FRANCE: La Quatrième République

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The Fourth Republic was born. Some 24,000,000 Frenchmen and Frenchwomen trooped to their country's first free election since 1936. By a resounding majority they chose a Constituent Assembly by the Left, ordered it to frame a new Constitution, approved a strong executive interim government.

France had come to this crossroads through the ordeal of defeat and occupation, and through the explosive tensions of liberation. She had tasted the bitter truth in the words of Lord Grey of Fallodon: "Bad as despotism is, doomed as it is to work its own ruin, the first fruits of its overthrow are not love and liberty." Now, in democratic fashion, France registered her choice for the future.

By her vote France also gave a solid mandate to middleway socialism. Of 596 seats in the new Assembly, the Socialists and the moderate Popular Republicans, who form France's biggest political bloc, held 60%. By voting for a strong executive, the electorate showed its support of Provisional President Charles de Gaulle. But this swing seemed also a rebuke to the General, a demand for a speedup of the socialistic reforms drafted by the underground and tacitly approved by his Government in the early days of liberation.

Out of Catastrophe. The France that did all these things is still far from actual socialism. Nationalization has progressed no farther than the coal mines and a few large plants (autos, airplane engines). Labor's voice in management is small. Full state planning of the nation's economic life has been hampered by economic dislocation, by ideological differences and by General de Gaulle's professed unwillingness to proceed without a clearer man date from the people.

It will take many months and years to repair France's 1,500,000 destroyed buildings, 2,000 wrecked bridges, 2,400 miles of torn railway, and all the other injuries to docks, fields and plain people. Raw materials and manpower are sorely lacking. The harvest (leading crops : wheat and sugar beets) has suffered from drought and from the thousands of still-buried German land mines. Inflation corrodes all progress and apparently will not be banished until the franc is devalued, a measure from which officialdom shies. But, de spite the vast inertia which grips France's economy and the French public as a whole, some signs of recovery are visible.

Coal production is up to 134,000 tons monthly, from a low of 40,000 tons just after liberation. Like plasma in a wounded body, the increase in coal is making itself felt in chemicals, metals, textiles and other basic industries. Railways now carry 65% of their prewar tonnage. The merchant marine (partly salvaged) is halfway back. A symbol is the rebuilding of Oradour-sur-Glane, the Lidice of France. Once again, amid the rubble marked simply "REMEMBER," the little town has its mairie, school, post office, shoemaker and bakery.