Foreign News: Agony of Decision

A French Air Force Dakota touched down one day last week at the Royal Air Force fighter base of Biggin Hill, near London. Out stepped a tired-looking Frenchman with a fat diplomatic briefcase. Pierre Mendès-France, Premier of France, was familiar with Biggin Hill: under very different circumstances he had visited it during World War II, as a navigator in a Free French bomber squadron.

Waiting to greet the Premier was Mendès’ old commanding officer, Colonel De Rancourt, now air attaché at the French embassy in London. “You once confined me to quarters for ten days,” Mendès said, recognizing him. “It was 14 days,” the colonel replied. “You proceeded on a mission without orders.” A rotund, familiar figure with a cigar was also on hand at Biggin Hill. Sir Winston Churchill, 79, who had driven seven miles from his country house at Chartwell, addressed his visitor, with his usual disregard for any language but English, as “Monsoor Mends Fra-a-ance.” Then the old British bulldog and the spry little Frenchman drove off in Churchill’s limousine to dis cuss the fate of Europe.

European NATO? After his failure at Brussels, Mendès had flown directly to Britain. Convinced that EDC would be killed by the French National Assembly, he hoped to enlist British support for his own alternative: a larger, looser European alliance in which Britain might participate. Over lunch, with Churchill and Eden, Mendès explained that he would keep some of the features of EDC—for instance, the plan for pooling arms production. He argued that his proposal, a

Western European NATO of seven nations, which would nestle within NATO proper like a kernel in a nut, would permit German rearmament and still be acceptable to France. It would have the backing of the French nationalists, said Mendès, because it imposed no restrictions on French sovereignty, of the Socialists because it would bring in Britain as a counterweight to Germany, of some of the “Good Europeans” because it retained at least a whiff of European Union.

Mendès’ plan was ingenious, but its core remained that the French would have their cake and eat it, too. France would accept no restrictions on its sovereignty, but German arms would be limited by treaty.

The British reminded Mendès that this was 1954, not 1951. It is no longer a question of what new restrictions should be imposed on Germany, but what restrictions the Germans will accept. Mendès’ plan, in any case, was disliked by the British Foreign Office. It transgressed a primary axiom of contemporary British policy: not to become more involved in continental Europe than the U.S.

Alone in the Rain. Seeing his visitor off, Churchill murmured: “I will do all I can to help you.” By this he meant that Britain would do its best to keep Anglophile Mendès in power. But not if it meant putting off German rearmament. Premier Mendès-France, said the British government, was left in no doubt that London still expected him to push for EDC.

Turned down again, the French Premier flew to Normandy to report his rebuffs to French President René Coty, who was taking the waters at Bagnoles de 1’Orne. The same evening, feeling sorry for himself, Mendès took his private diesel train back to Paris, ordering the engineer to stop overnight on a railway siding. “I was all alone with the rain,” the Premier said afterwards.

Next day Mendès plunged all of France into one of the most turbulent weeks in the history of the Fourth Republic. Official Paris was in an uproar, with ministers scurrying, newspapers trumpeting, Parliament fragmenting into anxious little knots of excited, gossipy Deputies. The Premier was peevish. To his bitterly divided Cabinet (12 against, 13 for EDC), he reported sourly that France had been “dragged through the mud” at Brussels. This was a foretaste, Mendès said, of how EDC would work: instead of France controlling Germany, Brussels had shown that Benelux and Italy would “gang up” with the Germans to impose their will on France.

Next, Mendès went before a joint session of three parliamentary committees which have been assigned to study EDC. All have reported unfavorably on it. Mendès proposed:

R That Parliament be left to reject EDC.

¶ That France accept limited German-sovereignty as a sop to Washington, London and Bonn.

¶ That France initiate some new European coalition, similar to the one which Winston Churchill had turned down, in which Germany would be rearmed under international supervision.

The parliamentary enemies of EDC burst out into the corridors of the Palais Bourbon, their faces flushed with certain victory. “He’s killed it,” crowed one. “Mendès has torpedoed EDC forever!”

But the battle was only beginning. The friends of EDC rallied, and the dispute that had raged in the caucus rooms and Parliament suddenly engulfed all France, and spread outwards in ever-widening circles to touch half the world.

