ON THE GAME OF POLITICS IN FRANCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81-01043R002300020002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 180
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 13, 2013
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 6, 1958
• Content Type: MEMO

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RESEARCH MEMORANDUM_
ON THE GAME OF POLITICS IN FRANCE
Nathan Leites
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STAT
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June 6, 1958
UNEDITED ADVANCE COPY
Copyright applied for by
The RAND Corporation
1958
74 D eypfroutteogs
1700 MAIN ST. ? SANTA MONICA ? CALIFORNIA
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z
This study, which will be published in a French
edition by Librairie Plon, Paris, is part of a
continuing research program of The RAND Corporation
on contemporary France. Related studies which have
been published in the United States are The House
Without Windows: France Selects a President, Row,
Peterson & Company, Evanston, Illinois, 1958, by
Constantin Melnik and Nathan Leites, and The French
Economy and the State, Princeton University Press,
1958, by Warren C. Baum.
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Introduction
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V.
CONTENTS
1
Chapter 1: Factions and Doctrines 9
Chapter 2: The Struggle Against Responsibility 35
Chapter 3: Designs for Failure 77
Chapter 4: The Resources of Time 99
Chapter 5: Precautions and Arrangements. . 121
Chapter 6: The Search for a Force Majeure 151
Notes
163
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1.
INTRODUCTION
In the pages to follow I shall attempt to describe some
major patterns of parliamentary strategy and tactics which
obtained during the second phase of the Fourth Republic, from
the general election of June 17, 1951, to the breakdown of
constitutional order on May 14, 1958. (The study wiiis completed
in February, the introduction written in late May.)
_I propose to deal only with those parliamentary groups,
cliques, and individuals who essentially accepted the French
constitutional status quo. This excludes not only the Communists
but also the "extreme right," which was, as it happened, very
weak during most of the period. While I did not study these
two extremes, I felt almost certain that their styles in
politics were significantly different from those of the so-
called "national" groups. This belief made it reasonable to
limit-my field of investigation to the national groups. More-
over, during most of the period the extremes entered but little
into "the game," so that the "nationals" did not find many
occasions to apply to them the patterns of calculation and be-
havior to be discussed. '
The materials for this study have been derived from a
variety of sources: the proceedings of the National Assembly
and of the Council of the Republic; news and analyses
appearing in the French press; personal observations of meetings
of parliament; interviews with. parliamentarians and journalists;
memoirs of political and military leaders; and collaboration
in-research with colleagues' close to parliament. Occasionally
I have drawn .on data from periods preceding June 1951, when
they seemed to furnish the best illustrations of persisting
practices.
While many of the illustrations of "rules of the game"
given below concern domestic politics, the analysis to be
presented is, I believe, relevant to the fuller understanding
of French foreign policy. Contemporary France appears to
furnish an instance of what probably is a very frequent
situation: certain ways of calculating and acting are evolved,
tested, and reinforced in domestic politics, but then extended
to foreign affairs, often with unexpected consequences. One
tendi to assume that reactions abroad are similar to those with
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2.
which one has become so familiar at home. Accordingly, members
of the French political class frequently act in the field of
foreign-affairs as if their foreign counterparts were so like
themselves that the issue at stake could be treated as a
domestic one. In the process of arriving at a national decision
on a problem of foreign policy, politicians often apply the
procedures customarily used to deal with domestic partners and
antagonists, with little perception of the repercussions this
may have abroad.
A situation in foreign policy must have become very acute
indeed for its requirements to modify the rules of the game.
In the matterof the rearmament of West Germany, for instance,
it would be difficult to understand French behavior between
August-1950 and December 1954 without taking into account the
customary style of parliamentary politics in Paris. Not
only did the French first seem to accept, then reject, EDC, but
they rejected the Paris Agreements (December 24), in spite Of
their acceptance of a detailed blueprint, the London Agreement,
on the preceding October 12. This behavior produced a situation
so threatening that external realities finally had to be taken
into account: within a week the Assembly reversed itself. Less
than two months later the completion of the process of ratifi-
cation had come to appear so inevitable that some of the diehards
of December 24 becaTs tacit supporters of WEU. It seems charac-
teristic of Frenchipof14 that things have to come to such a
pass before reality can be accepted. This peculiarity may be
partly explained by certain patterns of behavior which are
largely evolved in domestic politics. These patterns are dis-
cussed below (see Chapter 1).
