The Waters Are Rising

This week, for the first time since June 1940, the voice of Metropolitan France will be heard. From the rostrum in a high-ceilinged chamber, long the home of the Algerian financial assembly, the first session of the French Provisional Consultative Assembly will be called to order in Algiers. Seated in semicircular rows ringing the rostrum, 84 men will represent France according to democratic parliamentary procedure, at least 40 of them representatives of the highly organized French underground itself. They will reflect all political hues, from Conservatives to Communists. They will speak for a renascent France.

The Assembly, brought into being by the governing Committee of National Liberation, lacks both legislative and executive authority. But its inclusive composition may give it real strength. One indication of the Assembly's potentialities came last week from the National Committee: seeking to remove its remaining Vichy taint, the Committee ordered the arrest of former Vichy Air Minister General Jean-Marie Bergeret, charged with treason. Other Vichyites who, with turned coats, had fled to Africa after the Allied landings, were also on the Committee's black list.

Vichy and Axis broadcasts daily report an unprecedented wave of resistance, raging from Artois to the Pyrenees, from Biscay to the Alps.

Last week the Vichy area suffered from its worst flood since 1907. Angrily swollen, the Allier River inundated parts of Vichy itself, nearby Puy-de-Dome, and neighboring farmlands.

The waters are still rising.

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