FRANCE: I Will Not Submit to Usury

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France's audacious Premier Mendès-France lives on drama. By making Christmas the deadline for ratification of the Paris accords, he has loaded the interim period with high suspense. His Assembly opponents countered by filling the script with highly charged dialogue.

The first matter before the House was a bill amending the French constitution. This proposal was so far short of the reforms that France needs that it quickly became known as La Réformette. In fact, instead of making it harder for the Assembly to unseat Premiers at will, it provides that a candidate needs only a simple majority of those voting, instead of an absolute majority of 314, to be invested as Premier (thus making it easier to find a new man), and provides that he must present his entire Cabinet before winning the Assembly's confidence (thus increasing the pressure the Assembly can put on him). There were also useful provisions designed to handicap the Communists, e.g., eliminating the chance of Communists getting interim Cabinet posts after a government falls. La Réformette has been kicking around Parliament for four years and was not Mendès' baby, but he demanded that the Assembly avoid a national referendum on the issue by giving it a three-fifths vote. The Assembly obliged.

A Lie Nailed. A few days later, Deputy Jean Legendre, member of the faction that broke with De Gaulle, implied, without offering proof, that Mendès and his top advisers had been responsible for leaking secret government information to the Communists before he became Premier. Legendre recalled that in August last year ex-President Auriol had summoned the Defense Committee, saying: "There is a traitor among us." Pointing at Mendès' Interior Minister, Francois Mitterrand, Legendre shouted: "Three weeks later you resigned from the Cabinet." Pale with anger, Mendès leapt to his feet, crying: "What are you insinuating?"

In rebuttal, Mitterrand called upon Georges Bidault to testify that Mitterrand had left the Laniel government because of policy differences. Bidault, still bitter from the defeat of EDC, agreed that Mitterrand was right, added stonily, "I refuse you all other testimonials."

Mendès, taking the rostrum, said that as a result of the "remorseless campaign" of lies and calumnies conducted by "certain leading persons in France," he had suffered ''deep humiliation" when negotiating with allied statesmen in London. "I will not submit to this usury," he said. "The question which faces you tonight is . . . does the government have your confidence as patriots and Deputies?" The vote: 287 to 240 in favor of Mendès, his smallest majority yet.