Paris

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE Fourth French Republic has been born with apologies. No congratulations or cigars were passed around on this occasion, nor even any of the more typically French dragées — candy-covered almonds — which proud parents usually send to future friends of their newborn child.

The regime will not be complete until well into the new year. Under the highly complicated procedure devised for the creation of the Republic, the direct election of the National Assembly was followed by the indirect choice of a second, almost impotent, legislative chamber, the Council of the Republic. The two houses meet in January to elect jointly, for a seven-year term, the President of the Republic, who will appoint the Prime Minister, subject to approval by the Assembly.

This is the first permanent new regime to emerge in Western Europe from the Second World War. While others shirked or shied away from the responsibility of creating new states, the French at least lived up to their traditions of political leadership on the Continent by trying to reach some sort of decision.

A multi-party system, with a coalition of inimical groups necessary for a controlling majority, remained the political basis of government. By substituting the Popular Republican Movement for the Radical Socialists, one could easily suppose this was still the 1936-1939 period of the Front Populaire. The division of the world between East and West was reflected in French indecision between the left and the right.

Black-market politics

The week of the vote accepting the new Constitution was also the last week of the Paris Peace Conference and the week of the execution of the Nuremberg war criminals. But the French public was more concerned with black-market scandals than with these events.

On Monday the scandal concerned wine. At the instigation of the Supply Ministry, judicial investigation was opened against “X” on charges of traffic in rationed commodities, illegal price-raising, and corruption of civil servants. Big names were whispered about and finally spoken aloud, when Socialist former President Félix Gouin saw fit to announce that the affair was “inflated.” Independent Yves Farge, Supply Minister, asked in reply, “What does he know about it?” An armed guard was placed around Farge’s modest home in the suburb of Sèvres.

Successive days produced further scandals. Four Paris department stores were charged with wholesale acquisition of textiles without ration tickets. The wine scandal having been exploited at the expense of the Socialist Party, a textile scandal was turned against the Ministry of Industrial Production under Communist management. Then came affairs of forged automobile licenses, and of flour, dried vegetables, and condensed milk, all being diverted from official to black-market channels.

Paris censorship

Theatrical talk centered on the impending production of a version of Hamlet by André Gide, which the celebrated author promised would not be an adaption but as literal a translation as possible, and on two new plays by Jean-Paul Sartre: Morts sans Sepulture and La Putain Respectueuse. Both Sartre plays were sadistic but technically brilliant examples of existentialism. They caused lively controversy — the first because it portrays the torturing of members of the Resistance during the war, and the second because it gives a bitter picture of the anti-Negro sentiment that prevails in our Southern states.

The title of Sartre’s second play caused trouble for Paris authorities, who permitted it to be advertised publicly only as La P*** Respectueuse. That week also prostitution ceased to be a legal profession in Paris and all houses of tolerance were closed by the police, who finally enforced the law adopted last April by the Municipal Council.

Who wants a Constitution?

All during this time debate continued over the Constitution. From his place of retirement at Colombey, de Gaulle issued to the Paris press through his former Chef de Cabinet, Gaston Palewski, a statement asking the country to vote No on the Constitution and warning that its political system would lead to “impotence, then to anarchy, and finally to dictatorship.” President Georges Bidault, expressing “complete tranquillity of conscience,” broadcast an appeal for a Yes vote so that the country could obtain a permanent foundation. All three major parties, having contributed to the writing of the document, urged approval of the Constitution.

On Sunday, October 13, about nine million citizens voted in favor of the new Constitution against eight million opposed. Another eight million registered voters abstained from the referendum. The 31 per cent abstention was obviously a sign of disapproval. In southern departments, where 47 and 48 per cent absence assumed proportions of an electoral strike, the Republic was brought into being against the will of a majority of citizens.

This was a depressing, anticlimactic conclusion to the effort to create a heroic new institution. Nevertheless the French wrapped up the Constitution, sealed it with red wax, and promulgated it as the new law of the land.

The Constitution delegated the dominating powder to the National Assembly, with the express provision that the “National Assembly alone votes the law.” In contrast to the bicameral system of the Third Republic and to the checks and balances of the United States, the Council of the Republic was given only an advisory role, and the President of the Republic was relegated to a minor position.

