Turnout for Maurice

Some of the noblest bones of France lie in the sod of Pere-Lachaise, the most stately cemetery in Paris. It was there, and not in a humble graveyard, that French Communists last week buried Maurice Thorez, for three decades their leader.

Not in living memory had a French man received in death so lavish an outpouring of homage--a sobering reminder that France's shrunken Communist Party, with 240,000 card-carrying members, is still the nation's biggest. Ever since a Russian jet had flown his body back from the Black Sea, where he died of a heart attack on a Soviet ship, thousands of mourners had walked past Thorez' casket as he lay in state first in the hotel de ville at Ivry, which he had represented in the National Assembly on and off for 32 years, later in central Paris at the party headquarters, which had been draped entirely in black. Receiving condolences, Jeannette Vermeersch, Thorez' widow and Communist coworker, stood stoically for hours at the bier.

Even Charles de Gaulle, who had recruited Thorez as a Cabinet minister after World War II in the desperate effort to rebuild the nation,* pronounced a qualified tribute: "I do not forget that in a decisive period for France, Maurice Thorez -- whatever his actions before or after--followed my call and, as a member of my government, contributed to the maintenance of national unity." On the day of the funeral, police blocked off 3 1/2 miles of Paris' busiest boulevards, and half a million people stood in the sweltering heat as the mile-long procession headed for Pere-Lachaise. Ahead of the flag-draped coffin strode ranks of miners from Thorez' native north, wearing red scarves and white helmets. Behind the hearse walked row after row of foreign Communist officials. At the cemetery Waldeck Rochet, who succeeded Thorez as secretary-general only ten weeks ago, paid respects to his old chief.

For years, younger elements in the party had been struggling to win more independence in the tight, monolithic structure built by Thorez over the years. Rochet, handpicked by Thorez, reflects the old man's views. But deprived of cher Maurice's prestige and personality, he will find it increasingly difficult to fend off the reformers.

* Thorez had deserted from the French Army and spent the last years of World War II in Moscow. When De Gaulle signed his friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1944 (as he recalled in his memoirs), Stalin said: "If I were in your place, I would not put Thorez in prison," adding with one of his cynical smiles, "At least not right away."

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