LETTERS FROM PARIS
447
visible repugnance for the unmeasurable and the mechanical. The
disappearance of optimism has strengthened, rather than weakened, at
least among the best, French attachment to reason and the sense of
limit.
Naturally, when one leaves particular individuals and outstanding
intellectuals, and turns to diffuse feelings, journalistic polemics, current
party politics, and government action, the picture becomes quite dif–
ferent. In judging French political life today, one should never forget
that it is still based on an artifice: the restoration of the old parties
that followed the Liberation, and on a mutilation: the absence of a
principled opposition from the Left, caused by the Communist schism.
The
raison
d'
etre
of the artifice is the fact that the collapse of the
present majority would mean the end of the Fourth Republic under
Gaullist or Communist onslaught. Its net result is a paralysis of gov–
ernment action that touches on the grotesque, and a discrediting of the
political parties which favors precisely the two-fold danger that com–
promise was supposed to avoid: Gaullism and Communism. As for the
collapse of the Left, its main cause is probably the omnipresence of the
raison d'Etat
noticed by my friend, the modest citizen. It is obvious that
only mass parties and mass organizations whose aim is precisely the con–
quest of the State, can give people the impression (or the illusion) that
such things as radical changes are possible. But French repugnance for
mass organization and mass slogans is great indeed. One could even
say that in France, the individuals are still more numerous than the
masses at present. Which is another way of saying that France is still
a reasonable country. Maybe this is a terrible weakness today. But it is
also a fact. Hence, when one speaks of the absence of a Left, what
one means is the lack of a political formation that could become a force
without being an affair of ideological fanaticism and authoritarian
discipline.
In the meantime political life is reduced to a minimum and political
passions are in a state of constant repression, which is not healthy. How
unhealthy, is shown by the fact that political phenomena take the form
of sudden outbursts: strikes, violent polemics, and scandals.
Take the recent polemic on "neutralism."
It
is a characteristic
example of how real issues, as soon as they are brought into the open,
are made both narrow and general. Narrow, because they have to be
"adjusted" to the public one wants to influence. General, because,
finally, they have to take the form of catchwords.
"Neutralism" is precisely one of these polemical catchwords. It
is obtained by abstracting from a state of mind which is widespread in
