Connoisseurs of the French scene have learned to grade local political ferment in terms of what they call ripeness. Last week, after 26 days without a government, France's political cheese was about as ripe as it could get without rotting on the shelf.
The stench of decay was recognizable in Parisian cinemas where newsreel audiences booed and jeered an endless procession of politicos marching vainly into the Palais Bourbon to argue and temporize. Railway workers, bus drivers, mailmen, stagehands, customs inspectors, garbage collectors, undertakers and thousands of other French workers walked out...
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