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Thorez was quick to realize his mistake. At 9:30 on "referendum night," the big four of the French Communist Party were sitting around a rickety wooden table in an office on the top floor of the Humanité building in the rue d'Enghien. Most political experts believed that the results could not safely be predicted until midnight. Came a discreet tap on the door and a youth entered bearing a slip of paper. It was the result of the vote in the Ivry-sur-Seine district, Communist stronghold on the outskirts of the city, Thorez' own electoral fief. At Ivry the constitution had been carried by 14,705-to-6,783. The majority was 2,000 less than Thorez had hoped for. He turned to the three others—Jacques Duclos, André Marty, Léon Mauvais—and said: "We are beaten. In one hour there will be a meeting of the Political Bureau."
At midnight, while the other parties and observers were still hesitating about the outcome of the referendum, the Communist Party had already accepted its defeat, defined and blamed certain errors which had contributed to that defeat, and laid down its new strategy.
First—the U.S. For a TIME correspondent last week Thorez summed up the foreign policy side of the new strategy. In the course of an interview, he whipped out a pen, wrote:
"By the side of those with whom she fought against the Nazi oppressor, and in particular the United States, England, the Soviet Union, France hopes to build a new world, based on democracy and collective security. It is a union of free peoples which permitted victory, and this union sealed in a common sacrifice can guarantee peace. The United Nations organization appears to us the most efficient instrument against the threat of aggression."
Thorez not only put the United States first, he underlined the two words with a quick stroke of his pen. Then he smiled engagingly.
Soothing Syrup. In domestic policy the new Communist line is equally placatory. Thorez insists that the present stage of French development calls for a democratic regime and that the only ambition of the Communist Party is to be the most democratic of French parties. It follows, he says, that the French Communist Party will govern only if it gets the support of a majority of the French people. On nationalization of industry, the last Assembly went almost as far as the Communists want to go, except that they would like to see all—rather than some—heavy industry taken over by the state. The Communists will not oppose a clause in the constitution upholding the sanctity of private property. They seek no capital levy on the rich and, above all, they insist that no orders whatever are received from Moscow.
This double dose of soothing syrup is intended to lull certain suspicions which France has about its Communist Party. A Frenchman who considers joining it or following it asks himself whether it is a French party, an international party or a Russian party. Charles de Gaulle engraved this doubt on French minds when he gave it as a reason for refusing to give the Communists the ministries of Foreign Affairs, War or Interior (police). The French remember, too, the Communist record between the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact and the German attack on Russia. Thorez himself symbolized that record by deserting the French Army in September 1939 and making his way to Russia.