As-long as foreign problems obtrude themselves less sharply
than domestic, the ordinary "rules of the game" are likely to
be quite influential in determining French conduct in inter-
national affairs. A well-developed capacity for avoiding
their responsibility seems to affect the politicians when they
are faced with major national misfortunes (pp. 36-40). The
device _of passing the buck is used even in circumstances which
might seem unpropitious for this universal technique (pp. 40-41).
Such propensities among the politicians are likely to affect
the feelings, and hence the conduct, of French policy makers
in moments of international crisis. The latter are apt to
suspect that their colleagues are out to-unload all responsibility
upon them (pp. 48-51), and to make intense efforts to repay them
in kind, (pp. 52-53). The practice of agreeing to make certain
concessions to a domestic opponent,tdding conditions which
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3.
one believes to be unacceptable, is applied to foreign affairs ,
(pp. 61-63). In moments of domestic or foreign crisis, cabinet
members are disposed to relinquish their positions, while par-
liamentarians are tempted to give up some of their normal
functions to the government (pp. 66-75).
In both domestic and foreign affairs one often observes a
tendency to draw back at the last moment from completing an
enterprise (pp. 77-78) and .to scuttle a measure deliberately
at a very late stage of its career (pp. 78-80). Related to
this behavior is a maneuver called "the lifting of a mortgage"
(pp. 85-92) whose major consequences may be rather unexpected
to those who use the device (pp. 94-97).
Decisions in foreign policy are affected by a belief in
the expediency of "waiting" (pp. 99-110) and in the need to
proceed by stages (pp. 110-113), and by an apprehension that
the premature announcement of a "solution" may be fatal to its
chances of adoption (pp. 114-116). The conviction that a "valid"
solution can be conceived only "in the heat of the decisive
moment" also extends beyond domestic issues (p. 116). In
foreign affairs especially, faith in the effects of passing
time may reflect a hope that sooner or later force majeure
will provide an automatic solution (pp. 116-118), or, alterna-
tively, the confidence that ingenuity will find a solution if
enough time is available (p. 118).
The practice of equivocation as a means of making possible
temporary alliances in parliament is applied to problems of
foreign policy (pp. 140-142), and to international dealings
(pp. 143-144). There is a tendency to treat foreign policy
decisions like parliamentary resolutions, where each component
of the majority must be accorded some verbal concession
(pp. 146-149).
The disposition to take major action in domestic politics
only when catastrophe appears the imminent consequence of a
continued refusal to act is carried over into the field of
foreign affairs (pp. 154-156). Only the immediate future
tends to be taken into account (pp. 157-158).
Many of the patterns of behavior to be presented below are,
no doubt, found outside France. It is the way these patterns
combine which is peculiar to France. Even where French practice
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4. -
corresponds to the universal game of politics, certain French
peculiarities are observed.
The-recourse to imprecise statements (p. 138), for example,
is a aommon enough political device, but in contemporary France
it is thrown into relief because, for one reason, it conflicts
with a rather strong aspiration to "precision." Hence a
political device usually accepted in other countries is some-
what shocking to Frenchmen.
French politicians, like those in other countries, may
justify important political failures on the ground that a great
deal was learned in the course of them. In the case of France,
however, such behavior is intimately related to some of the
customary parliamentary maneuvers discussed in Chapter 3.
Before entering into an analysis of the patterns of parlia-
mentary maneuvering in the period 1951-1958, it may be useful
to sketch the framework of "parliamentary arithmetic" (the
distribution of strength. among the various groups) within
which it occurred.
The elections of 1951 produced a "hexagonal" chamber in
In approximate numbers, there were among the 630 deputies:
Communists
100
Socialists
105
Radicals and near-by small groups
115
Christian- Democrats
90
Moderates
100
Gaullists
120
Both theCommunists and the Gaullists then refused to enter
into alliancesacceptable_to other groups, or were refused entry
by them,- so that all the four other groupings had to combine
if a majority was to be secured. Any three would have furnished.
too narrow a base.
Thus the-parliament began with a continuation of the previous
formula: a coalition of Socialists, Radicals, Christian-
Democrats, and Moderates. The governments so formed were those
headed-by Rend Pleven and Edgar Faure, which lasted from the
summer of 1951 to the winter of 1952. During this period,
however,_a-differently constituted majority began to emerge,
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5.
when a law granting subsidies to Catholic schools was passed
by the Gaullists, Moderates, and Christian-Democrats, supple-
mented by a fraction of the Radicals. Certain Gaullists and
Moderates had designed this measure as a tool to disintegrate
the Fourth Force, and it did so.
