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The outcome of the French vote reflects the stability of the French electorate quite as clearly as it reaffirms the instability of Parliament. Other than the Poujadists, inheritors of the lunatic-fringe of the Gaullist vote, only the Rally of the Republican Left showed a shift of more than 2 per cent in popular support since the last general election of 1951. The Communists' extraordinary gain of fifty-two seats reveals more about the electoral laws here than about the electorate; in terms of percentage of popular vote, they actually lost 0.9 per cent. In the same context the Republican Left grouping, which includes both the Mendes-France and the Faure Radicals, climbed 2.7 per cent and the Socialists 0.6 per cent.

The latest discovery made by the French government is that if communism is Enemy Number 1, neutralism is Enemy Number 1-a, in other words, a sort of sub-communism, an accomplice of the agents of Moscow. In the National Assembly there are 180 Communists and near-Communists; but there is no Neutralist Party. This makes it all the worse. For neutralism is a state of mind and its spokesmen are skeptics of various nuances. Neutralists claim to express the most widespread and deep-seated feelings of the French people. Neutralists of all brands are severe critics of the Atlantic Pact.

In the rearmament debate in the French Assembly a number of vital questions were raised. Scarcely anybody except Communists mentioned German rearmament evidently an indecent subject to which it was best not to refer. Socialists who have violently opposed the proposal had a crest-fallen look when anyone tactlessly speaks of it now. Some vague assurances were given by the government to the effect that nothing had yet been finally settled and that France was still hoping that something would come of the four-power conference. But while the government is credited with a desire to arrive at an agreement with Soviet Union on the demilitarization of Germany, there are no illusions about the U.S.'s intentions.

All foreigners in Soviet Union today are undesirabe, though in varying degrees. Even Communists from Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, or Poland are not considered 100 per cent proof: for all one knows, they may some day go abroad and change their minds. The new cult, "pride in being a Soviet citizen," is more universally touted than ever before. All contact with bourgeois civilization or with people from bourgeois countries is evil. At a public lecture on Palestine, a Jew in the audience asked whether he could go to Palestine.

The article discusses issues related to the French elections. Although no worse time could be imagined than the beginning of January for an election, there is undoubtedly a great interest in this one. The candidates fall roughly into three groups. In English terms one might describe them simply as Conservatives, Laborites and Communists. The "conservatives" include all the parties, of the classical right, the so called "Peasants," the Catholic M.R.P., the majority of the former Gaullists and those "Faure Radicals" who, expelled from the Mendes-France-dominated Radical Party, are now campaigning under the label of the Rally of Left Republicans.

The article throws light on the 1954 budget and steps taken to reduce the budget deficit. In addition to this, some strange conflicts are mounting high, with no solution to them. First, there was the conflict over the treatment of communists as outlaws. the party. Finally, there was the incredible speech of the Minister of the Interior, M. Martinaud-Déplat, which has already earned for him the nickname of "the little Hitler." He has put himself as a very strong man who might, in certain circumstances, attempt an authoritarian revolution.

The article discusses the western reactions to Prague in Czech Republic where foreigners are looked upon as spies. One such victim was André Simone, foreign editor and the real power of Rude Pravo, official organ of the Czech Communist Party. According to the author Simone was a sincere communist, though almost pathologically obsessed with vanity and personal ambition. Perhaps his vanity, plus the fact that a different type of Communist is wanted by Moscow these days, led to his downfall. The trial was the outcome of a conflict between the two rival factions in Czechoslovakia with the Jewish faction made the scapegoat for the country's lamentable economic condition.

The article presents information on various political developments related to Tunisia. In the recent debate on Tunisia in the National Assembly every party with the exception of the Communists who as a matter of principle talked of the coming independence of colonial peoples argued for what it considered the most effective way of keeping North Africa. For the Socialists the best and safest way to keep it was to be generous with the Arabs, for the right, the best way was to be exceedingly tough.

The article presents information on the riots in Trieste, Italy. There were several mild police charges in the Piazza Colonna, where the students-- Fascists, Monarchists, Communists, everybody-- were raising an infernal row over Trieste. The trouble started with the riots in Trieste on March 20, 1952, the fourth anniversary of the famous Tripartite Declaration by which the U.S., Soviet Union and Great Britain promised to do their best to see the Free Territory of Trieste restored to Italy. Whoever conceived that idea in March 1948 is considered the chief culprit was playing with fire.

