Davis appealed to the same milieu as the RDR; Franc-Tireur gave him much more enthusiastic coverage than it ever gave to the RDR.
In January Rousset told readers of Franc-Tireur that things were changing in the USA after Truman's victory in the presidential elections (although of course Truman had already been President for over two years).
A little later Rousset, Altman and Bernard went to New York to attempt to raise money for the RDR and Franc-Tireur. They had been advised by Irving Brown (who had played a key role in organizing the FO split) to contact the American unions.
The internal bulletin produced in the month before the conference contained a number of articles attempting to analyse the problems of the organization -- declining membership, ineffective activities, lack of support from Franc-Tireur and the confusion at the international peace rally.
This had led to a number of specific failures: La Gauche had been too ambitious and failed to mobilize the membership; the mass meetings had not related to the concerns of the membership and as a result had been abstract and even compromising, as when speakers at the peace rally defended NATO; because of the failure to recruit the leadership had engaged in vague and dubious political alliances; Franc-Tireur had failed to give support, particularly with regard to the Vietnam petition.
The initial enthusiasm for the RDR, the continuing mass attendances at its rallies, the readership of Franc-Tireur and Combat -- and even the determination of the PCF and the SFIO to crush the RDR before it could take off: all these facts suggest that there was a real base for an organization that was independent of Washington and Moscow.
[156] Altman remained with Franc-Tireur till 1958 through financial decline and a drift to the right; at the time of his death in 1960 he was running the Gaullist Andre Malraux's press service.
(22.) 'La premiere assemblee generale du RDR', Franc-Tireur, 13 March 1948,3.
(31.) Report of press conference in Franc-Tireur, 11 March 1948, 3.
(38.) See M Fourrier, 'Mon exclusion', Franc-Tireur, 18-19 January 1948, 3.
(42.)'Il faut gouverner au profit des travailleurs', Franc-Tireur, 3 March 1948, 3.
Altman, 'Leon Blum se trompe', Franc-Tireur, 29 February - 1 March 1948,3.