On November 10 the electorate was called upon to select the members of the National Assembly. This campaign was conducted on more conventional lines. Black-market scandals were left in judicial pigeonholes and the parties appealed for votes on a political basis. The principal rivalry developed between the MRP, calling for government without Thorez, and the Communists, calling for government without Bidault. De Gaulle spurned the MRP as he did all political parties.

The electoral marathon

Election results could be and were interpreted to suit the interests of various interpreters. The Communists took first place in the Assembly with 164 seats, compared to 157 for the MRP, 90 for the Socialists, 77 for a collection of conservative parties, and 56 for the Rassemblement des Gauches including the old Radical Socialist Party. But the Communists had only 30 per cent of the votes, and even with Socialists as dubious partners they commanded only 45 per cent of the Assembly, well short of an operative majority.

It remained for the people to finish their electoral marathon by trudging to the polls one more Sunday — November 24 — for the final popular consultation in the creation of the Fourth Republic. This time the electoral process was carried to the ultimate in complication and confusion. The people were called upon to choose grands électeurs who would join with deputies of the National Assembly and regional councilors to select 200 of the 315 members of the Council of the Republic, the others to be designated by the colonies.

The results, so far as they could be deciphered from the puzzling procedure and twisted combinations, confirmed what had gone before. The Communists led the MRP by a slight margin but failed to win control even in problematical coöperation with slipping Socialists, and the scattered conservative vote showed an appreciable increase.

Repeated trips to the polls provided a good opportunity for an analysis of post-war opinion in France. The analysis showed there were about five million confirmed, disciplined Communists in France, who would go to the polls whenever called.

Paradoxically, while the Communist vote mounted slightly at the expense of the Socialists, the antiMarxist vote also increased to the point where the anti-Communists, if they could ever get together, would control the government. Reduced to the simplest terms, the dominant legislative chamber of the new Republic contained 45 per cent Marxists, 55 per cent anti-Marxists.

There remained the problem of how to translate the will of the people as expressed at the polls into a working system. The Communists of course claimed the right to head the government. Had they been a party like any other, no doubt they would have been granted that right, particularly since it involved unenviable duties. But ever present in the minds of the other parties was the example of other countries in Europe, where Communists, once installed in the Prime Ministry and in a few other ministries like those of Interior, Justice, Education, and Information, could never be dislodged except by force. So in France the Communists were strongly challenged.

The Socialists, first to be approached for membership in a Communist-led cabinet, dodged the issue by asking who else would be invited and what the program would be. The MRP ruled flatly against participating in such a government. The only possible solution of the governmental problem for the initial period of the new Republic seemed to be the continuation of the clumsy coalition cabinets which France has known for so many years.

Will France balance her budget?

While the problem of political reform was being solved at least temporarily, work on the economic problem had barely begun. Through all the electoral period, prices went up. The franc and what it could buy went down. On the black market the dollar reached three times its official value. For a country of people famous for stowing small savings away in their socks this situation was disastrous. Persons and parties that urged immediate revision of the Constitution encountered the hard reality that much more urgent and critical was the need to revise and improve daily life.

After months of hush-hush deliberations, the General Planning Commission, headed by the wealthy banker Jean Monnet and including representatives of all levels of society, produced something which the French in their customary reckless way with figures called a five-year plan for 1947 to 1950 to modernize the national economy. This was not the drastic Soviet type of plan. It consisted essentially in charting production goals and asking private enterprise to coöperate with the state to achieve them, rather than in imposing the state on private enterprise.

The most important single proposal was that the legal work week be expanded from forty to fortyeight hours, and the over-all purpose was to obtain by 1950 a 25 per cent increase in production over the best pre-war year, 1929.

Much more immediate was the need to bring the national budget closer toward balance and to curb constant inflation. But all economic and financial questions had to await the first government of the Fourth Republic, and there was no guarantee that when the Cabinet was constituted, political compromise would prove secure and the atmosphere of doubt would be dispelled.

Although the new National Assembly presumably would last five years, it was entirely possible that the country might be called upon to start voting again in a year or two. Two successive Cabinet crises would lead, under the new Constitution, to dissolution of the Assembly and to new elections.