deputies on the jury panel had not appeared.

At 4 p.m. presiding Judge Louis Nogueres made an interesting discovery: the missing eleven were all Communists. He scratched his beard, then phoned No. 2 French Communist Jacques Duclos. "Duclos," he said, "do you know why the Communist deputies on my jury have not arrived?" Replied Duclos: "But yes. They have not arrived because they are not coming."

To a shocked public the party organ Humanite explained next day that the Communist jurors had struck because, of 105 Vichy officials indicted, two alone (Darnand, Laval) had been given death and most of the others had been flatly, or virtually, acquitted. In the Chamber, Communist deputies demanded the High Court be reorganized; they demanded an Assembly-elected prosecutor (rather than an impartial state appointee), and wanted the jury's secret deliberations opened to the public.

Meanwhile, the Fourth Republic's highest criminal court would remain suspended until either the comrades backed down, or the National Assembly set up a new judicial procedure. All but the leftist newspapers cried out in disgust. Said Combat, for a majority of Frenchmen: "The Communists do not want justice but a strictly political jurisdiction. In the eyes of the world [they] have scuttled French justice more effectively than the admirals sank our fleet at Toulon."

* Not present: Admirals Jean de Laborde (ill in a hospital) and Gabriel Auphan (inexplicably still at large), scheduled to be tried at the same time for their part in the scuttling of the fleet at Toulon.

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