The Socialists withdrew into opposition. Had the Gaullists
remained monolithic, the Assembly woad have become ungovern-
able, and, as some hoped and predicted, a way to power would
have opened for the General. In the spring of 1952, however,
the Gaullists began to break up and, before the end of this
parliament in the fall of 1955, about half of them had joined
other groups, mostly the Moderates. The remainder, deprived
of the prospect of power on their own, "entered the system,"
i.e., supported governments and participated in them, while
the General renounced them. By 1955 the picture thus was,
approximately:
Communists
100
Socialists
105
Radicals, etc.
115
Christian-Democrats
90
Moderates
150
Ex-Gaullists
70
As early as 1952, however, it had become possible to form
governments without the support of the Socialists. The first
of these, that of Antoine Pinay, was voted in by mistake
in the winter of 1952. It had not yet been perceived that
a new majority had come into existence (cf. p. 61), The
Piney government enjoyed the support of the emerging "dissident
Gaullists" Ow Moderates) without their furnishing any ministers.
In the next government (Rend Mayer, from winter to spring of
1953) the "dissident Gaullists" participated, while the nex-
Gaullists" (as the orthodox Gaullists were called after the
General had renounced them) gave their support, from which
they, _too, advanced to full membership in the subsequent
combination (Joseph Laniel, from the early summer of 1953 to
the late spring of 1954). This was the "true" formula of the
legislature, the one which produced the greatest stability.
The majority's complement of 425 votes could withstand sub-
stantial defections on particular occasions, and also attrition
through time, without endangering the government, at least after
its first months. This majority was re-established in the list
government of the parliament (Edgar Faure, from the winter of
1955 through the rest of the year). But between Laniel and
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6.
Faure there had been a peculiar interlude, that of Pierre
Mendes-France.
The fall of Pinay in the winter of 1952 and that of Mayer
in the spring of 1953 had not been connected with major issues
of policy. But that of Laniel (June 1954) occurred about a
month after the fall of Dien-Bien-Phu and about a month before
what was in fact the "abandonment" of Indochina by France.
While it may be argued that Laniel and Bidault, had they re-
mained in office, would have followed a policy similar to that
of the new Premier, Mendes-France, it remains a fact that the
latter pursued his own course with a changed majority. . Taking
his stand as a reformer, he could draw on the support of the
Socialists. While the Christian-Democrats went into opposition,
large fractions of the Radicals and "ex-Gaullists," as well as
a smaller fraction of the Moderates, allowed Mendes-France to
survive while the abolition of the status quo in Tunisia began
and EDC gave way to WEU. By that time the job assigned to
Mendes-France as liquidator of over-ripe issues was done, and
the majority of Laniel reasserted itself early in 1955, after
"seven months and seventeen days." In the spring, with this
majority, Edgar Faure managed to accelerate the withdrawal from
Tunisia and, in the summer and fall, to initiate and complete
the retreat from Morocco by drawing on the temporary support of
the Socialists. Faced with the growing strength of the rebellion
in Algeria, he attempted a consolidation of his majority through
new elections, and failed.
The election of January 2, 1956, produced the following
approximate party representation:
-Communists 150
Socialists 100
-1-4end4sites 15
Radicals of various factions and
related groups 90
.Christian-Democrats 75
-Moderates 110
ex-Gaullists 20
-Extreme Right 35
The groups which had formed the majority of Laniel and Faure
now controlled but 295 out of 595 votes, and were thus no 19.0itt.
effective-as'a coalition. It was not feasible to add the
Mendesists or the Extreme Right (mainly Poujadists) to such 'a
combination. There was thus only one practicable majority
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7.
in this Third Assembly of the Fourth Republic, the same with
which the first one had ended, stretching from the Socialists
to the Moderates. In the first two governments formed-under
this formula, that of Guy Mollet, from the winter of 1956 to
the spring of 1957J and that of Maurice Bourges-Maunoury, from
the spring to the fall of that year, the Socialists and
Radicals participated in a government which the Christian-
Democrats and Moderates merely supported, and which the latter
in the end overthrew. In the next government, that of Fdlix
Gaillard, from the fall of 1957 to the spring of 1958, the same
formula produced the majority, but all its constituent groups
participated. When sufficient Moderates deserted the government
to overthrow it, the new government of Pierre Pflimlin, beginning
May 14, 1958, included representatives of all the supporting
parties except the Socialists, who joined a little later. By
then, however, the Fourth Republic had in effect broken down.