To left and to right, EDC’s enemies thundered. Former President Vincent Auriol, a respected voice, cried that EDC “would sunder France from the French Union.” Charles de Gaulle, who dislikes both EDC and Mendès with equal intensity, announced that “a surge comes from the depths that will protect France’s independence.” But as the week wore on, the answering fire grew louder. “If France fails to ratify EDC,” editorialized the conservative Figaro, “she will find herself on the road to Prague. All else is sophistry, self-deceit and imposture.”

Counteroffensive. France’s friends and enemies joined in the great debate. Pravda said that a rearmed West Germany would lead to war. Communist Poland sent Mendès-France an official invitation to sign a Franco-Polish alliance against Germany. From the U.S., Adlai Stevenson sent a handwritten letter to Mendès-France, “an old friend of mine,” asking him to recognize that John Foster Dulles “spoke for all of us” in urging ratification. Konrad Adenauer’s Christian Democratic party sent an urgent appeal for “courage . . . to achieve great goals”; Canada’s Lester Pearson served notice that EDC’s defeat might damage NATO. To many Frenchmen, all this was evidence that Mendès’ simple solutions would isolate France from her best and most powerful friends. To prevent this, an ad hoc cabal of Roman Catholic M.R.P.s.

Radicals, Independents and Socialists staged a last-minute rally to save EDC. Four ex-Premiers, Rene Mayer, Georges Bidault, Robert Schuman and Paul Reynaud. offered a “postponement formula” proposed by that master of postponement, Antoine Pinay (who in ten months as Premier had never submitted EDC to the Assembly). The Brussels meeting had been too brief to permit “a real exchange of views,” they argued, therefore the Assembly should put off voting until Mendès-France could try again.

“EDC COUNTEROFFENSIVE ROLLING,” read the headlines. Five pro-EDC ministers threatened to resign unless Mendès agreed to a postponement. For a moment, Mendès, the man of drastic alternatives, faltered.

Great Debate. At week’s end, after more than two years, the great debate finally began on the floor of the National Assembly. The man who spoke first was himself a walking case history of France’s political neurosis. Socialist Jules Moch is an antimilitarist who served as Minister of Defense in two postwar French governments, a friend of the West who opposes EDC. a patriotic Frenchman with a deep-felt hatred for Germany since his oldest son was killed by the Nazis. “A dozen thermonuclear weapons suitably dropped.” said Moch, “would practically destroy all life … In this terrible hypothesis . . . the option is to disarm, or, if war breaks out, to perish.”

Moch was followed by speaker after speaker, representing six separate parliamentary committees, droning out their objections to EDC. Their unanimity against EDC set the tone of the debate. Next morning, at a special Sunday session, Premier Mendès-France took the floor, looking tired but neat in a blue suit and grey-striped tie.

Mendès’ fingers adjusted a glass of milk that had been placed for him on the lectern. He opened a pink folder and in a staccato voice made plain to the world that he came to bury EDC, not to praise it or postpone it. “We must say yes or no,” Mendès said. “It must be made known whether France is for or against EDC.” To mounting applause, Mendès gave the Assembly a “full and frank account” of the Brussels Conference, which he described as “painful and humiliating.” “We were faced by a united bloc of five countries,” he said (at one point Mendès called them “our Brussels adversaries,” then corrected himself and said “our Brussels partners”).

“Opposite me,” said Mendès, “were men who were exasperated—and they said so—by the policy adopted by France during the past few years. In diplomatic language, they told me: ‘The rearmament of Germany was proposed to you, you proposed the European Army. The European Army was proposed to you, you asked for changes. They were given to you, and then you asked for prior conditions . . . You got those too, and today you ask something new, pending a new Prime Minister, who in six months will ask for something else again.’ ”

Mendès insisted that he wanted no more shilly-shallying. “Once the vote has been taken,” he said, “we shall have to accept the consequences and either put the treaty into effect or else adopt a new solution in agreement with our allies.”

The Premier acted like a man who expected that the treaty would be killed. “If it is,” he promised, “I will ask the Parliament to authorize the restoration of political sovereignty to West Germany.”