SPEECH BY DE GAULLE

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24904, 18 June 1946, Page 5

SPEECH BY DE GAULLE

SUPPORT FOR SECOND CHAMBER

LONDON. June 16. General de Gaulle, speaking at Bayeux, the first town captured by British troops after the D-Day landing, urged a two-chamber Constitution for France.

He said that, it was the essence of democracy that opinion should be expressed through universal suffrage, but all experience demanded that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers should be separated and balanced and that there should be established, above the contingencies of politics, a national arbitration to ensure continuity in the midst of political^combinations. The final voting on laws and the Budget devolved on an Assembly elected by universal suffrage, but the first reaction of such an Assembly did not necessarily involve complete clearsightedness and serenity. Everything, therefore, led them to institute a second chamber, elected by municipal and local representatives, and supplemented by representatives of bodies representing the nation’s economy, the family, and intellectuals. Such a second chamber, united with representatives from overseas parliaments would form a grand council of the French Union qualified to deliberate on the laws and problems affecting the empire, the budget, foreign and domestic relations, defence, economy, and communications. Unity could not be maintained if each member of the Government was nothing but the delegate of his party. Executive power must, therefore, emanate from a head of the State elected by an electoral college, which would Include parliament, but would be wider than parliament, so making the head of the State President of the French Union as well as President of the French Republic. It was the head of the State’s function to name the Prime, Minister, promulgate laws, issue decrees, preside at Cabinet meetings, and exercise an influence of continuity which no nation could do without. z , ~ He urged, Frenchmen to observe the rules of national life, which tended to unite them when they were constantly impelled to be divided. “Return to Politics” “The general verdict in Parisian political circles on General de Gaulle’s speech is that it signifies his return to the political arena and poses his candidature as future President of the Fourth French Republic,” says Reuter’s correspondent in Paris. “An enthusiastic welcome- was given to General de Gaulle at Bayeux, where 30,000 persons thronged the market place to hear his suggestions. He con-

tinues to be the most outstanding personality in France to-day, and a political factor to be reckoned with.’’ "The French Communist Party, after a session lasting all the week-end, unanimously announced its opposition to participating ‘in a Government headed by M. Bidault, the Foreign Minister and leader of the Catholic Progressives (M.R.P.),” says the Paris correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph.’’ The Communist leader <M. Thorez) told the closing session that the Communists would oppose any Government headed by the M.R.P.