The port of Le Havre (pop. 140,000) is the largest French city with a Communist-controlled council and a Communist mayor. It was just the place for the battered party to hold its 14th national congress. Red flags decked the streets as 800 delegates, tieless and in shirtsleeves, trouped into Le Havre's vast, unfinished city hall. They had gathered to give obedience to Maurice Thorez.
Nowhere outside the Iron Curtain had the cult of personality operated more strongly than it had in France. On his 50th birthday in 1950 the faithful thronged to an...
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