PARIS LETTER
365
that they would exclude the
democrates chretiens
from the united left
ticket which is to be presented next week at the run-off elections. The
Socialists, with some reluctance, have agreed to this exclusion, so that
we shall now see what the Christian Democrats can do on an indepen–
dant list. One thing is certain: the Communist manoeuver is bound to
push this new party to the right.
What are the general political perspectives? I don't know. Nobody
knows. One of my friends, a young Frenchman whose post-1940 history
-and there are so many like him !-reads like an escape-novel, remark–
ed with bitterness the other day that when six Parisians arrived simul–
taneously at a newspaper stand, nowadays, they invariably formed a line.
Before the war, he said, they simply waited, like free men. ·'Vichy has
corrupted us more than you think." The subtler effects of this corrup–
tion would require more than the scope of this letter for expression;
and more than three weeks in Paris. But I find here, as in Algiers, a
general a tmosphere of confusion, bad conscience and cynicism among
certain elites which are vital to this fantastically centraliz.ed country.
This is particularly true of the administr-ative bureaucracy and the
students of the great schools which periodically renew it.
Nevertheless, one element in the situation is enough to convince
you of the political "toughness" and energy of the country. De Gaulle
who in Algiers assumed, whether he wanted to or no, the proportions
and trappings of a
fuhrer,
is now becoming in a very curious way irre–
levant: he administers but except perhaps in diplomacy takes no irre–
mediable positions; and since he had announced no internal program
beyond a vague "renovation" the political struggle takes form without
reference to him. In what sense is this a sign of political vitality? In
Algiers, the presence of De Gaulle was enough to stifle the political
struggle, at least to adjourn it. No one could do that here, no matter
what his foreign politics might be. In Algiers, there was no
people of
France.
Which means that De Gaulle must either descend into the arena
and take sides or become something very much like a prewar President
de !a Republique.
Meanwhile, of course, the vitality of Paris is distilled in subtler form
than ballots and speeches. There are some twenty dailies, many of which
are extremely literary in tone (a single issue of
Figaro,
despite the pos–
tage-stamp format, may carry articles by Mauriac, Claude! and Jean–
Paul Sartre; Albert Camus frequently writes the leading article of
Com–
bat; L e Monde,
which is simple
Le Temps,
rebaptised, carries regular
literary chronicles by Robert Kemp, Emile Henriot, etc.). Of the fifty
or sixty weeklies, the most literate are
Les Lettres Franfaises,
founded
by Aragon in the clandestine period of the
Editions de Minuit,
and
Les
Nouvelles Litteraires; Nuit et Jour, Action, Gavroche, Carrefour, L e
