Towards the New French Republic
The French National Committee has been giving its attention to the important but by no means simple problem of the means of restoring democratic government in France. In the plan which it has prepared for .submission to the Consultative Assembly it is recognised that progress must be made in several separate stages. The first will be reached when some small part only of France is liberated ; the second when the whole or an important part (including Paris) is free. At this stage the Committee would be enlarged to form a provisional government, with a supreme council of resistant groups now at work within France. Elections would then be held in the traditional way for the creation of a national consultative assembly, which would appoint a new provisional government, and this would hold office in an interim period pending the holding of general elections according to the laws of the Republic. Plans are thus being made for an orderly and comparatively quick transition to a form of government which will be both democratic and in accordance with the French democratic tradition. From the nature of the case neither the existing Committee nor the Consultative Assembly in Algiers can claim to have a constitutional mandate from the people ; yet it is significant that the Assembly is making its weight felt more and more, and that its deliberations have real influence upon the Executive. This was seen in the manner in which it Influenced policy in regard to the Lebanon, and in the deference paid to it by the Committee in submitting to it the new plan of procedure for criticism and adoption. The danger that either the Committee or Assembly might become a rigid body with all power in its hands during the period of transition is guarded against by the provision for the introduction of new blood in liberated France. Even at the present stage a very evident sense of responsibility is imposed on members of the Committee by the knowledge that their actions will soon come under the scrutiny of a French electorate.
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