This is the context within which were used the tactics now
to he analyzed.
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9.
Chapter 1
FACTIONS AND DOCTRINES
In contrast to a widely held view, "doctrines" do not play
a major role in French politics (pp. 9-13). What often gives
the impression of "doctrine" is a set of more or less emotion-
laden phrases peculiar to a given party (pp. 13-14). Conflicts
of an "ideological" nature are apt to involve simple answers
(often irrelevant to action) to simple questions (pp. 14-15)
During the period analyzed, interest in constitutional matters
was limited (pp. 15-16), while here as elsewhere the attention
of politicians was largely absorbed by efforts to defend and
improve the position of special economic interests ( p. 16)
Historical memories play a minor role in the attitudes toward
current problems (pp. 17-20). The conflict between "Right"
and "Left" has declined in intensity (pp. 20-25), this has
involved a sharp reduction in the role played by the opposition
between "clericals" and "anti-clericals" (pp. 28-32). In the
political class the feeling has gained strength that the policy
to be followed in any given situation is commanded by "facts"
rather than by doctrine (pp. 25-28). During the period analyzed,
the most intensely fought issues split both the Right and the
Left (pp. 32-33).
In France, one often hears, politics is "intellectual,"
"theoretical," "abstract," "ideological," even "idealist."
According, to the most important contemporary commentator on
parliamentary activities (Jacques Fauvet), "ideological quarrels"
occupy "an eminent place" in politics. They invade everything:
We always start by conferring on our most trite
- discussions the dignity of philosophic disputa-
tions.1
For,
The French people prefer pure .ideas in all
circumstances.z
In the preface to the book which contains these assertions
-- the only recent essay on French politics by an observer close
to the political.class--the author announces that he itk"liberating
himself for awhile from the constraints of day-to-day events," and
proposes to regard the "landscape" which-he is usually viewing at
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10.- -
short range "from a greater distance.? In so doing he seems to
have turned his eyes toward an imaginary world where "sordid"
facts have been replaced by "pure" ideas which may appear out-
dated, but do not lack dignity.
A few weeks after the elections of Janutry 2, 1956, the
staff of a satirical weekly (Le Canard Enchain) gathered around
a recording apparatus in order to discuss, in more or teas serious
fashion, the new political star, Pierre Poujade. One of them
(Robert Treno) said:
What worries me is not Poujade's program
but his lack of program. One knows from
experience where this leads.... He doesn't
have any doctrine, he doesn't have any
program, isn't that curious?
But this was bound to provoke a reply:
You are talking about doctrines and ideology.
And M. Pinay, does he have a doctrine? And
M. Legendre, does he have a doctrine? And
Coste-Floret, does he have a doctrine? Schuman,
does he have a doctrine? And Laniel? Please
tell me about Laniel's ideology! (Henri Jeanson)4
It_is, in fact, not easy to find doctrines in French politica
though politiciansfrequently talk about them; less frequently by
the way, than they are often believed to do, and less emphatically
than they used to do in the Third Republic.
Let usconsider from this point of view the main groupings
in French politics (always with the exception of the Communists
and of the extreme Right).
-
Th. initials usually employed to designate the Socialists,
"SFIO," stand for "French Section of the Workers International";
but one wonders how many among those specialized in politics are
in any way aware of the antiquated ideological words behind the
familiet abbreviation. Though the Socialists are particularly
inclined-to talk about their "doctrine," the commentator cited
before, itho stresses the role of "ideology" when he makes over-
all itailvents, admits that the Socialist Party "has no doctrine
anymore." Still, it is "one of the rare political organisations
which still possess.a certain modest number of economic.and social
conceptions of _their own."6 These "conceptions" include a favorable
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11.
attitude toward the maintenance and extension of governmental
activities in economic affairs, and an advocacy of what are
regarded as the interests of lower-income groups, whether salaried
or not. On the other hand, words such as "socialism," "nationali-
zation," or any other terms referring with an air of specificity
to a radical transformation of the present order are, on the
scale of national politics, not too frequently employed by the
Socialists. Demanding that all nuclear fuels be owned by
Euratom, a Socialist speaker in the Assembly, a former
Premier, added:
If we regard this measure as desirable, it
is not, ladies and gentlemen, please believe
me, because of any sectarian ideology hostile
to private property.7
When a Socialist Premier wants to "fall leftward," he may suddenly
come out with vague demands for workers' participation in the
conduct of business so that the Moderates may cry "Sovietization"!