The article focuses on the Schuman Plan. The French National Assembly embarked on a debate on December 8, one which clearly revealed the various trends of thought in France. The question was the ratification of the Schuman Plan, and discussion went on for several days. Some French papers have expressed astonishment at the extraordinary lack of interest in this debate shown in Great Britain, as distinct from the U.S., where the interest seems to have been almost excessive. There is no doubt that the offensive conducted against the plan by the Gaullists and Communists was joined by a large number of right-wing deputies representing the French employers, particularly the steel magnates of Lorraine.

The article presents information on the Yugoslav Communist leaders. Yugoslav leaders are in truth, temperamentally as well as physically, very different from the ordinary run of East European Communist bosses. They don't have the standard "poker face" of the Communist boss, his heavy-handed and heavy-footed manner, his lack of humor. The Russians say they are not serious-minded men but a bunch of playboys, unworthy of the name of Communist. Most of the present Yugoslav leaders were professional revolutionaries before the war and soldiers during the war and they never became Moscow-trained functionaries.

The article focuses on the political condition of Vietnam. Emperor H.M. Bao-Dai himself perhaps best illustrates the complicated Vietnamese mentality. The conclusion reached by most French observers is that the establishment of Bao Dai as emperor has played straight into the hands of the rebel. If in 1948 there was still a chance that the Socialists, Democrats, and Nationalists would split away from the Communists, it became clear in 1949 that they would not do so to perpetuate a thinly camouflaged French colonial regime.

The Soviet Union can prevent Yugoslavia from turning to the West by making peace with dictator Josip Broz Tito. But there is a quarrel between the Soviet Union and Tito that has surely gone very far. Short of violence, the Russians have tried every possible way of undermining the "Tito clique." The Cominform resolution openly called on all good Communists to throw Tito out. It failed. So did the attempts to start a "palace revolution." The collapse of the Five-Year Plan would totally discredit the Tito regime, and then of course anything might happen. But if with the help of the West the plan can be at least partially carried out, and if, moreover, trade with the West means at least a slight increase in consumer goods, Tito's position will be strengthened.

The article focuses on Czechoslovakia, former country in central Europe, south of Poland and east of Germany, which today has some extremely unpleasant aspects. Thousands of people, expropriated business men, lawyers and other professional men must now serve the state or starve, instead of being able to pursue independent careers. Many writers, newspapermen and artists have either been purged or are destitute because their strong liberal convictions will not allow them to cooperate with the government. Many Czechs don't like to have their reading prescribed for them. They don't like the limited choice of newspapers, all pro-government and all pro-Communist; they would prefer the free printed and verbal discussions in which they used to delight.

The article focuses on the deadly onslaught by the Communist Information Bureau on Marshall Tito, Prime Minister of Yugoslavia. A current Yugoslav joke is that the world, is divided into three parts, that is, East, West and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia, was now on the outer fringe of the Russian bloc, which in itself was important. The relative independence it has shown would have been inconceivable without the help of geography. Compared with Poland, Yugoslavia is much less Soviet Union-conscious, to the ordinary Yugoslav, other than the conscientious and politically trained Communist.

In Rome, just on the borderline between the two, abject poverty is represented chiefly by the constant influx of "immigrants" from the South. At the same time, houses are being built all over the place, with rents accessible to middle- class and upper-working-class incomes. There is a marked embourgeoisement among the working class, and the labor unions are up against a terrifying problem high wages in certain industries. No doubt, the poor in Italy continue to vote for the Nenni Socialists and for the Communists.

The "Third Force" era in France seems to have ended. As to what is to take its place, already French President Charles De Gaulle has started popping up all over the place and announcing that France must choose between him and Communists. The debate at the National Assembly, when French politician Georges Bidault first appeared there with his patched-up Cabinet, was most revealing. The promise given by French Socialist statesman Léon Blum entirely on his own, it now appears, that Socialists would continue to support the Bidault government was not kept when it came to the point. Socialists merely abstained, their spokesman saying that this was the only logical course for them to take. He added, however, that he did not wish to be too categorical about Socialists' future attitude.

The article presents author's views on Andrei Zhdanov, a communist who died on August 31, 1948. According to the author, Zhdanov unlike V.M. Moltov, foreign minister, Soviet Union, had a slightly theatrical personality, and more personal vanity and ambition than Molotov. He enjoyed a sense of personal power. According to the author, Zhdanov was extreme in everything. The son of a czarist inspector of schools with the rank of a civil service general, he was determined to be proletarian and plebeian. In early youth he joined the Bolshevik Party and became a fanatical supporter of Joseph Stalin, general secretary of Communist party, after communist leader Vladimir Lenin's death. He rose rapidly in the party hierarchy, thanks to his untiring heresy hunts against the Trotskyites and certain trade-union elements.