Remembrance of Things Past

A barrel-fat grocer named Jean Damasio made a parliamentary shambles of France's Chamber of Deputies last week.

Assembly President Andre Le Troquer had just called for a vote on the ejection of another of the 13 Poujadist Deputies whom an Assembly majority is trying to unseat on electoral technicalities. He signaled one of his presidential secretaries, a diminutive Communist named Robert Manceau, to place the heavy green urns for the voting. Down the aisle clumped Poujadist Damasio. He lumbered up onto the tribune and grabbed little Manceau in a bear hug.

As one man, the Communists sprang up from their benches with a roar. Some leaped to the tribune, others charged across the Chamber floor at the Poujadist benches. In seconds the floor was a melee of pushing, shouting, punching Deputies. Stools flew overhead, Deputies tore lids off desks to use as weapons. Suddenly, three shots rang out. There in the second-tier gallery was a pale, gaunt young man, waving a nickel-plated pistol and shouting, "Vive Poujade!" The combatants froze into startled silence as spectators grappled with him. A woman screamed and fainted with a clatter among the gallery chairs.

Abashed, the contestants allowed ushers to separate them. Six Deputies repaired to the infirmary with cuts and bruises. "It was a beautiful battle." crowed Poujadist Floor General Jean-Marie Le Pen.

"Have we fallen so low?" cried the Paris-Presse. "After the insults and tomatoes that greeted Guy Mollet in Algeria, nothing more was needed to stain the regime than a brawl between the representatives of the people."

But both Pierre Poujade and the Communists were well pleased. Poujade was quite willing to accept ejection of his men by the Assembly if he could capitalize on it in the country. Communists were delighted to proclaim a crusade against the "reactionary, fascist right," and hoping to tar the moderate right of Antoine Pinay with the Poujade brush. The net result of the brawling was to make the democratic parties of the center seem helpless and ineffectual.

All week long Poujadist filibustering and Communist clamoring tied up the Assembly. At week's end the moderate majority moved to limit the electoral attack on the Poujadists. All too many Frenchmen had been sharply reminded of the parallel fascist-Communist clashes of 1934 that foreshadowed the decline and fall of the Third Republic.

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