FRANCE: Happy

Last week Henri Laurent, a hardware clerk on Paris' fusty southern edge, unburdened his mind. "Voyez vous," said Laurent, "for five long years I stood here and watched the Boche walking arrogantly around my quarter. In those days I never thought I could ever again have a surfeit of democracy. To get out of bed on Sunday morning and walk to the polling booth does not seem a very heavy price to pay for freedom, but the French people are wearying of the process."

At last Sunday's balloting (the ninth since liberation), the voters chose some 85,000 electors, who in...

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