The French Election
By D. R. GILLIE Paris THE French people have given the Republican politicians another chance. Although the only way in most con- stituencies to record a critical vote to the Left of the Government was to vote Communist, the Communist total vote has not increased and has pretty certainly (complete results are not available at the time of writing) decreased. The Humanize faced this awkward- situation with a banner headline announcing victory. On the other hand, on the Right, criticism of the Government could be expressed either by voting Gaullist, for strong government and diminished power to the parliament, or by voting for Republican, Independent or Peasant Party candi- dates, i.e:, for parliamentary conservatives. This second alterna- tive has been so largely used that the Gaullists and the parliamentary conservatives will be of almost equal strength in the new Assembly. The two anti-parliamentary parties, Gaullists and Communists, have a majority neither of seats nor of votes. There is still, therefore, a majority of deputies committed to use the instrument of parliament for go'vernment.
This is due to the French provinces and not to Paris, and, indeed, on the whole to the smaller towns and the countryside, though the industrial area of the north has certainly given its support to parliamentarism. It is due also to preference for free and reasonably polite discussion as again.st a booming dictator- ship of opinion. It isi not parliament in the British sense, a stational institution with bewigged Speaker, but parliament in the old French sense, simply a possibility of talking about things, that has won the day. Every time that the Communists howled down their opponents at an election meeting and went away with smug smiles on their faces, they had strengthened un-Popular Democracy in France—and, indeed, it needed strengthening. . 1 Sunday's vote was certainly not a vote of approval for the last Assembly. The meticulous French nation does not approve of budgets five months late. it likes things properly done, though it does not always help to have them done so. It is cruelly hard on its politicians, turning the word itself into a term of abuse, on the ill-founded assumption that a well-whipped servant will be a good one. But it does prefer servants to masters, and that is the sense—for good or for ill—of the present election. But the servants will now have to solve a very difficult problem. The parliament elected has a " centre " majority, but the term centre has become purely negative. It means that affairs are to be dealt with by free agreement and not that there is agree. ment on how they are to be dealt with.
The new Assembly seems to offer two possible majorities—ft of the Gaullists with the right wing of the parliamentary Centre (Independents and Radicals, and, perhaps, the M.R.P.); the other of the parties from Socialist to Independent (roughly Tory). It is extremely difficult to imagine how either is to work.
The right of the parliamentary " centre " does not consider the Gaullists as inevitable enemies, partly because it does not believe in men of destiny. It supposes they can be negotiated with, and that a coalition can be formed on that flank as well as on the other. The possibility also exists of a coalition between the parliamentary parties from Socialist to Independent, but that is to revive all the difficulties of government by a coalition of Marxists and anti-Marxists. The problem of governing on such a basis has been the creeping malady of the last seven years. Either solution will be a very awkward one. The first, if it is practicable, is probably preferable, since it would leave the Socialists and, perhaps, the M.R.P. free for the missionary task of reconverting the French industrial workers, intellectuals and Protestants who have been enrolled in the great Communist community.
Even if the Communist expansion has been momentarily stopped, it must not be forgotten that this party represents nearly forty per cent. of the Paris area and controls solid' blocks of opinion in all parts of the country. A man starts by. voting Communist because he is discontented, but he is rapidly drawn into the Communist network, indoctrinated and conditioned. A voter is much more easily lost to Communism than recovered from it. The Communist convert combines hope, self-assurance and self-satisfaction to a most alarming degree. Once he has formed his carapace of resistance to all arguments from non- Communist sources he is a most disturbing problem. But how are the Gaullists to enter a coalition with parliamen- tary parties ? The essence of their creed is that the whole party system is wrong. Indeed, the Gaullists' usefulness to the parties is that they,force the latter to answer the question whether their existence is really necessary, and to set about proving that it is not only necessary but also desirable. The General, it is true. is placed in an awkward situation. The Communists had accused M. Queuille of collusion with General de Gaulle because, by choosing-June 17th as the date of the elections, he made the publication of the results coincide with the anniversary of the General's first appeal from London on June 18th. The General himself had obvious difficulty in adjusting his dual role of man of destiny and leader of a party seeking election. He had spoken . of a renewed rendezvous between himself and the people in the Champs Elysees (a reminiscence of the liberation of Paris). and had forecast that the world would say on this new June 18ih that France had won another victory (through the triumph of his followers). He can scarcely make an abrupt climb-down. He is still in the situation of having isolated a very important part of the energies of the French nation by the very fact of having grouped them for action. The essential and salutary lesson of the French elections is the drawback of talking big. But the alternative lesson of the _drawback of not thinking big is no less important. This is the lesson that the parties of the centre have got to show that they can learn. They will have plenty of opportunity when they meet in July with the task of repairing the disorder of the budget and Iof proving that the Republic is not a synonym for Facility.
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