FRANCE: Le New Deal

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Pierre Mendès-France, son of a clothing manufacturer, is economist first, politician and statesman second. The argument which did most to convince him that the Indo-China war must be stopped was that France could not afford it. His chief ambition in North Africa is to stabilize the area, so that France can concentrate on what he calls the "real battlefront": eco nomic reform.

Mendès-France believes that the limping French economy needs more reform than it did in 1789. In his investiture speech, he promised to submit "a coherent program of recovery and expansion" by July 20. Last week, a few days late, Mendès kept his promise by laying before the National Assembly a dramatic blueprint for peaceful economic revolution.

Under the Oaks. Mendès-France calls his program le New Deal null He worked most of it out himself. Back from Geneva, Mendès set up shop outside Paris in a hunting lodge in the forest of Marly. Outdoors, under the oaks, Mendès met his two economic brain-trusters: Georges Boris, 66, and young Simon Nora, 33. He looked over blueprints proposed by Finance Minister Edgar Faure, and reworded by Boris and Nora. "I seem to find nothing but old projects," he grumbled. "They are neither original nor daring." He wanted a program of "total economic conversion," to give a "psychological shock to the country."

Our Main Error. "We have really only one problem, at home and abroad," Mendès-France says. "France is the one nation in the West whose production has not increased in a generation. It is the same now as it was in 1929 . . .*

"This explains a great deal the fear of the bourgeoisie, the social pressures, the lack of armament production, the low living standard. And our needs now are far greater than in 1929. We have 2,000,000 more to be fed. Our export needs have increased . . . Our equipment is oldfashioned. We need new homes. It is now 40 years since any housing of consequence was built in France."

Why is this? Mendès has an economist's answer. "Our main error lies in spending for unproductive uses. First, spending for luxury goods by individuals and the state. Second, operating our nationalized industries at a deficit—coal, gas, railroads. Third, the exaggeration of [France's] social laws—some of them tend to cut back production, not increase it."

Sweeping Powers. Under the oaks at Marly, Mendès-France rewrote Faure's program to give expression to his own ideas. It took him 48 hours, practically nonstop. As presented to the National Assembly, last week Mendès-France's New Deal consisted of two documents: a one-page legislative bill, asking sweeping powers to run the. French economy by decree until March 31, 1955, accompanied by a 30-page "Exposition of Motives." Main features: