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...
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