The Two Majorities

Edouard Harriot, one of the grand old men of French politics, had come at last to the end of a political road. Weighed down by age (81) and his legs crippled by phlebitis, he could no longer climb without help to the chair of the President (Speaker) of France's Assembly. For more than a month, he did not appear at all. Last week his deputy read a message from him.

"I cannot put it off," said Herriot. "My age and my state of health no longer permit me to direct the work of the National Assembly as I should wish . . ."

A man of learning, wit and literary talent, Herriot strode energetically through four decades of turbulent French politics. "Don't go to sleep thinking a thing is impossible," he was fond of saying. "You'll probably be awakened by the noise of somebody else doing it." He was three times Premier of France before World War II. After France fell and Petain took over, Herriot mailed his Legion of Honor decoration to Vichy. The Nazis imprisoned him in Germany, and he was three times reported dead. But he came back and set up his own little camp along the tent-speckled riverbank of French politics, as nominal head of the right-of-center Radical Socialist Party.

His departure as Speaker was not so significant as his decision not to be a candidate in next week's election (by Parliament) for the seven-year job as President. One of the most emphatic opponents of EDC, Herriot, despite his feebleness, was given an excellent chance to win the presidency; the EDC-haters, from the Communists to the Gaullists, would be happy to rally around his respected name.

According to the U.S. embassy's anxious counters, there is still a slight numerical majority for EDC in the French National Assembly. The difficulty is that a majority that could be put together to pass EDC is not a majority that could govern the country. There are two majorities in the chamber: one for internal policy, one for foreign policy. The Laniel government is a precarious internal majority, essentially a right-of-center group. The Socialists will not join it. On a vote for EDC, the Socialists would support Laniel, but the Gaullists would desert him. Without the Gaullists, the government cannot enact its internal policy. Without the Socialists, it cannot enact a "European" foreign policy.

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