The constantly expanding influence of Communism in Europe, Combined with consistent failure of the United States to provide concrete aid, has finally created, the same imagined need for the "strong mansavior" that led unthinking Germans and Italians to their destruction. Again the demagogue shouts: "Leave everything to me and all your troubles are solved." France's RPF (Ressemblement in Pouple Francis) doesn't call itself Fascist, but neither did the German National Socialists. And General De Gaullo's principles of nationalism, militarism, and an anti-labor policy, enforced by a strong central executive, all sound familiar. In fact, the whole procedure are sounds familiar--the "non-political" rallies, the unified core of 40 percent against a divided opposition and an apathetic majority the shrieks about a red menace, and finally the complacent satisfaction in America at the sight of Communism foiled. The whole thing has the horrible aspect of a once van quished vampire coming to life again.

Liberal observers had long hoped that the Communists and De Gaullists might hold each other at bay while the Socialists continued in power until the present European crises had passed. But too many Americans swallowed the Luce line that this was a struggle between Communism and Anti-Communism, with no middle road. The result of this misconception has been manifested in the State Department by a pro-De Gaulle, or, at best, a hands off policy, instead of a full-fledged support of the struggling Socialist government.

Most of American seems oblivious of the immense significance of a Fascist, or, at least, a Reactionary French regime. The Boston Herald in an editorial called "Jean Votes for Food" looked on the whole thing as a move for food, stability, law, and order. The same editorial might have been written in 1933 France, as the natural leader of western Europe, now becomes the prospective leader of a Fascist bloc-the France government in Spain, Qualunquists in Italy, Belgian Fascists, Mosleyites in England, and the remnants of Nazism in Germany. The unification of such neo-fascist elements under the leadership of France would wipe out what hope of East- West peace remains in the world. America would be entitled to the dubious privilege o starting in where Hitler left off.

It has been the opinion of competent observers of the French situation that De Gaulle would have been prepared to follow in the footsteps of France and start a civil war if the Communists had been elected. But this was no coup d'etat. The fact that a Fascist or semi-Fascist party won in a free election makes the situation that much more dangerous. It reveals a rapidly increasing despair of American aid materializing into anything more than hot air. While Congressmen investigate and Speaker Martin announces that there is no danger of starvation, U.S. business counts its dollars, the termites of Fascism and Communism eat into the crumbling remains of European freedom. The price we may have to pay for our sloth and half-hearted ness will make the billions spent in the last war look like the proceeds of a piggy-bank raid.