Nobody will have known that the Socialists were particularly
intent on this reform, and few will wonder about the disappear-
ance of the demand once it has served its function. Suppose
that Le Monde, the newspaper most widely and thoroughly read by
the political class in Paris, wanted to describe in detail the
program of the Socialists: many of its readers, though special-
ized in politics, would feel that they were being led into
rather unknown territory, though they would also be sure that
there were no major surprises in store for them.
If teachers are part of the "intelligentsia," the Socialists
represent that stratum to a higher degree than other parties;
but among the intellectuals who are socialist militants, function-
aries, parliamentarians, exceedingly few are known on non-political
grounds, or as contributors to "doctrine." "The doctrinal effort
which the. appearance of the Communists ought to have imposed on
the other parties, and particularly on the Socialists," observes
Jacques Fauvet, "was not made until shortly before the war."8
I should rather say that it was not made at all, as far as the
Socialists are concerned, despite a few essays by Leon Blum
and one by Jules Moch. If that book appeared to be followed by
some difficulties for Moch in the party, this was not because of
any excessive deviations from Marxism which it may have contained,
but rather because the author envisaged a raising of retirement
ages, a suggestion unwelcome to public employees forming a deci-
sivi-part of the Socialist clientele. It would, indeed, be
difficult to indicate the.relations between the alleged Socialist
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12.
doctrine and .Marxism, which Socialist leaders have not renounced
but which they claim as their own quite rarely and in very brief
affirmations. The few persons who are held by party members to
be "theoreticians" because they write in the party's monthly are
quite unknown outside of the limited circles of its readers, and
so is the monthly itself.
When somebody talks about "the doctrine of the Radicals,"
others immediately think of the philosopher Alain. On the other
hand, one often hears the following anecdote retold: having
written a book called Elements of a Radical Doctrine, Alain had it
placed before the seat of every Radical minister at the table
of the Council of Ministers. One of the recipients, upon looking
at the book, remarked: If a Radical doctrine really existed,
would we not be the first to know it? "To my mind," declared
an important Radical (Edgar Faure), "Radicalism ill a method- for
solving problems rather than a set of solutions."' (He went on
to suggest that the facts outside of parliament and the distri-
bution of party strength within it imposed about the same "method"
on every reasonable man.) "The Radicals conceive of themselves
as Socialists," alleged Jacques Fauvet.10 But if the full name
of the party is "Republican Radical and Radical socialist Party,"
the words "Socialist" and "Socialism" are almost never applied
by Radicals to themselves on the level of national politics;
they almost never claim allegiance to any doctrine called
"Socialist."
? Lately an effort has been made, in the group around Pierre
Mendes-France, to create a new Radical doctrine. But this is
indicative of the break-up of the old Radical Party into various
fragments, rather than of its continued vigor. Among the eighteen
members of the directing commitee of the periodical which attempts
this creation of a new doctrine (Cahiers de la R4pub1ique), there
are at least two Socialists, two "Left Catholics" and one Left
The-Christian Democrats, too, used to have a periodical
supposedly oriented on doctrine (Terre Humaine), edited by a
man viewid as the "theoretician" of the party (Etienne Borne);
but it ceased publication for lack of readers. Jacques Fauvet
admits that "the principle of unity" of this "movement" is
"emotional rather than intellectual": "being faithful to a
tradition,"11 that of the anti-conservative trend in French
Catholicism between the 1830.'s and the Second World War. "If
one had to indicate the aims of the Christian Democrats, ten
years after the foundation of their party," another journalist
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13.
remarks, "all one could do would be to name a few chapter head-
ings of a program which was never developed."12 It is known,
for instance, that the Christian Democrats do not like "capitalism."
But as to the vague formulae about the "new institutions" through
which the "reign of money" is to be replaced by "a more human
order of things," only the authors of doctrinal reports prepared
for national party congresses would be able to repeat their texts
even approximately.
Even those who believe that "doctrine" plays a dominant role
in French politics agree that there is little of it among the
Moderates, where one is usually content with rejecting Socialist
errors, without however seriously attacking the social-economic
status quo on behalf of less government interference.
