France Past the Crisis ?
Officially the French strikes are finished. "The battle has been fought, and the battle, I am able to tell you, has been won," said France's Foreign Minister, speaking at a public luncheon in London on Tuesday, and affirming his "complete and absolute confidence" in France's future. That same night, in Paris, the Communist leaders of the C.G.T. ordered trade union members to resume work. The immediate cause of this order was presumably the fiasco of the Paris bus and Metro workers' strike, which fizzled out on Monday morn- ing, having been in force scarcely twelve hours. The French Com- munists, in fact, have had a set-back ; but how long will it endure ? The C.G.T. statement declares that "our forces must now be re- grouped and rallied for future fights, which will be bitter," and M. Bidault himself admits that the future months in France will not be smooth. To onlookers on this side of the Channel the strikes seem to have been defeated as much by the basic common sense of the French people as by the shrewd and energetic measures of M. Schuman and his Cabinet. The sudden emergence of M. Schuman as a strong man, and the wide support he evidently commands, is but one more example of that bewildering jack-in-the-box quality which makes French domestic politics such an exacting exercise for foreigners—and for some Frenchmen. And, in the last weeks, the French internal situation, obscure enough in all conscience, has been made yet more complex to outsiders by the exercise of a species of unofficial censorship on news going out of France. Private letters now (at last) reaching England from Paris make clear that the con- ditions in the capital, and doubtless elsewhere in France as well, have been much worse than has been publicly admitted.
