The Elections

The French elections, anxiously watched by the free world, produced no large decisions, brought no substantial hope that France will be any stronger or more nearly united than before. Main facts:

P: The Third Force, France's rambling, diffuse coalition of center parties, will probably continue to govern, as best it can (it will need votes from Independents to do it).

P: The Communists were pushed back.

P: De Gaulle did not win, but he made significant gains.

The Gaullists, the largest party in the new Assembly, will be able to make the party voice heard more firmly than in the past, may be able to compel the Third Force to follow some of its policies. Still a possibility: De Gaulle may be able to split some of the Third Force groups away from the center, form a coalition government with them. If that happens, the Reds are sure to make trouble. The Communists suffered a sharp loss in Assembly seats, suffered losses (less severe) in popular vote as compared with 1946. But they are still France's largest single party.

With returns from French overseas territories still to be counted, this is the shape of France's new 627-seat Assembly:

Gaullists 112

Communists 103

Third Force (including Socialists, Radicals, M.R.P. and splinter groups) 280

Right-Wing Independents (who go along with the Third Force on many issues) 97

Miscellaneous 4

The popular vote (round figures):

Third Force 6,400,000

Communists 4,500,000

Gaullists 3,600,000

Independents 2,100,000

Miscellaneous 400,000

The vote seemed governed by two essentially negative sentiments: discontent and routine. The vote for the Communists was probably as much the French workers' continued protest against still-too-low wages and rising prices as an avid option for Moscow from doctrinaire party members. Gaullist votes mostly recorded dissatisfaction with Third Force bumbling.

Moment of Choice. Election day was warm, clear and calm. Voting was heavier than expected: all candidates had exhorted Frenchmen to do their duty, and Roman Catholic leaders had said it would be less of a sin for Catholics to miss Mass that Sunday than to fail to vote.

Many people, bored or perplexed by the proceedings, interrupted afternoon strolls to vote, tugging their poodles into polling booths with them. Campers carrying knapsacks and Sunday fishermen with rods hustled in & out of the booths, eager not to waste a delightful day. Lines of black-robed nuns came up to vote beside Communist workmen in their Sunday best.

At the moment of choice, many Frenchmen were earnest enough. "I'd better vote well," said an old man at Versailles, "it's probably my last chance."

President and Mme. Vincent Auriol cast their ballots in downtown Paris amid the pop of photographers' flashbulbs, then hustled off to the Auteuil horse races. Grey-suited De Gaulle, as dour as usual, voted in a schoolhouse in his home village of Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. Premier Henri Queuille, symbol of the Third Force, voted before TV and newsreel cameras in his constituency in central France, then flew back to Paris to watch the count.

The tepid calm of the election campaign hardly changed in the homestretch. Most meetings were humdrum, badly attended, polite. There were only a few brawls. In Nice, Communists and Gaullists clashed in a gun fight: three Communists were wounded. In Paris, leftists and Gaullists broke up a meeting of followers of former Marshal Henri Philippe Petain who were campaigning for his release.

After the polls closed, first results flickered across luminous screens along the Champs Elysees. Parisians sat in their sidewalk cafes, totting up figures. Radical Premier Henri Queuille stayed up until long past midnight, finally went to bed saying: "As for me, I'm not worried." He was re-elected in his own district.

Who Won. Other familiar French figures to whom the day brought victory: able Foreign Minister Robert Schuman (MRP); Former Premier Georges Bidault (MRP); Minister of National Defense Jules Moch (Socialist). Also elected were two strays from France's darkest days: Munich-going Edouard Daladier (Radical) and Paul Reynaud (Independent), Premier at the time of the fall of France.

Defeated: Paul Ramadier (Socialist), first Premier of the Fourth Republic; General Pierre Koenig (Gaullist), war hero and former French commander in Germany, De Gaulle's chief candidate (De Gaulle himself did not run for Parliament) ; Darius le Corre, a leader of France's newly formed "Titoists" (TIME, June 11).

Shortly after the polls closed, Petainists learned they had won at least a victory of sorts. President Auriol, timing the announcement so that it would have no effect on the election, let it be known that he had commuted Petain's life sentence to "permanent confinement" in a hospital; the 95-year-old prisoner, again & again reported near death in recent weeks, will leave the Ile d'Yeu, off Brittany, for the mainland as soon as he can be moved.

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