FRANCE: Heeding the Master

FRANCE Heeding the Master France's Communist leaders were busy carrying out orders. The Kremlin had spoken and Messrs. Thorez & Co. were dutifully sowing disruption far & wide. Main target was the U.S. military assistance program. To halt American arms shipments at ports, strikes were set off last week among longshoremen and transport workers.

The biggest, roughest show was mounted in the National Assembly, and it turned out to be the most riotous performance in the Fourth Republic's uneasy history. The occasion was the government's introduction of a bill specifying penalties for sabotage of the national defense. As the time for debate on the bill drew near, Communists at the extreme left of the chamber redeployed their forces.

Aged deputies such as Marcel Cachin (80), women members, and less resilient types, including tubby Party Secretary Jacques Duclos—all of whom usually sit in the front rows—moved to the rear. Their places were taken by young, rugged backbenchers from among the party's 183 Deputies. A dozen of these charged up the red-carpeted steps toward the presidential tribune, plowed through a starchy cordon of dignified ushers in tailcoats. They installed young, good-looking Gerard Duprat on the rostrum. In the uproar none heard his speech, but when the

President suspended the session and set off the sirens to clear the galleries, the entire Communist body swarmed around the rostrum. Center and right Deputies tried to leave the chamber, but the Communists hemmed them in, punching and kicking. A former M.R.P. minister, Fran-gois de Menthon, was knocked down, trampled and, minus two teeth, was taken to a hospital. The Communists stayed in the chamber all night.

When the session was resumed next day, Duprat was still on the rostrum. The non-Communists left the hall again. Jolly General Maurice Marquant was ordered to eject them with a hundred Republican guards. After the guards marched into the chamber, reporters and Deputies waiting outside could hear cries of pain and anger and the screams of female Reds, who stretched out on the floor, forcing the guards to drag them out. One by one, the Deputies were ejected, noses bleeding, clothing torn. General Marquant mopped his brow. "What a scrap," he said, "and I'm such a kindly fellow."

At midnight the Communist filibuster was resumed in a sullen atmosphere. But at week's end it looked as if the Reds had roared themselves out, and the government was ready to put through its anti-sabotage bill.