The Big Knife

All French governments are condemned to the guillotine from the moment they are voted into power. French Premiers are like men in death row, continuously making appeals (votes of confidence), living from one reprieve to another, loudly proclaiming their innocence but secretly accepting the inevitable, wondering and worrying when the big knife will fall.

Having survived 33 appeals for confidence and nearly 16 months in office, Premier Guy Mollet trod his way to the end last week with a certain nonchalance. "No regrets," he told one of his executioners, "now I can take a rest. They can nail me up on the wall like a trophy, but I won't be used as a doormat." In his conduct of the war in Algeria the militancy of Mollet's patriotism had offended the left, and now that the war bill had to be paid the right was appalled by his Socialism.

Soak the Rich. Having already borrowed the legal limit from the Bank of France and hoping to borrow more to offset the government deficit, Mollet had encountered Bank of France Governor Wilfrid Baumgartner, conscientious keeper of the country's precious bullion reserves. Said smooth, silver-haired Baumgartner: "I want collateral--taxes. And quickly." Mollet's answer: a soak-the-rich tax program that hit corporation earnings, dividends and inventories, added four francs per liter to the gas tax.

Deputies remembered that a year ago Mollet had forced through a 105 billion franc program of old age pensions and paid vacations and still had a proposal to socialize medicine on his books. The temptation was too great to resist: in the constituencies a vote against Mollet on the budget would not be a vote against the Algerian war (which most Deputies favor) but a vote against high taxes and against Socialist experiments.

The execution was carried out with the utmost consideration for the victim, for in his term in office schoolmasterly Guy Mollet had won national popularity. "We cannot give you our confidence without betraying our voters," apologized Farmer Deputy Joseph Cadic. Mollet caught the drift, sighed: "Oh well, 'twill be an amusing end. After overthrowing us, people will come to tell us how much they really like us and how courageous we have been."

Condemned as a Socialist, Mollet chose to meet the end like one. Wearily climbing the podium, he delivered a lackluster speech which revealed his own uncertainty about Algerian policy. Then, reaching into his pocket, he produced a brochure and like a park-bench orator began intoning: "I have here a small document given to every new member of the Socialist Party, containing not only the rules but a declaration of principles." Exploded Independent Deputy Roland de Moustier: "Enough propaganda! Your ministers spend their Sundays making Socialist speeches when they should be working." Unruffled, Mollet read out a paragraph about labor's aims, went on to dedicate the country's economic policy "to the profit of the working class." Said he: "I await your judgment with serenity."

The judgment against him (250 to 213) was not a constitutional majority, and therefore Mollet was not required to resign, but Mollet snatched at the opportunity anyway, and quit. While Mollet ate sandwiches with President Coty at the Elysee Palace, some Deputies, over beer and sauerkraut at the nearby Brasserie Lipp, belatedly discovered that in the haste of Mollet's overthrow they had forgotten to faire la cuisine, i.e., cook up a successor.

This is a task complicated by arithmetical certainties. With the 143 Communists and 37 Poujadists outside the parliamentary pale, a new Premier would need the approval, avowed or implicit, of the bulk of the remaining 400 Deputies. One hundred of these are Socialists who have vowed to serve only in a government headed by a Socialist. By going down waving a Socialist tract, Mollet had "fallen to the left," entrenching himself firmly in the esteem of his followers and reducing the possibility of forming "a Mollet government without Mollet."

Mendes Quits. Oddly enough, the man who had suffered most by the upset was ironic, bitter-tongued Pierre Mendes-France, who had joined Mollet's government at its inception with 13 members of his Radical Socialist Party. Mendes-France later resigned over Mollet's Algerian policy, but let his fellow Radicals stay on in the Cabinet. Last week he was unable to whip his party into line for a solid vote against Mollet, and, crushingly defeated, barked: "I'm thoroughly disgusted. I'm quitting."

At week's end, commissioned by President Coty on a "mission of information" to bring the parties together, former Premier Rene Pleven had no illusions about becoming the incoming Premier himself. Said he: "My task is only to spur reconciliation, and I can use only one argument: patriotism." Once, on a similar mission of information, Guy Mollet had recommended Pleven as having the best chances of forming a government; now Pleven, after all his looking, might find himself recommending Mollet to Coty. Such is French politics. Despite the nation's evident prosperity, the growing budget deficit was bringing France perilously close to bankruptcy, the franc was in grave danger, the war in Algeria no nearer ending, but what saddened gracious, occasion-loving Rene Coty was the fact that he would have to put off, indefinitely perhaps, his warmly anticipated state visit to the U.S. Said one of Coty's aides: "Now what do we do with those white dinner jackets we had made? Nobody wears them in Paris."

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