FRANCE: Vote of Tolerance

For weeks France's Communists have been under orders to agitate against the war in Algeria, demonstrating against troop-train departures, plastering up posters, organizing protest meetings—all with a fine disregard of the fact that only three months ago the party's Deputies voted solidly to give the government a free hand in Algeria. Now Premier Guy Mollet had confronted them—and all French parties—with a demand for a "package" vote of confidence on his whole policy, including both Algeria and his domestic program.

In a heated caucus of the Communist Party councils, rank-and-file militants said they had been having a hard time explaining...