Though Jacques always reminded his son that he was just one of many good socialists giving the lead, it pleased young Max to see how, in the huge car works and in smaller plants all over the city, his father was respected.

And two years ago, the work of Jacques Le Sourd and his friends had been rewarded.

At the start of 1934, the old guard had occupied the parliament and tried to stage a coup. Within days, the socialists and the communists of France cooperated in a general strike. Millions put down their tools. In Paris, the workers filled the streets. The country came to a standstill. The old guard were kicked out.

“Now’s the time to play politics,” Jacques had urged. “All our efforts will be for nothing unless we can win political power.”

A grand coalition had been formed. First the two great trade unions—the moderate CGT and the communist-led CGTU—had come together. Cleverer still, the political parties had come to a subtle agreement. His own Socialist Party and the French Communist Party had arranged that the communists would give silent support to the socialists, but take no part in any government, so as not to frighten off the bourgeoisie. With this reassurance, and a promise to respect private property and not to nationalize the banks, the left had been able to form a coalition with the bourgeois radical and liberal parties of the center.

“Call it the Popular Front,” Jacques said, “and we could win an election.”

He’d been right. By the start of 1936, the Popular Front was ready to fight an election. A month ago, at the start of May, the Popular Front had won, and Léon Blum, the Jewish leader of the Socialist Party, was prime minister of France.

When Le Sourd had been asked if he’d like any government job, Max had assumed he would accept. But his father had surprised him.

“There’s something more important for me to do,” he’d said. And despite his age, he’d thrown himself into another, feverish round of activity. Meetings with important union men, visits to factories: for three weeks Max hardly saw him. But when he did, his father always said the same thing.

“Now is the moment, Max. Strike while the iron is hot. Everything is possible, if we act fast.”

His father was right. All over France, from plant to plant, strikes started breaking out as workers, bolstered by the thought of having a socialist government, began demanding all rights: a forty-hour week, paid holidays, wage increases. As Jacques had also predicted, the key was Paris, and by late May he could point out triumphantly: “Thirty-two thousand workers have occupied the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt. Every big engineering works around Paris is out on strike now. That’s another hundred thousand men. The workers of the Bloch aircraft factory out at Courbevoie are with us.”

A few days ago, there were two million Frenchmen out on twelve thousand separate strikes.