_ JOSEPH STAROBIN PARIS HE French election campaign is developing with a furious activity over ballots—but it may - Tesult in a decisive struggle with bullets. The danger of a de Gaullist victory triumph—at the Polls or by a seizure of power— is considered here to be very real. And the ‘Communist party, ap- Pealing to all supporters of the Republic, has already given its 8Mswer in advance. As general Secretary Jacques Duclos put it in the Chamber of Deputies and -Tepeated it at a huge mass meet- ing in the Vel d’Hiver two weeks 880, the working class intends to bar the road to fascism.” Ihave it on very good authority that General de Gaulle’s emis- _ Sariés have already sounded out the 92 prefects—the heads of the _ Rational police in each depart- _ ™ent of France—as to their at- is titude in case he takes power.’ Two-thirds of the replies, I am informed, indicate support for de aulle, In addition, of course, c is believed to have a good third °f the Army on his side. _ © come on. the Monday following © elections, now definitely set for Sunday, June 17. It so hap- . _ Yersary of de Gaulle’s declaration °f resistance 11 years ago. The °n this day, which have a semi- ficial eharactér ‘anyway, will “erefore find the general at the hamps Elysee just as the re- ("ts from the balloting become _ Xtown, It will also find most Working people in the factories. The rumors in Paris are that < Gaulle may try to proceed Tom the _ Champs Elysee to the “Elysee,” at is, the presidential palace. # aod at least; is the atmbsphere as the election campaign “sibitit e are, of course, other pos- ; ities depending on the elec-. ‘ ‘al result, The de (Gaullists may 2m to worm their way into er “legally” — thanks to the Way the “Third Force” coalition is ma, aging the campaign, or they 8Y prefer to wait until a later cor nent. In any case, the strong- ‘ists single group—the Commun- , 8nd their allies—have fmade Plain that they will defend the “Public against anything de lle does. - py While it is known ‘that the administration prefers a R hd the Foreign Policy of the Government iS: ms e, The first key moment is going — _ Pens that June 18 is the anni- ~ ‘Usual de Gaullist demonstrations d ceremonies at the © this to th “Third Force” victory here, the opinion of conservative news- papermen whom I have been sounding out is that Washington will favor de Gaulle if his show- ing in the elections is impressive, and if he appears to be the ulti- mate winner anyway. What the Truman administra- tion is overlooking, of course, is that France will resist de Gaulle and therefore will hardly be the , firm base for the so-called ‘de- fense of the West” that General Dwight Eisenhower is now bury here organizing, The immediate concern of the “Center” parties — the Radicals, the Catholic Republicans (MRP) and the Socialists — is how to work out’ their apparentements— their coalesced voting lists. e The new electoral law provides that if the lists of various parties have been designated as “co- alesced lists,” and if the total vote for all these lists is 50 per- cent ior more, then all the seats in the Chamber of Deputies for a given. departement go to this coalition and are divided among hem. In this manner, even Communist maintain their 28-30 percent popular vote, they can be shorn of their seats in the 90 out of 92 departements where the new law will prevail. The two where proportional representa tion still holds are those of Greater Paris. Only if the Conieabed lists fail to get a majority—resulting from their own conflicts, or inability of everybody from the “Socialists” if the i to the extreme Right to get to-— gether—will proportional repre- ‘sentation prevail. Communists maintain their pop- ular vote of five to six million, which is altogether likely, and if he opposition is divided in such a way that the coalesced lists fail to reach the 51 percent,, then pro! portional | epee ates would hold. — » It should also be borne in mind, ‘as the conservative Le Figaro Thus, if the points out recently, that prelim- inary “Gallup: Polls” here show ‘as much as a 20 percent abstention. Many voters are confused or dis- | gusted or both. ‘This is a factor tending to favor the Communists. The bourgeois parties are there- fore now trying to “divide the spoils” in advance,’ and justify their electorate. The Cath- olic. Nee x licans aoe: their Can-, Center” De Gaulle bid for power seen in Voting rigged by new election law gress at Lyon two weeks ago and the Socialists met in Paris over the Pentecost holiday. It is already clear that the “theft of the ballots” is not prov- ing easy. In many departments, the So- cialists are finding it hard to sell coalitions with the concealed de Gaullists who are to be found in all the other parties of the Center and the Right. For the-moment, the de Gaullists are playing a reserved game, and are officially making deals mainly with the smaller Rightist parties, e AN Thus, there are several possi- bilities. The de Gaullist RPF (which did not exist in 1946 and hence has only a handful in the old AS8sembly) may get some- thing in the neighborhood of 125- 150 seats on its own line. The “Third Force” parties will each have less than that, but even put » together, they may not have ‘the necessary majority of 311 to form a government. The Communist, now the larg- est bloc with 184 seats of its own and its Progressive Republican and Democratic African allies, is expectedy to lose—perhaps 50 to 60 seats. If no one of the “Center” or Rightist parties can form a gov- ernment themselves, and if they fail to achieve an agreement, there will be a deadlock. This again would open the road either to more monkeying with the elece toral laws and new elections, or élse—a coup d’etat by de Gaulle. Of course, if the so-called “Re- publican bulwark”—the Socialists, Catholics and Radicals — were not so Completely sold out to _ American imperialism and not so bitterly anti-Communist, it might be another story. The Communists, while | delib-_ erately being shorn of a possible gain in seats, nevertheless expect. to be powerful enough, both in popular