Baptism of Acid

One night last week the speedy auto-rail train which links Paris with the rubber-manufacturing city of Clermont-Ferrand ground to an unscheduled stop five miles short of its destination. Surprised passengers stumbled over luggage piles into waiting buses and heard a guard explain: "The station at Clermont-Ferrand is in the hands of Communists." The "Akron of France" had become the scene of France's bloodiest battle since liberation.

Center of the disturbance was the Bergougnan rubber factory, where a Communist-fomented sit-in strike had been in progress two weeks. When French police arrived to enforce a court order requiring the strikers to vacate, the strike suddenly became a brutal reconnaissance in force for France's Communists and for Interior Minister Jules Moch's new, mobile Compagnie Republicaine de Securite (security police).

Ball Bearings & Bottle Bombs. It was the first action for the new force. Created since November's rioting, it was divided into eight super-precincts, which covered all France, and equipped with rapid transport and radio jeeps. It had special military powers and was especially designed to provide a fast, hard-hitting counter to any pattern of scattered, simultaneous outbreaks that the Communists, or anyone else, might devise. At Bergougnan the Compagnie de Securite received a baptism of sulphuric acid, but it won a swift, decisive victory.

When police entered the plant, they were met with a barrage of bottle bombs containing acid, and ball bearings flung by slingshots. The acid fumes temporarily blinded 113 police, but only enraged the rest. Swinging rifle butts, they drove the strikers into the streets. In three hours it was all over. At least 450 people had been injured, and 50 arrested. Said one of Moch s tight-lipped men: "We wouldn't have been nearly so tough if they hadn't tried to blind us." But, for all the fury, nobody was killed.

Fists & Votes. Next day fighting broke out again--this time in the National Assembly. But with fists only. While Communist deputies chanted "Assassin," Moch made his report. He charged that the battle at Bergougnan had been caused by 300 Communists among the strikers, and added that the bottle bombs had been thrown by "non-workers." "Liar!" shouted Marcel Cachin, dean of France's Communists. Replied Moch: "It is easy to say others lie when one does not have an easy conscience oneself." But some of Moch's Socialist colleagues were less mild. They surged across the aisles, fell upon Communists with flying fists. After the ushers separated the combatants, the Assembly killed, 404-186, a Communist demand for a full-dress debate on the Clermont-Ferrand affair. In effect, the vote was a vote of approval for Moch's new Compagnie Republicaine de Securite.

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