PARIS LETTER
415
This is all the harder for France since she cannot even maintain
the appearance of power. The United Kingdom possesses the A-bomb
and very soon, perhaps, will have the H-bomb. This does not prevent her
from having lost rank and from being each day more dependent on her
American ally. But the United Kingdom enjoys a political system and
machinery which, with her governmental stability, allows her the
il–
lusion of power. The case is the opposite with France, whose notorious
instability and procession of Premiers prevents anyone from taking
her quite seriously.
Nevertheless this instability is not the result of political frivolity.
It is the faithful image of France and of the interests that oppose
each other on her territory. Charles Moraze, in
Les Franfais et La
Re–
pubLique,
gives the clearest explanation for this. Three revolutions in
less than a century, then three wars which ended, one with a defeat
which destroyed nothing, the second with a victory which lost nearly
everything, and the third with another victory which lost the rest, have
left the body politic of France with exposed nerves. Regrettable as it may
seem, everything in France is opposed to the two-party system. The
multiplicity of French parties is the expression of the division, or more
exactly the compartmentalization, of the nation, within her larger unity:
the France of the iron founders stands arrayed against the France of the
coal miners, the growers against the breeders, the regions of a single
crop against the regions of multiple crops, expanding big industry against
backward small business,
This division is natural to France, while at the same time the theme
of union remains one of her dreams: national union, union of the Left,
sacred union, national rallying. . . . What party, what politician, has not
on one occasion or another called upon all citizens to rally about it,
or him, in the name of some ideology or against ideologies? But it is
precisely at the moment when a man or a party comes forward with
the idea of rallying all France that the country divides most sharply. It
is not alarming, to France, to see the voters split into some fifteen parties
or groups. Contrary to what is the case in other nations, the situation be–
comes serious in France when the voters divide into two groups.
Everything indicates that we are on the eve of a development of
this sort--or perhaps it has even come about already. True, one might
have had the impression that France had split into two at the moment
of the debate on the European Defense Community. In fact that was
not true. Except for the professionals-politicians, journalists, soldiers,
and economists-no one in France knew exactly what the EDC was. To–
day the question which is put is much simpler and strikes home to every
