General de Gaulle's Rally
The fatal tendency to label every political movement as Black or Red is at work in France. It represents General de Gaulle's new incursion into politics as an attempt not to rally France, but to divide it, and his advocacy of strong rule as a move towards dictatorship. But such an attempt at over-simplification is inevitably broken on the complexity and unpredictability of French politics. Who could have guessed that from this new turmoil would have arisen a new strengthening of the Presidency? Yet that is what has happened. M. Vincent Auriol, rising above the restrictions which the new Consti- tution places upon him, and following up his firm and successful handling of the recent crisis on Indo-China, has made a speech, on the eve of his departure for a State visit to West Africa, which is as much a rallying cry as General de Gaulle's recent pronouncements. The President has taken upon himself the function of defender of the Republic and has called upon all Frenchmen to keep their eye on the goal of recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction. To General de Gaulle's cry for discipline he assents, but he rightly asks—discipline for what? To his insistence on an end to fruitless party dissension he agrees, but he rightly warns the people of France that dissension can take many forms. In short, this speech is not so much a challenge to the " Rally of the French People," at whose head the General has now formally placed himself, as a salutary warning that impatience with the miserable goings on of the existing parties is not enough in itself. The General's call for unity and the reform of the State is not new in Republican France, and it has often been proved to have grave dangers as well as a straightforward appeal to all reasonable men. Everything depends on the way the new movement develops. If it leads to the peaceful reform of the existing constitution that may well be a good move. The structure of the Fourth Republic, as it at present stands, has flaws enough. But the dangers of a change are great. General de Gaulle, as a good Republican, will do well to listen to the paternal warning of the President of the Republic.
