FRANCE: Tomorrow's Secret

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Each night, wherever he went, former Minister of the Interior François Mitterand was pelted with aged pears, tomatoes, oranges and occasional root vegetables selected for their hardness. Ex-Premier Mendès-France, breezing out of one rally to address another, narrowly dodged a left hook and threw one off-target in reply. The leader of the Union for Defense of Shopkeepers and Artisans, a motley, rowdy party standing against all candidates and most taxes, swore his followers to accept summary punishment up to and including death if found guilty of violating the party line. Another ex-Premier, Edgar Faure, filed suit because a newspaper printed a statement accusing him of indiscriminately passing out the Legion of Honor to buy votes.

All France (plus half a dozen exotic remnants of the old empire) simmered last week with such hot-tempered politics. Only a few days remained before 26 million Frenchmen were to go to the polls and with their ballots reveal what the politicians called "tomorrow's secret": Who, or rather, what new coalition shall next govern France?

Some 6,000 candidates, backed by the clanking machinery of 18 parties, competed for 596 seats in the National Assembly. * The cascade of campaign rallies grew to at least 3,000 a day. Public interest was so high that registration was 1,200,000 above past records.

Old and familiar faces crossed the scene. Crowds heard again from Edouard Daladier, France's agent at Munich, and Paul Reynaud, Premier when France fell. Aged (83) but intrepid Edouard Herriot got from meeting to meeting in his wheelchair. Bodyguards propped ailing Communist Chief Maurice Thorez before microphones to breathe a few words on behalf of Red candidates.

On the right flank rode Edgar Faure, the slick-as-onionskin politician who precipitated the snap elections, and Antoine Pinay, the slow and steady little tanner from St.Chamond. They led a relatively smooth-working alliance of independents, farmers, other conservatives and Catholic M.R.P.s.

On the left flank, a knight in half-polished breastplates and only part-plumed helmet that he had not expected to use until spring, rode Pierre Mendès-France. With him were allied the Socialists, numerically strong but not strong enough, the pundits guessed, to carry Mendès to power. The Communists, though reduced in numbers and caught in contradictions of policy, rode the guerrilla trails in confident expectation of gaining 20 or 30 seats. Also present were roughhousing bully squads organized by brash young Anti-Taxer Pierre Poujade to tear down candidates and break up opposition meetings, Fascist-style.