Red Schism

Harry Truman's increased pressure on world Communism extended all the way to Paris' Place de Chateaudun, where a beggar was plaintively singing: J'attendrai. Fernand Lurc,at, who had lost a leg in a Nazi concentration camp and was now a night watchman at Communist headquarters, felt the international tension. Irritably, he hobbled out and told the beggar to shut up. "On discute,l`a-haute" (They're deliberating, up there), explained Lurgat.

They were deliberating, passionately and bitterly--the 37 men who form the Central Committee of the Communist Party of France, the world's most important outside Russia. Truman's speech on Greece and Turkey had opened up an old and deep cleavage in the party leadership. Maurice Thorez, party secretary and boss, who sat at the head of the table, thought that that committee meeting would decide whether French Communism would keep its 1,300,000 followers and gradually increase in power (as he wanted), or would again become an underground party of a few hundred thousand militants. After three hours, Maurice Thorez lost, in such a way that his humiliation was next day made gallingly public.

"L'oeil de Moscou." Thorez called the meeting Wednesday night because he knew that he and four other Communist Ministers in the French Government faced a party revolt on the Indo-China issue. The five Ministers had gone along with 'the rest of the Cabinet in approving funds to fight Communist Ho Chih-minh's rebellion in faraway Viet Nam. Next day these expenditures were to be reviewed by the French Assembly. Thorez and the other Communist Ministers could scarcely vote to disapprove an action in which they had participated. But the party dissidents wanted Thorez and friends, along with other Red Deputies, to do just that.

The most vocal spokesman for the anti-Thorez faction was Andre Marty, who led the mutiny of the French Black Sea Fleet in 1919 and who yearns for a return to dark, dramatic glory. But through the haze of smoke (mostly from cheap Gauloise and Celtique cigarets), the man the committeemen watched most closely was not Thorez or Marty, but a dark, stooped Algerian--Laurent Casanova.

Once Thorez' secretary and later a hero of the Resistance, Casanova never forgave his old boss for bowing to Charles de Gaulle when the latter disarmed the Communist-directed militia after liberation. In recent months Casanova has spoken in the private councils of the party with an uncompromising authority, far above that to which his nominal party position would entitle him. Observers think they know why. They call Casanova "L'oeil de Moscou"--Moscow's eye.

Through the Smoke. About midnight someone opened a window to clear the smoke, and rain came spitting in through the protective iron bars attached to the sill. No. 2 Party Leader Jacques Duclos was nervous. His thick lips did not bare his gold teeth in the famous smile. When he upset an ashtray he scurried on all fours under the table to retrieve it. Reluctantly, with Moscow's Eye upon him, Duclos stood by Thorez. Casanova, tense, never seemed to smoke, letting the cigarets burn down in his fingers. His main speech took 40 minutes, almost a quarter of the meeting. He and Marty stressed three arguments:

1) The party cannot hope for much more progress in metropolitan France, but by championing the "oppressed" Indo-Chinese it might win millions of converts in France's vast overseas empire.

2) The party had become too respectable. (Said one Communist militant last week: "We are becoming a gang of sales bourgeois.'')

3) Above all, the party must react to President Truman's new policy on Greece and Turkey. If the U.S. was headed for a showdown with European Communists, now was the time for French Communists to counterattack by going into opposition and undermining a Government which would rely more & more on the U.S. Now was the time for the French Communists to use their iron grip on the French labor unions to show who was master in France.

Thorez argued that the French Government must not be upset during the Moscow Conference. But the vote went 14-to-10 against Thorez; 13 Central Committee members, led by tired old (77) Marcel Cachin, abstained from voting, after trying vainly to heal the schism.

"I Look You in the Eyes." Right-wing elements, vastly encouraged by the Truman administration's stand on Greece, immediately pushed Socialist Premier Ramadier toward a Cabinet crisis. But the Socialists and the M.R.P. were anxious to avoid the fall of the Government, simply because they did not see what could succeed the present coalition. Another coalition, without the Communists? But would it be possible to govern, with the Communists swinging the labor club against the Government?

In the Assembly, Ramadier told the Communist Deputies that if they persisted in their intention to abstain from voting the military credits, they would "bring the French political situation to one of fundamental and exclusive opposition between Communists and antiCommunists. None can say where this opposition would lead us--perhaps to the end of the Republic--perhaps to the end of France. . . ." Staring at the Communist benches, he warned solemnly: "I look you in the eyes, and I ask you to be honest with yourselves. You cannot be with the Republic and against the Republic." Then Ramadier paid a personal tribute to "the civic spirit of Maurice Thorez, who has sought to safeguard French unity." Not one Communist applauded this reference to their leader. Their silence drew excited mutterings from the rest of the House.

Ramadier closed his speech by saying that he would make an issue of confidence of the military appropriation vote. The position was then clear. Unless the Communists voted for the appropriation, Ramadier's Government would resign. At 8:30 Saturday morning the Communist Party Political Bureau--which does not include Casanova--was urgently summoned to the Chamber of Deputies. Thorez used every ounce of his authority to reverse the Central Committee's Wednesday night decision. Thorez partially succeeded--but only at the price of an unprecedented parliamentary dodge which left the party's split wide open. The five Communist Ministers were allowed to vote for the Government, but all the other Communist Deputies would abstain.

Two Consciences? Cabled TIME'S Paris Correspondent Andre LaGuerre:

"It was one of the most extraordinary sessions I have ever witnessed at the Chamber. When Jacques Duclos explained the Political Bureau's decision he got the most lukewarm cheering from the Communist benches that the chubby maestro has ever had to endure. Marty looked as though it killed him to clap his hands together twice, and after the confidence vote (411-to-0) I heard him say to Thorez in the corridor: 'Is that how we defend the interests of the working class?'

"Throughout the debate Thorez sat, scarlet-faced and obviously uncomfortable, staring at his desk. After he had cast his vote for the Government his hand was wrung lengthily, emotionally even, by Ramadier. Thorez hung his head like a small boy when Rene Pleven, lanky, bespectacled Radical spokesman, asked quietly: 'Are there two consciences for the Communist Party? Is there one conscience for Communist Ministers, and another conscience for the rest of the Communist Party?'

"When a Deputy paid tribute to 'the sons of France who have fallen in Indo-China, innocent victims of the Viet Nam's stab in the back,' all Deputies save the Communists rose in silent homage. Thorez half rose, then subsided.

"Nothing could be more damaging to Communist prestige than the evidence of this split, which they are naturally going to seek to camouflage. But if the American initiative in Greece is to be the forerunner of other equally vigorous moves, if some kind of a showdown is really coming, then the cleavage in the Communist Party will be total and avowed. The largest party in France will say goodbye to its 'respectability' and Maurice Thorez will be politically executed without mercy by his own party."

Days of Fear. Through the days of the Indo-Chinese crisis ran a real thread of fear. Rumors of De Gaulle's return to politics ran through Paris. (It is a fact that he is leaving his retreat at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises for an apartment in the Boulevard de Courcelles.)

Moreover, Minister of the Interior Edouard Depreux had announced the capture of illegal arms stocks near Paris, and admitted that arms, in small quantities, were hidden "all over the place." The arms captured had disappeared from Air Ministry depots at a time when Communist Charles Tillon was Air Minister.

From these speculations to the fear of civil war was only a step. Would this fear abate, now that the Indo-China crisis was past? Perhaps the only ones who knew were an old Black Sea mutineer and a man called "L'oeil de Moscou."

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