FRANCE: Wobbling Bicycle

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Premier Pierre Mendès-France, said an unfriendly critic recently, is like a man on a bicycle who has to keep moving to avoid a spill. Last week, though no spill seemed imminent, the Mendès-France bicycle was patently wobbling.

First there was the inconsequential Post and Telegraph Ministry budget, on which Mendès impatiently demanded a vote of confidence. He won—but by the narrowest margin of his meteoric, five-month tenure: 321 to 207. Later in the week, on the eve of his take-off for a ten-day visit to Canada and the U.S., Mendès asked the Assembly to postpone debate on the ugly North African situation until his return. Again he won—but by a still narrower margin: 312 to 272.

The Communists, who had backed him on the Indo-China settlement, were now voting regularly against him. The Roman Catholic M.R.P., the party of ex-Premiers Bidault and Schuman, accused him of sabotaging EDC, and resentfully rank themselves solidly against him. But the Socialists (with 105 seats) were wavering towards him.

Mendès hoped to win over the Socialists, who have disdained to join any French government for the past three years, by giving them six Cabinet posts. The Socialists decided to join Mendès only if he agreed beforehand to push three Socialist measures. Unwilling to have his hands tied, Mendès said he would study the conditions until his return. He arrived in Quebec looking his usual assured self. After all, the Socialists, with almost no debate, had agreed to support the Paris accord for the new German army, which should assure its passage.

The kinetic little Premier remains widely liked and admired by the French people, and the only man since Charles de Gaulle who has given France a sense of cohesion, direction and escape from stagnation. Even Guy Mollet, the Socialist Party secretary, recognized this last week when he labeled Mendès "the second-best possible Premier"—meaning that if France could not have a Socialist Premier, then Pierre Mendès-France was the next best.