sae

y When William Saroyan, noted
pMerican author and play-
{ Might, visited the Soviet Un-
| "recently he did not, in his
hn Words, dash around sight-
j ting.
7 followed the crowd,” he
Mid, “the endless crowd of
Mestrians whom I never saw
Many city of the old world.
‘These people don’t make
Bite running after imaginary
he ess, they don’t gabe be-
/“@ shop windows, the don’t
Md~ around chatting

fy are very sure of them-
Ives, proud of their city,
te. and available for a talk.

y
ine...
! ‘They know they have at-
, hed something and are more

tons to share their achieve-

Rents and their knowledge
other peoples.”

% at $eg

Canada, currently involved

ae jet on which $400 mil-
lke has already been spent,
tthe only country with its
“Maments scandal.

ss in Japan, where the
|, t government has decided
fe nufacture U.S. - type
ter planes, Takeo Yamato,
| “Mber of the governing Lib-
he Party, has been disciplined
.. US own party for exposing
, “Uption.

1 ed revealing that U.S. air-
ht Companies had made
8 political bribes to influ-
“the government’s decision,

ne. five Agrarian party
he Sters decided to withdraw,
\ding Virolainen.
;, “8 than three months after
he formation the right-wing
tion has fallen ‘apart be-
Se the policy of anti-Com-
Nine which brought it to-
€f did not offer any solu-
\' to Finland’s problems.
he the elections, last July.
iy People’s Democratic Un-
) backed by the Communist
lines? emerged as the biggest
ing : Party. But the Agrarian
cial Democratic parties,
4 a two in size, refused
Tm a Left coalition.

Wie “Soviet interference,”
the

ight-wing is now shout-
di; ut its own economic and
‘ ‘tical ’ +
Sho machinations, were
hy Msible for the collapse of
80vernment coalition.

What PEOPLE.
| SAY and DO

Mling than any other old na- °

Yamato was ordered to leave
the party within three days.
xt be; xt

An auto accident has claim-
ed the life of one of Finland’s
leading Communists, Dr. Mauri
Ryoemae, member of the poli-
tical bureau of the Finnish
Communist party and for sev-
eral years editor-in-chief of
its paper, Tyoekansan Sanomat.

As chairman of the Soviet-
Finnish Friendship Society, Dr.
Ryoemae was sentenced to 15
years’ imprisonment in 1940.
First elected to parliament as
a Social Democrat in 1936, he
sat in all post-war parliaments
as a People’s Democrat.

xt xt xt

The U.S. Parole Board has
denied the parole applications
of Henry Winston and Gilbert
Green, last two Communist
leaders sentenced under the

notorious Smith Act still in -

prison. Their only hope of im-
mediate release lies in Presi-
dent Eisenhower exercising his
power to issue a pardon or
commute ‘their sentences to
time served.
te ot xt

Another footnote to history:
The Indian state of Uttar Pra-
desh has removed 37 statutes
of British rulers from public
places. One, a marble statue
of Queen Victoria, is being
sent to Australia at’ that) coun-
try’s request. Of the others, a
few “with artistic merit” will
be preserved in : Lucknow
museum,

So viet interference’
" Finland false cry

he HELSINKI — The Finnish coalition government resigned

ek but will remain in office until a new government is

% ed, with Prime Minister Karl-August Fagerholm acting
reign minister in place of Johannes Virolainen.

Instead of sticking to agree-
ments of equal trade with the
Soviet Union and other East-
ern European countries, it
tried to reduce imports while
maintaining the level of ex-
ports, and demanded payment
in dollars or sterling, in order
to switch to the West for es-
sential purchases.

Apart from the rise in the
number of unemployed to 60,-
000, the coalition ran contrary
to the majority of the elector-
ate in its policies.

The final word on the charge
of “Soviet interference,” comes
from the Conservative news-
paper Uusi Suomi:

“Nobody ~in official circles

.in the Soviet Union, with even

so much as a word, has inter-
fered in the Finnish govern-
ment question.”

