THE TABLET May 31st, 1955. VOL. 211, No. 615S

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MAY 31st, 1958

NINEPENCE

French Nationalism l The Implications for Europe Elections in Belgium 1 Hope of Reconciliation. By Mark Grammens Anglicans and. Presbyterians ! ll. The Fading Calvinism. By Ronald Walls File Layman and the Trinity l Dr. Sheed’s Theology. By Edward Quinn Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters ; Chess

THE GREAT TRANSITION

JV| PFLIMLIN has resigned, and as we go to Press

President Coty is consulting the other party leaders, beginning with M. Mollet, in order that the Chamber may be convinced that there is no alternative to de Gaulle. It is primarily a matter of convincing the Socialist Deputies; and this is not easy.

From the statements of General de Gaulle and M. Pflimlin, it seems reasonably certain th a t they came to an understanding in the small hours of Monday night. The General’s declaration on Tuesday was his way of honouring his undertaking not to encourage, as he had seemed to be doing, violently unconstitutional action by the military. He phrased his cautions and disavowals very gently, and apparently much too gently for them to be much help to M. Pflimlin. But he would no doubt reply that if he had said any more he would have weakened his own authority, giving the impression that he had been nobbled by the professional politicians and brought into their game.

That is his great difficulty, how to succeed to power legally and constitutionally, without seeming to be one more figure in the long and melancholy procession of Prime Ministers who. because they receive their power from the Chamber of Deputies, are dependent upon it. and, in consequence, never last very long. If the General is to do differently and better, he cannot succeed in the ordinary way and on the ordinary conditions. But if he does not so succeed M. Pflimlin, only a minority of the Chamber will support him.

Technically there was nothing wrong with the way in which Marshal Petain’s Government came to power in 1940. The Chamber of Deputies, including most of the Socialists, voted him in, and voted him his powers. In fact the event marked the end of the Third Republic and the beginning of a very different kind of Government, and, it is the shadow of that Government which gives the Communists their argument today.

For his part M. Pflimlin seems to have indicated to General de Gaulle that he would facilitate the transfer of political authority provided legal forms were observed,

which meant that he had to fall, through a lack of sufficient support from the Deputies who gave him his initial majority a bare fortnight before. These manoeuvres represent the efforts of two patriotic men to preserve unity, but they do not do anything to resolve the stark difficulty that General de Gaulle will not have a majority of the Chamber behind him, with the Communists and Socialists who together make up forty per cent of the Chamber in opposition. M. Pflimlin threw the responsibility on to the shoulders of the Deputies, leaving it to them to decide.

For a long time the Chamber of Deputies has been in fact the Government of France, the successive ministries no more than transient executive committees ; and it is the Chamber seen as a Government which has forfeited the confidence of the nation it governs. It can accordingly attempt to continue, knowing itself unsupported and not likely to survive in a trial of strength, or it can admit the justice of the criticisms which have been made by many other public men beside de Gaulle, that the present system is a disaster to France. What is needed is a drastic constitutional change, and the French would do well to consider the advantages of American democracy, with a direct election of the Head of the executive, who then chooses his Ministers and is secure for four years, but is not immune from a high measure of control by the legislature—by the Senate for foreign policy and by the House of Representatives, Congress being the source of all financial appropriations. No one has ever tried to argue th a t the American system is authoritarian or undemocratic because it divides political power.

It is interesting to note that the Founding Fathers, when they created this balance, were primarily thinking of ways of limiting, not the legislature, but the executive; whereas the French problem is the opposite one, how to provide a sufficiently strong executive and diminish the excessive authority which the legislative Chamber enjoys.

Perhaps what is needed is a self-denying ordinance