A Reluctant Yes

On a crisp, sunny day Frenchmen last week reluctantly adopted their 14th Constitution--a tripartite compromise draft neither rightist fish nor leftist fowl--rather than heed the adamantine voice of General Charles de Gaulle. Final score: 9,126,370-to-8,043,366 (complete except for a few overseas votes). Explained a Paris shopkeeper:

"We can't go on voting for constitutions forever. It is evident this Assembly can't produce a better one, so there's no use sending it back for more doctoring. De Gaulle will probably be proved right . . . but we have got to get on to other business."

Thirty percent of the French, weary of repeated voting, did not go to the polls. But enough followed the "Liberator" to give France's largest political party, the

Catholic Centrist M.R.P., and its leader, President Georges Bidault, a resounding slap. Only one-third of its members voted for the Constitution the party had cosponsored. The Socialists also were divided, but the Communists, as usual, voted in a disciplined phalanx.

Thirty-six out of 93 departments rejected the Constitution. It was adopted in such leftist strongholds as Marseilles and Lille, voted down in the rightist bastions of Paris, Bordeaux, Strasbourg.

Aloof Charles de Gaulle could claim at least a half victory. The vote showed that he could not buck the coalition, but he had emerged the largest single influence in France, larger than any one party. Frenchmen wondered if De Gaulle would accept (if offered) a presidency which, as set up in the new constitution, he considered weak and ineffectual.

With one fight over, Frenchmen at week's end had plunged into another four weeks of vigorous campaigning. Next month they would choose regular deputies to the new Assembly and Council of the Republic.

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