FRANCE SWINGS TO THE LEFT
Clair, Louis
France Swings To The Left By LOUIS CLAIR THE municipal elections in France, which took place at the end of April and the beginning of May, have an importance far transcending their limited direct...
...Only if the people of Europe will be given occasion to realize that on the other side of the Atlantic there are men and women who boldly challenge monopoly, special privilege power-hungry trusts, and moneyed interests...
...To the average Frenchman today, America is the land of fabulously rich monopolists, industrial giants, of money-hungry businessmen...
...France has a hangover from the wild celebrations after its liberation...
...Challenge To Progressives The quixotic attempts to bolster the tottering thrones of the continent with pounds and dollars do not meet with the approval of the French...
...While the Communists overtly talk much of Allied unity and Teheran achievements, they turn every undemocratic move of the Western Allies into an advantage for the Soviet Union...
...and as she begins to sober she begins to ask embarrassing questions of the Government and of the man who until recently was surrounded with the halo of the savior...
...The housewife who looks on after having stood in line for hours to buy her monthly allotment of 300 grams of fats, wonders—and then remembers that women now have been granted the right vote, and votes a Left ticket...
...8 27 Socialists...
...3 13 Right...
...The middle classes, center of France's stability, the pillars of the Third Republic, are in the process of being wiped out completely...
...only then will they put their trust in the fraternity of peoples, against the powers that be...
...Europe is a sick, a bleeding, feverish continent...
...They were the first elections in a liberated European country...
...Results in the predominantly agricultural districts will possibly somewhat reduce tho victory of the Left, but they cannot materially alter the general tendency...
...And yet people apparently voted for the Communists not because of their present politics and for what they really represent, but because of the magic of their revolutionary past...
...The elections are thus above all a vote of protest against the miserable living conditions, a protest also against the increasing difference in standards between those who have some special pull and privilege and the common Frenchman...
...While still in Algiers, he announced an economic program considerably left of center...
...In Paris the move toward the Left and specifically toward the Communist Party is even more pronounced: PARTY 1E35 1945 Communists...
...They have profited in spite of their frantic efforts to appear as conservative and respectable as possible...
...Relief shipments, charities, and other humanitarian works—important as they may be—will not perceptibly change this view...
...While their policy today is clearly right of center, in the eyes of the masses the Communist Party has remained the party of the people's revolution, and can therefore capture the votes of many who sincerely desire social change...
...Nobody can outdo a French Communist in flagwav-ing nowadays...
...De Gaulle Talks Of Glory But they are more...
...de Gaulle's growing conservatism in economic questions...
...The reason for this swing to the Left in a country which since the turn of the century enjoyed an almost proverbial political stability, are complex and many...
...The Army is the center of his preoccupation...
...Conservatives and Rightists only a liLtle over 8 per cent...
...During this first period the industrialists trembled...
...And people begin to wonder whether he doesn't also mean: everything by the Army...
...He nationalized the coal mines in the North of France and the huge Renault automobile works...
...It desperately wants some sort of security...
...Thus it is given to violent reactions...
...The de Gaulle mysticism begins to wear thin...
...For the first time one has been able to ••auge the political temper of liberated people...
...Anybody who should attempt to live at the official rations would simply starve to death...
...Every time American diplomacy tries by various means to bolster the forces of yesterday which in France, as in all the rest of Europe, are definitely doomed, they help the Communist propagandists...
...Parades and flags are not particularly disliked in certain French circles, but they cer- , tainly are by those men and women who have to watch them with empty bellies...
...Europe will never return to the ways of the past...
...didn'1 exist) 8 Left Catholics...
...he speaks of the rightful place of France in the world and of her imperial mission...
...The swing to the Left is welcome news...
...It was an old saying among observers of political trends in France that the Frenchman had his heart at the Left but his wallet at the Right, and the wallet usually won out...
...The elections indicate a decisive trend to the Left...
...But now they have regained their self-assurance...
...They patronize the black market restaurants where you can buy a dinner of pre-war quality but at 50 times prewar prices...
...Inflation is rampant and the Government has almost given up organized efforts to check it...
...De Gaulle speaks much of glory...
...In the first few weeks after the installment of his Government in Paris, de Gaulle made some attempts at implementing this program...
...5 12 Resistance...
...France Swings To The Left By LOUIS CLAIR THE municipal elections in France, which took place at the end of April and the beginning of May, have an importance far transcending their limited direct impact...
...They know next to nothing, however, about the Russian record in the Balkans...
...It might bulge with banknotes of large denominations—but these banknotes no longer express the former purchasing power...
...It is not by accident that the French had coined the phrase La propriete c'est la collaboration...
...People in France know of the record of the British in Greece and in Italy, they know of our coddling of Franco...
...The Radical-Socialists, the traditional moderate party of the Center, for many years dominant in French politics, polled only 11.5 per cent...
...Most collaborationists had come from their ranks...
...38 17 The Communists won 27 seats out of a total of 90...
...promised that he would nationalize key industries, break the back of monopolies, see to it that "the national wealth will return to the nation...
...While even the most rabid old-time nationalist feels somewhat uneasy about using the word "boche" to designate a German, it is current coin in the Communist press...
...It will depend to no small degree upon the action of progressives in this country whether Europe marches with them or will fall sway to those who offer it security at the price of freedom...
...And thus millions of hungry people of France, despairing of their own strength, look toward the light that appears to them to come from the East...
...Last month, a friend wrote me from France: "You spend 4 days' wages for one pair of stockings, one day's wages for a spool of yarn...
...many made huge fortunes under the Nazis...
...The black market undermines the whole economic structure...
...They are a protest against Gen...
...There seems to them no other alternative...
...The unofficial tabulations so far available show that in towns with more than 4,000 inhabitants the Socialists polled 28 per cent of the votes, the Communists 23 per cent, the generally Leftist Resistance groups 10 per cent, the Left Catholics 6 per cent and tlv...
...However my rejoicing is mitigated by the fact that the Communists have drawn the greatest profit from it...
...Yet these early efforts were shortlived indeed...
...Everything for the Army...
...The inflation hits hardest those who have lived on fixed incomes, the famous French rentiers, but it also hits the worker whose wages, though they have been raised twice in recent months, still cannot keep pace with an increasing cost of living...
...But now the importance of the wallet has largely diminished...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 23
