The surest sign of a real political crisis in France, now as in the 1930s or the days of the 1871 Commune, is the emergence of the mobs. Into the Champs Elysées they came one afternoon last week, 5,000 youths, war veterans and rightist sympathizers. After a small group had placed a wreath on the grave of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe, they crowded toward the office of the weekly L'Express, which has been attacking French army excesses in Algeria (TIME, April 1). Some shouted, "Mendès to the gallows"; others cried, "Down with Mollet." They carried...
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