A Finding of Failure

As the votes came in and a suet-grey day dawned, the brutal exposure of their own shortcomings confronted the French nakedly. They had longed for a new majority which could be strong and stable. They had reaped chaos, an Assembly of extremes far more ungovernable than the last.

In five years, the men of immobilism who had governed France had been found wanting--so wanting that 5,400,000 voters cast their ballots for the Communists and gave the Communists increased representation in Parliament. But the bluntest verdict came from a bookseller whose only program was a refusal to pay taxes, and whose only remedy was to get rid of the old gang. "Throw the rascals out!" cried Pierre Poujade--and 2,400,000 Frenchmen gave him their vote in what Poujade himself called "an explosion of despair."

Internationally, the result dealt a heavy blow to France's sagging prestige. There was little worry that France would desert the Western cause, but it would be no better partner in it. At best, any French government formed from the new Assembly seemed doomed to linger between a balk and a breakdown. At international tables, France's place would not be the "empty chair" of which Sir Winston Churchill once warned. But it was likely to be a chair occupied by a diminished man, hesitant to commit his nation to new exertions, uncertainly representing a negative mandate.

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