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The Frogs Who Demand a King* 51
checking, helping and challenging each other: they do not believe in Santa Claus
anymore. What, then, have they got to do with the Great One? Why, when it comes to the
State, should they place their trust in this infallible prince rather than in technical
organizations which they could keep a check on? It must be because the very figure of
General de Gaulle silently offers the slightly blurred image of a policy. And, above all, in
order to decipher this image, these republicans must have a particular idea of France, of
the Republic, of the world and of themselves. If we could, on the strength of innumerable
surveys, statements and private conversations, determine the characteristics and thoughts
of these perfectly honest and basically democratic electors who will vote ‘yes’ next
Sunday, we would see, I think, that they too are victims of a mirage. And if they happen
to see this sketch, some of them will perhaps recognize themselves, and perhaps have
their eyes opened.
We must get away from the wretched Fourth Republic that has just fallen apart from
self-loathing. There is nothing new about the reproaches levelled at it: they were levelled
before at the Third Republic, which, on 6 February 1934, thought it was going die from
them. At that time, they were less virulent and less unanimous: scarcely less justified.
The fact is that, since 1947, the regime has lost its grip on reality, the fact is that the
Assembly was cut off from the people, that is to say the electors; the fact is that there was
a ‘system’, in other words our politicians had become inert objects and obeyed inflexible
laws similar to those which govern the course of things. What stood out at first sight was
ministerial instability. The sudden, sometimes unexpected falls, the long crises were, for
many French people, the very image of disorder. In fact, there was never more than one
government. Stable, but rotating. The – limited – team of potential ministers danced in a
circle, each holding his neighbour by the hand while waiting for the revolving spotlight to
pick him out of the shadows. It is possible that a few close friends of M. Pflimlin and M.
Schumann could tell them apart, but politically, they elude the principle of individuation.
Supported by the same majority, the newcomers continued the policies of their
predecessors, in other words, persisted in their inertia.
During this entire period, a single tear in the fabric was mended fast, the Mendès-
France government. This upstart was not one of the gang: they certainly let him know it.
All right. This description has been given a hundred times before. The system is
impotence in power. Not anarchy – where people do what they like – but paralysis, where
the brain continues to think but the limbs can no longer move. Yes, M. Gaillard and M.
Pinay had something resembling a head, and that head told them – they made no mystery
of this in private – that the Algerian War was absurd and negotiations had to take place.
But when M. Gaillard did his stint of guard duty as prime minister, he was not crazy
enough to imagine his new post had been entrusted to him so that he could do what he
believed to be useful and just, to proclaim what he believed to be true. This
interchangeable prime minister lent his voice to the system, and via his mouth, the system
declared: to govern is not to foresee, or to prevent, or to choose, to govern is to obey; we
shall continue all-out war.
The spectacle of impotence does not swell the heart with joy. It makes those who work
indignant because work is action.
What proves pretty well that anti-parliamentarianism here is of professional origin is
that one hears members of parliament being reproached less for their impotence or their