The Fourth Republic was born. Some 24,000,000 Frenchmen and Frenchwomen trooped to their country's first free election since 1936. By a resounding majority they chose a Constituent Assembly by the Left, ordered it to frame a new Constitution, approved a strong executive interim government.
France had come to this crossroads through the ordeal of defeat and occupation, and through the explosive tensions of liberation. She had tasted the bitter truth in the words of Lord Grey of Fallodon: "Bad as despotism is, doomed as it is to work its own ruin, the first...
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