"Death to Carlini!"

Sun-soaked, raffish, turbulent Marseille, the largest seaport and the second city of France, resembles in many ways the San Francisco of Barbary Coast days and the Chicago of Al Capone's era. Animosity between Gaullists and Communists reaches a shriller pitch in Marseille than anywhere else in France. In Marseille last week the new R.P.F. (Gaullist) mayor, Michel Carlini, 58, who had been mauled by a Red mob, lay on a couch, his head wrapped in bandages, and said:

"I am not a man of politics. Only the tragic situation of my country and my admiration for General de Gaulle persuaded me--a university professor--to accept the post of mayor of Marseille. But now I'm here and I'm here to stay; violence and threats will not change that."

Streetcar Fare. To ignite the explosion, the Communists cynically used a spark of their own making. It was a decree, raising the streetcar fare from 3 1/2 to 5 francs, which had been prepared by the

Communist administration before leaving office. The new city council (25 Gaullists, 24 Communists, nine Socialists, five Popular Republicans) had merely let the decree go through. Nevertheless Red labor leaders summoned workers to the city hall to demonstrate against the fare increase. Two days later, the new council was having its first plenary session at the City Hall. Glowering, stocky Jean Cristofol, the ousted Red mayor, fixed a baleful eye on Carlini, his Gaullist successor, and interrupted the preliminary business to demand an immediate discussion of the streetcar-fare boost. Carlini refused. Instantly the 24 "Cocos" began shouting abuse; one of them threw a chair at the mayor. A woman Socialist thereupon spattered Communist Cristofol's shirtfront with ink and spat in his face.

"A Mort, `a Mort, `a Mort." Carlini, who has a Marseilles flair for colorful prose, described what happened next:

"Following the melee with my Communist 'colleagues,' I retired, with my assistants, to a private room in the City Hall. There I was warned that Communist shock troops were on their way over. We waited, and soon heard the rumble of the mob outside. Then, one by one, we heard the doors of the City Hall crash open as fiendish howls of 'Death to Carlini' grew nearer.

"The last obstacle--my office door--gave way, and a mob of howling furies leaped on me. One of them, an ugly, red-bearded giant, hit me on the head with a chair leg. I was knocked down, and under a deluge of punches and kicks, dragged down the stairs and outside the City Hall. I recognized the shrieks of my wife, mingling with the yelling of the mob: (A mort, `a mort, `a mort. . . .' "

The police might have saved him, but they did not, because some were Reds and some were afraid of the mob.

"They stood motionless, stiff as ramrods," Carlini recalled. "Not one of them moved. I thought my last moment had come, when suddenly a score of Gardes Mobiles showed up. In a most determined manner, they forced a passage through the crowd, freed me and took me back to the City Hall. I was put in an ambulance, but couldn't get to the hospital until an hour later, because the crowd blocked the road and tried to overthrow the ambulance.

"One woman, an awful-looking hag, pushed her face through the window of the car and spat in my face."

Rising Temper. Next day the Communist ex-mayor called a general strike. Thirteen thousand troops and special police moved in. The port was tied up, but troops unloaded some food shipments, and the general strike fizzled because public utility workers and members of most other unions refused to join it.

Meanwhile in Paris, the National Committee of the C.G.T., by 857 votes to 127, denounced the Marshall Plan as "an instrument of political and economic slavery." Communists staged their own Armistice Day parade, which was watched by Coco bigwigs (see cut) and marred by scuffles when bystanders mockingly shouted: "Vive De Gaulle!" The temper of non-Communist France was rising. Premier Ramadier, who still hopes to cleave a path between Gaullism and Communism, got up from a sickbed to denounce the Marseille mobsters in the National Assembly. Troops with four tanks raided a Russian repatriation camp near Paris, seized ten machine guns and ten hand grenades.

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