Of Hands & Arms

The Communist Party line in France last week swerved back to a point on which Maurice Thorez stood a year ago. In the spring of 1947, Thorez offered friendship to other "democrats" who wanted to rebuild France and Europe. Last autumn the Cominform in Belgrade knocked the props from under that milk-toasty policy. Many Frenchmen thought that Thorez, leader of the French Communists' "take-it-easy" faction, was washed up as the head of his party.

But the revolutionaries--Laurent Casanova, Andre Marty, et al.--took a licking when they tried a campaign of insurrection. Thorez stood his ground, waited for a signal from Moscow. Would Moscow order a detente (letup) or a bagarre (showdown)?

Last week the Kremlin still had sent no signal. Thorez, anticipating a crashing electoral defeat for the Reds in Italy, made his own decision. He plumped for the detente. To a friend he explained: "Marty and I are different sorts of people. There is less difference between a revolutionary and a nonrevolutionary than there is between two revolutionaries."

Last Sunday, while the Italians were voting, the Paris comrades were summoned to the Stade Buffalo, a sports stadium, to hear Maurice Thorez. To 25,000 of the faithful, Thorez announced the new line--"la main tendue" (the outstretched hand). Said he: "The party extends a fraternal hand ... to all democrats, to all socialists who do not wish to be the pawns of American millionaires, to all Catholics sincerely devoted to progress and freedom, to all men of the Resistance .. ."

At Marseille, where mobile guards kept Communist demonstrators at more than arm's length, the Communists' great enemy, Charles de Gaulle, spoke from a barge anchored in the Old Port to a throng of 100,000 on the docks. He offered not one hand but two to all who would join his movement. He said that "our arms are wide open to others"--which seemed to indicate that he still had lively hopes of a deal with Premier Robert Schuman.

On the same day Premier Schuman spoke quietly to a small crowd in Poitiers. Said he: "I do not know how long the government will last. We are provisional men, but we will work as if tomorrow belonged to us. Others will be called on to replace us, and we will aid them."

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