De Gaulle Sweep Result of French Communist 'Fear'

General De Gaulle "looks like the only salvation for Freshmen who are afraid," two former French students, one of them president of the Harvard French Club, agreed here last night. Their statement was offered as a comment on the marked swing to the Right in the recent upper chamber elections in France.

Although De Gaulle's Rally of the French People swept at least 40 percent of the 262 seats at stake in the Council, this fact in itself does not prove that the French people as such have endorsed his program, observed George A. Vicas '51.

No Direct Vote

Raised and schooled in France, Vicas explained that French senators are elected by municipal councils and not direct popular vote, even as the American Senate used to be, elected by state legislatures until the Seventeenth Constitutional Amendment.

Nevertheless Oleg Grabar '50, in this country only two months, contended that the election results really reflect the sentiment of the French worker. The "ouvrier" turning to the head of French wartime resistance has done so, he argues, feeling that Do Gaulle is "the only force who can expel the Communists from France."

Strike Influence

A reversal of French leftist sympathy, grew out of the recent coal strikes which tied up more than 16 percent of the French Labor force. Socialist and Catholic Labor movements withdrew their support, Grabar added, when they became convinced that the stoppage was prompted by Communist hostility to the Marshall Plan, and not wage demands.

Grabar and French Club President Vicas were wary of predicting what the future holds in French politics. "If De Gaulle could get a working majority with the Socialist and Radical Socialist parties, an unlikely situation," said Vicas, "he would call for a general election which undoubtedly would sweep him into power."