FRANCE: Beginning of an End

The French were franker than the Brit ish about Suez. Said Socialist Premier Guy Mollet last week: “We did not tell President Eisenhower about the Franco-British invasion, because if we had, the U.S. would have insisted on our stopping.” Mollet did not acknowledge that the main French objective was to unseat Nasser, but the failure to achieve this aim was threatening the life of his government last week.

To bring down Nasser, the French reasoned, was to stop the flow of money, arms and propaganda which keeps Algeria in active revolt. Merely to wound Nasser was to leave Algeria as serious a situation as before. With less than 100 of the 586 Deputies present, Parliament listened in frigid silence as Foreign Minister Christian Pineau announced the withdrawal of French troops from Suez.

At the outset every party (except the Communists) had supported Mollet’s Suez policy. Last week the same Deputies were bitterly divided. Those who had been against aggression, but afraid to speak out, were condemning Mollet in almost the same terms as those who favoring aggression, now resented his failure to finish the job. Mollet’s own Socialist Party was split last week: 17 Socialist Deputies, including former Minister of Interior Jules Moch, demanded an extraordinary national party congress to review Mollet’s record. The Radical Socialist Party headed by Pierre Mendès-France threatened to withdraw its 13 ministers from Mollet’s coalition Cabinet unless he revised his Middle East and Algerian policies. The M.R.P. (Catholic) Party voted against Mollet in Parliament, forcing him to carry the issue (a minor budgetary item) on Communist votes. The meaning of these rebukes was plain to most Frenchmen: the politicians were turning their back on Mollet. This is the inevitable first step in an ancient French ritual: first declare your victim use (finished), put together a hypothetical majority to replace his government, then agree on a potential new Premier and the proper distribution of Cabinet posts.

Who would succeed Mollet? Mollet has held office for 10½ months, longer than any one expected him to, proving himself an abler politician than he was given credit for being. He lasted largely because he has faced up to disagreeable tasks (e.g., drafting soldiers for Algeria) that few other French politicians relished. With gas rationing, unemployment and inflation building up, and no Algerian solution in sight, the problems facing the next Premier appear even less attractive. No obvious candidate has yet appeared, but ingenious solutions were being peddled, including a “Syndicat des anciens,” or a Cabinet composed entirely of ex-Premiers (there have been 15 since the war).

Mendes-France had an even more radical proposal: that a Cabinet of ex-Premiers be formed “under the patronage” of General Charles de Gaulle. Recovered from a cataract operation, the famed World War II. Free French leader has been coming to Paris once a week from his retreat at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises and seeing some politicians. De Gaulle always made his terms perfectly clear: a stronger executive and a “large and liberal” French Union in which the North African states would have independent status. Scorning the come-and-go of ordinary Premiers, he waits for the day when he is needed so badly that his price will be paid.