Percentage of vote
Ist: 17.6 — 2nd: 26.47

Seats 188

Votes Seats

These figures tell

~~ GAULLIST UNR

CONSERVATIVES

Percentage of vote
Ist: 13.7 — 2nd: 23.64

Seats 133

Votes Seats

the story

COMMUNISTS

Percentage of vote
Ist: 18.9 — 2nd: 20.76 N

Seats 10

Votes Seats

Fascist danger to
France heightened

By LANCE SAMSON

PARIS—Gaullists have brought off the French election swindle they planned, the sequel
to the Algiers coup last May which raised Gen eral de Gaulle to power.
The outcome of last month’s general election is a new National Assembly dominated

by the extreme right wing, while the Commu nist party, which headed the polls in the first
round with nearly 4,000,000,000 votes, is red uced to ten deputies.

This was the result the May

plotters wanted — and got
eby the most glaring election
fraud of modern times.

This has been the effect of
the dropping of the propor-
tional representation system
which had been used since the
Second World War.

The Union for the New Re-
public, the new Gaullist party
led by Jacques Soustelle, de
Gaulles minister of informa-
tion, is, with 188 seats, now the
largest party in the assembly.

With 133 Conservative depu-
ties, plus the 71 ultra-colonial-
ist and puppet deputies being
provided by the mockery of
elections in Algeria, the new
assembly is the most reaction-
ary France has had since. Na-
poleon III.

The Gaullist election fraud
made the Communist party —
with 3,741,384 votes, the third
largest in, the second round
poll — the smallest party in
the assembly, with 10 seats.

The figures tell the story:
It took 19,000 votes on the
average to elect each UNR
deputy; it took 388,000 for each
Communist.

So the Communist party,
with over one-fifth of the
French people’s. vote, gets
about one-fiftieth of. the seats
in the assembly.

The Socialist party, whose
right-wing leader Guy. Mollet
was one of. those chiefly res-

ponsible for the success of de.

Gaulle’s take-over last May,
lost seats and votes compared
with the last elections in 1956.

Mollet, who himself was re-
turned to the assembly largely

Mollet asks Socialists:

to support de Gaulle

PARIS — French Socialist
leader, Guy Mollet, who is a
minister of state in General de
Galle’s government, said in
Paris last week that the party
should support de Gaulle, if
he stood for election as presi-
dent. of. France.

Speaking at a special ses-
sion of the party’s congress, he
said that if the congress de-
cided Socialist ministers must
leave the present government,
it would be “a political fault
as extraordinary as to present
an Opposition candidate to
General de Gaulle for the
presidency.”

as a result of UNR support in
his constituency, now has
merely 40 deputies with him,
compared to 97 in the last as-
sembly.

The Socialist vote in the
second round was 2,484,417
compared with 3,187,890 in the
1956 elections.

The 10 Communist deputies
include Maurice Thorez, the
party’s ‘general secretary, re-
elected by his Ivry, Paris, con-
stituency; Waldeck =-Rochet,
also re-elected in Paris, who
was deputy leader of the Com-
munist. deputies. in the last
assembly; and Francois Bil-
loux,. elected with another
Communist in Marseilles.

Some 1,500 candidates who

took part in the first ballot on
November 23 stood down for
the second -round to leave

wherever possibly only one
combined candidate against
the Communist.

How this worked in practice
can be seen from the working-
class Paris suburb of Mont-
reuil, where Jacques Duclos,
leader of the Communist group
in the’ old assembly, topped
the poll in the first round with
21,049 votes against 18,218 for
a UNR candidate and 10,416
for a Socialist.

For the second round the
Socialist stood down in favor
of Dr. Profichet, the UNR can-
didate — who won the seat
from Jacques Duclos by 29,-
662 votes against 21,252.

In an editorial written while
final figures were still coming
in, Humanite, Paris Commu-
nist daily pointed out that the
UNR, though it. had put itself
forward as a centre party, was
in fact a party of the extreme
fascist right, the direct heir of
the May 13 movement.

“The rise of the UNR shows
the seriousness of the dangers
now threatening democratic
liberties. and the Republic
itself.”

Humanite said the result of

the robbers’ election system
was a new and striking iHus-
tration of bourgeois democ-
racy. “As. General de Gaulle
said: The Fifth Republic is
beautiful, great, pure .. .”’ the
paper ironically. recalled.

But the election of.a cham-
ber of ultras and big business
representatives, it said, would
not settle the problems facing
France — the economic crisis
and the Algerian war.

December 12, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3