Anachronism

In liberated Lyons CBS's Eric Sevareid found and interviewed an anachronistic Frenchman whom the F.F.I. would give a good deal to find. Charles Maurras, 76, editor of the Royalist Action Fran false, diehard antirepublican and brilliant man of letters, was hiding from F.F.I, vengeance. Wrote Sevareid:

"Maurras opened the door for us. ...

With him was Pujo, his lifelong colleague.

. . . There was something pathetic about

these two bent, white-bearded men. Their

Victorian clothes and manner exuded the odor of decay, and one felt that here in this cramped room filled with musty books and pamphlets we were witnessing the last stand of the embattled French literary and journalistic giants of the old tradition. . . .

"Maurras is very deaf, slightly feeble, and his voice whistles in the manner of a very old man, but his mind has lost none of its vigor nor his words their punch. . . .

"When asked what kind of a French government there now would be, Maurras said: '. . . The art of politics consists in making the necessary possible. Monarchy is quite indispensable to France. A state like France cannot afford the luxury of a republic, for then all the country's resources are squandered for a party--whichever party happens to be in power. France can stagger along for a while, as a beggar, but she cannot continue as a great nation that way. ... So long as I have a tongue to speak and a hand to write, I shall go on repeating what I have said for 50 years. We are not bestial enough to abandon the truth now. . . .'

"One could not escape a certain feeling of admiration for the old man's courage in facing the end of his life work . . . nor could one escape a feeling of being stupefied at this utter refusal and inability to grasp the first principles of what is happening in the modern world and what the peoples of Europe want and require. . . ."

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