votes and in seats—aré in terms of their manifold extra- parliamentary program—to make a decisive appeal for blocking the dictator’s road to power. _ Judging from the firm and de- liberate stand expressed by their general secretary, Jacques Duclos, they intend to block that road, including every detour to it. They are. confident that decisive masses who may - have voted for the parties in “good ' con- science will rally to the Com- munist call for unity against fas- eism, for defense of the Republic. i , PHYLLIS ROSNER British delegation spikes press lies E say’ that peace and friend- ship between Britain and the Soviet Union is the key to the future,” is the unanimous view of the 28 British delegates who have just returned from a three-week tour of the USSR. The delegates added: “The Soviet people want peace. Peace- ful construction is the keynote of their society.” That was the view of each of the delegates to whom this correspondent spoke. _For example, R. Sullivan, a plumber working at ShellMex Oil Refineries, told me: “I am defin- itely not‘a Communist. I do not belong to any political party. What struck me most while I was in the Soviet Union was how peace is stressed. Soviet people talked about.” P. ‘H. McMahon, a glass pro- cessor elected by the Shop Stew- ards Council of the National As- sociation of Furnishing Trades Organizations, interjected with: “Wherever we went people talk- ed to us of peace.’ McMahon also paid tribute to the wonderful treatment the delegation receiv- ed from everyone Among other things, he was par- ticularly impressed with the crowded congregations in Ro- man Catholic, Baptist and Rus- sian Orthodox churches he had made a special point of visiting. At a joint press conference here, delegates were contemptu- ous of the Yaily press, both for the false reports it had publish- ed about themselves and for the distorted accounts of life in the USSR it had carried in efforts to sway public opinion. “The capitalist press,” their statement said, “has depicted a false and slanderous picture of _the Soviet Union and its peoples. So much so; that much of what is ordinary came as a surprise to. a number of the delegation. We can only come to the conclusion that these lies about the Soviet Union .are_ deliberately being spread in order to worsen friend- ly relations between our countries. “We state categorically that the Soviet worker is a free worker. We have spoken freely to them and. ithey have spoken freely to us. . . . In every town we have visited the citizens show them- selves as a happy, free people, in- dependent and confident; who It was all the, -they met. A two: work hard, play hard and enjoy their good food and cultural activities.” @ Miss K. Marshall, a_ hosiery worker, said she “was very thrill- ed to see the women and children looking so well and happy and the shops so full of goods that everybody could afford to buy.” The other woman delegate, Miss M. Beasley, a civil service delegate from the ministry of health, Clerical Association, Lon- don Branch, said: “The Soviet . people want peace so that they can continue the reconstruction of their country. Wherever we went peace came into the conver- sation . . . they must have peace to continue what they are build- ing. ,I was. amazed at the tre- mendous number of new build- ings.” James Sutherland, representing London Aircraft Joint Shop Stewards Committees and en- dorSed by shop meetings of De- Havilands workers, declared: “We saw machinery at the var- ious factories such -as I have never seen, although I have worked at BTH, English Electric and DeHavilands. The standard and speed of work equals any- thing I have seen in England and their equipment is in first class condition.” Sutherland is a mem- ber of the Labor party. The delegates told the press — that only two members of their group belonged to the Commun- ist party and many belonged to no political party. A London carpenter, James Dallison, less than 24 hours after his return, was telling what he had seen to the London Council of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers Shop Stewards, Dallison is also a member of the _ Labor party. He said he had gone to Russia in a critical frame of mind, but had returned favorably impress- ed by the living conditions of Soviet workers, by the amount of construction going on, by the complete freedom of religious worship and by the wellbeing of the children. “The Soviet people are quite content with their lives,” he told his colleagues, “and they are cer- tainly not waiting for either Mr. Truman or Mr. Churchill to come along and eerete them.” fi L FOOT IN MOUTH ~ to a hospital in Somaliland. Colonial Service.” Pole to every eight Jews to Easily adaptable’ E Jewish Board of Deputies in Britain has protested tas the appointment by the Colonial Office of the notorious medical superintendent of Auschwitz murder camp, Dr Pe Replying to the board, ths Galli’ nihses\ quit le oliey of | the recommendations on which Dering’s appointment was made. Knowing Dering’s criminal record, the Jewish deputies were astonished to hear him officially described as “an agreeable — personality — he has a quick sense of humor and obviously — plenty of character and should be easily adaptable to the ” As head of Hers Dering was wanted by three en as a war criminal and last year narrowly escaped being extra- dited by Britain to Poland. His surgical experiments included sterilization and castration of prisoners, and the marking of victims for gas chambers. Members of the Board recalled that . Dering—who was of Polish origin— attempted to cover his . tracks by joining General Anders’ Polish Legion after the war. He then pleaded in oa ree, that “he only sent one — the gas chambers.” we The report described this Nazi killer as “well acquainted ‘with the literary classies and obviously a cultured man”. Des- cribing his medical qualifications, it skipped the war period with the brief comment that his “five years in Amen gave him further ample experience of surgery.” pe £ PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 1, 1951 — PAGE 9 :