FRANCE AND THE ELECTIONS
r HE results of the French elections this week have been awaited I with more than usual interest in this country. They, and their consequences, will decide the future of France for many years to come, and with the future of France is bound up the future of Great Britain and of the political ideals which both countries represent. In a wider sense also the elections are of , particular importance. They are the first genuinely free elections ., i to be held in any major country of the Continent since the war ; : 'and as such they give some indication of the reaction of popular opinion in Europe to the terrible experiences of the last six years. The results tend to confirm the opinion that, in Europe today, the political alternatives are no longer between Left and Right, f but between moderate and extreme Left ; and perhaps the greatest e task before Europe is to ensure that the victory of the Left as a whole is not frittered away in sectarian quarrels, but finds its reali- r sation in practical action that embodies the aspirations of the broad masses of the people.
In France, the electiolns have swept almost out of existence the parties of the Right. Out of a total of 560 seats the four Right 2 wing parties combined hold no more than seventy-seven. More- over, the great Radical Socialist Party, which in the Third Republic formed a bridge between Right and Left by sharing the vices and weaknesses of both groups, has been reduced to only nineteen seats ; and with his party has fallen one of its most discredited leaders, M. Daladier. The most important consequence of this purge of , the French Parliament is that France may now enjoy what approxi- mates to a three-party system, and may be spared much of that intricate 'and meaningless Parliamentary manoeuvring which weakened the Third Republic. The great majority of the seats in the, new Assembly are divided almost equally between the Com- munists, the Socialists and the new Mouvement Republicain Popu- 1 're (Catholic Left), the Communists so far holding 156 seats, the Socialists 152, and the Catholic Left 146.
The success of the Communists is less than might have been expected, given their excellent organisation, their prestige as a spearhead of resistance, and their efforts to represent themselves as the heart and nerve of French patriotism rather than as the representatives of Marx or Stalin. No doubt they, like other Com- munist parties in Europe, have suffered because of the behaviour of their Russian colleagues on the day after victory. The Socialists also are less strong than was expected, and it is clear that they, unlike the British Labour Party, have failed to unite behind them that broad mass of public opinion which, ranging from the edu- :ated artisan to the prosperous bourgeois, wished to register its disillusion with the Right without committing itself to the dicta- torship of the proletariat. But the greatest surprise of the election ras been the success of the Catholic Left. They have profited by the decline of the Right and of the Radical Socialists ; they have won over the moderate Conservatives who accept the necessity for social reform and are disgusted with collaborationism ; and they have the following of that large mass of Catholics for whom, as the resistance showed, religion is not incompatible with patriotism and hatred of social reaction. They probably profited also by the votes of those millions of women who, in a larger degree Catholic and Conservative than the male population, voted for the first time on Sunday, after being urged by the Pope on Saturday 1 to exercise their political influence in the interests of home, family and the stability of society. These three parties now have the future of France in their hands. The tasks before them have been partly determined by the results of the referendum on the two issues placed before the electorate by General de Gaulle. To the first question, whether the new Chamber should constitute a Constituent Assembly to draft a new Constitution for France (which in effect is the question whether the Constitution of the Third Republic should be jetti- soned) the people has answered, by i5,000,000 votes to 600,000, with an overwhelming yes. To the second question, whether the Assembly's powers should be defined in advance and its duration limited to seven months, the electorate has given a less decisive affirmative by ro,soo,000 to 5,000,00o. The difference between the two majorities is explained by the desire of the Communists. logically enough, for a Constituent Assembly with unlimited sovereignty ; it is probable indeed that the minority on the second question would have been considerably larger but for the personal influence of General de Gaulle. Indeed, the majorities cast on both issues in the referendum are, apart from the particular ques- tions involved, a personal triumph for the General. For all his intransigence, his diplomatic ineptitude, his personal idiosyncrasies, he remains the only person capable of uniting the French people ; and this country no less than his own owes him profound gratitude for his services in assisting France to recovery.
The task of drafting a new Constitution will test the new Assembly severely; no doubt its attention will be directed largely to the two problems of strengthening the Executive and protecting it against haphazard and irresponsible votes in Parliament, and of reducing the consistent obstructing of the popular will which, given the character of the Senate, was inevitable under the old Constitution. The first problem may be solved by providing that the Government shall not be required to resign except when defeated on a formal vote of censure ; and by forcing the Chamber to face an automatic dissolution after inflicting a defeat on- the Government. The second problem may be solved either, as the Communists wish, by a single Chamber constitution, or, as is more likely, by reconstituting the Senate on a more liberal basis and reducing its powers to those of consultation. The solution of these problems, however, depends less on their inherent difficulty than on the difficulty• of constructing a strong and stable majority from the three dominating parties.
Undoubtedly, the best solution of this difficulty would be the formation of a united front of all three parties ; nothing less will really represent the will of France at the present moment. But the obstacles in the way are formidable. The Socialists are divided from the Catholics by the traditional issue of anti-clericalism and by the suspicion that many of the new presbyters of the Catholic Left are Leff only in name. From the Communists equally they are divided on issues of foreign policy (which in France, as elsewhere in Europe, reflect profound con- flicts on the interpretation of democracy) and by the instinctive misgivings that infect any Socialist in the face of Communist col- laboration. Nevertheless, the divisions between the parties are no greater an obstacle to collaboration between all three than to collaboration between the Socialists and either the Communists or the Catholics alone. If the patriotism to which all three parties vociferously lay claim prevails, the obstacles to a three-parry coalition can and will be overcome: It is encouraging, at least, to find M. Blum, the leader of the Socialist party, already writing in favour of three-party collaboration. Admitting the difficulties of the situation, he nevertheless insists that the three parties are agreed on a programme of immediate action, and that in the Constituent Assembly there will be not only a large majority but practical unanimity for voting basic reforms.
It may be hoped that unity will prevail the more readily because of the immense responsibility which rests on the three parties. It is nothing less than the fate of their country. And failure to achieve unity will have grave consequences not only for France, and for this country, for whom a strong, healthy and united France is an essential, but for democracy throughout Europe. For France herself, the tasks to be faced are such that only the united energies of her whole people can solve them. During the seven months of this Assembly's life she must not only solve her constitutional problems ; she must at least begin to overcome the vast adminis- trative, economic and political problems by which she is distressed. Not only this, but in solving her practical problems, by her own energies, she must exorcise that mood of cynicism, apathy and disillusion which has followed the bliss of liberation, and those mutual hatreds of Frenchman for Frenchman which were a cause of defeat and humiliation and are a legacy of occupation and col- laboration. In attempting these tasks, the most gifted and the unhappiest people in Europe may be sure of the sympathy, the understanding and the assistance of the people of this country.
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