The French Government at Paris It can have been no
easy task for General de Gaulle to select the members of a Government who will commend themselves to public opinion in this transition period when so much is unknown. Up to now in Algiers he has been head of an Administration which could only maintain underground contacts with the people of France. He has wisely decided to include leaders who have made their mark in the Resistance movement, and also to appoint Ministers who still have party labels from all the parties, though it is, of course, common to all of them that they have been opposed to the Petain regime. M. Jeanneney, a Radical and President of the Senate, becomes Minister of State. M. Bidault, a younger man who was chairman of the Resistance Council in France, becomes Foreign Minister, while M. Massigli, who has held that post throughout the Algiers period, comes to London as Ambassador. The Provisional Government is a coalition in the sense that it includes members of all parties except the extreme Right, and persons who have worked for their country abroad and those who have worked in secret within France. All the laws of Petain's " French State " have been abolished, and the Republic declared to have continued in being uninterrupted. Yet there is no sanctity about the decrees adopted by the Algiers Consulta- tive Assembly. The underground Press, by simply appearing in public, swept away in a moment the Press decrees so carefully elaborated, and already the breath of frank criticism blows around the new Government. The Republic has been vindicated, but there can be no popular sanction of Government until the time comes for holding elections. General de Gaulle has announced that a National Assembly to draft a new constitution will be elected as soon as the soldiers and the war prisoners have returned. His difficult task at the moment is to restore public services and to feel as best he may the pulse of public opinion, which, in a country so essentially democratic as France, cannot fail to be vocal. His speech of last Monday gave the new regime an admirable start.