In his famous speech in Bayeux in 1946, de Gaulle furnished
the organizations, which were to profess allegiance to him, the
bases of a political doctrine by sketching a "presidential"
constitution for France. In addition, there was the idea of an
"association between capital and labor" as well as "federalist"
words concerning the French Union. But during the years when
Gaullist or ex-Gaullist movements were of importance in French
politics (1947-1955), doctrine was shrinking rather than expand-
ing. The major postulates of Gaullist ideology only rarely
appeared in parliamentary speeches or in actual proposed legis-
lation. It became unusual to hear a Gaullist leader say in
the Assembly:
We continue to strive for a presidential
regime.13
On the whole, Gaullist speakers came to limit themselves to
the affirmation that existing institutions were in need of
radical revision; and that the salvation of France depended
on the General's return to power. The only Gaullist periodical
which had a somewhat doctrinal air ceased publication in 1953.
At time the Gaullist criticism of the "regime" ceased
to be peculiar to that group, and became what was widely felt to
be a set of commonly accepted and predictably inoperative truisms.
Though there is little "doctrine" in French politics, what
does, -Of course, exist for each major political tendency, and
what often gives the impression of "doctrine," is a set of
somewhat special and more or less-emotion-laden phrases. (These
are-at present more important on the local level and in elections
than. in parliamentary politics. The decline of party vocabularies
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14.
in Paris may foreshadow a similar development in the provinces.)
"Every major political tendency has its pantheon and its vocabu-
lary."14 This is true, as I said, though less so for the
Moderates than for the other parties: There seem to be no
commonly accepted heroes of the Moderates after Henry IV. Often,
by the way, the words to which adherents of a party are attached
and which differentiate them best from partisans of other move-
ments are not those by which the party would characterize itself;
an instance would be the use of the adjectives "human" and "new"
by the Christian Democrats. Also, the pantheons of the various
tendencies are sometimes a bit strange. "Neither Montalembert...
nor LaTour du Pin...deserves to figure in the genealogy of the
Christian Democrats,"15 remarked, correctly, Jacques Fauvet in
speaking about two prominent French Catholics of the nineteenth
century. If they are nevertheleis claimed by the Christian
Democrats, this is not by virtue of the efforts made by ingenious
"theoreticians" who have interpreted them in the desired sense,
but rather because one knows them little, cares less, and because
their names appear mostly at ceremonial occasions when words are
not taken too literally.
In a frequently encountered view of French politics the
many complicated doctrines to which the various tendencies are
allegedly attached enter recurrently into passionate and pro-
tracted combat; and inside each doctrine, it is claimed,
anguishing struggles between its various components occur.
At the occasion of "political conflicts," Jacques Fauvet affirmed,
"ideological controversy is endlessly cultivated."16
'Whenever debate lasts for some time, it becomes
for the Christian Democrat a conflict between
justice and liberty, fdr the Radical a choice
between the individual and the state, for the'
Socialist one between reform and revolution.?
I do not know of any evidence in the period of the Fourth Republic
which would supportthis observation. To take one case, among
the Socialists, the traditional conflict between "Reformists"
and "Marxists" has almost entirely disappeared since the time
when Daniel Mayer was replaced, after the liberation, by Guy
Mollet,who presented himsdif as being more to the "Left." In
1958, Mayer belongs to the Icainority". within the party; but so
does Andri Philip (who got himself expelled because he went
farther than Mayer), who has been one of the most outspoken
"Reformists" and who has never broken with his past. Also, the
Socialist "minority," divided from the majority largely On the
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15.
war in Algeria, is near to the Radical Mendes-France, who has
never pretended to be any kind of Socialist.
"In any one of the recurring great ideological conflicts,"
affirmed Jacques Fauvet, "every party, every individual exhausts
itself or himself in the search for an unattainable synthesis."18
I do not see this either. Take the "ideological" debate on the
operations of 1956-1958 in Algeria and on the future of that
territory. Whatever the factual or moral worth of the conflict-
ing positions, they were exceedingly simple and lacking in any
doctrinal foundations. Has "torture" been applied in Algeria?
Has it-been applied systematically? If it has been applied, can
this be justified by the necessities of a "war against subversion"
and by the "atrocities" committed by theTebels"? IS it legiti-
mate to speak about "torture" in public? What are its consequences
for the course and outcome of the war? What are the effects of
revealing its use? These were some of the questions around which
the debate turned (to take only the problem of the "special pro-
cedures" which may have been applied in Algeria). Just as one
perceives here complication of thought, there was no "search for
an unattainable synthesis": those who participated in these
discussions tended rather to answer the questions which I
mentioned with a definite yes or no.
French politics, one often hears, is characterized by the
"primacy of the political,"19 and by lack of interest in the
economic.
"The most popular play in politics," notes an eminent
observer, "that which is always being played before a full house,
is the debate on the constitution." "Just as in 1848," one
discusses "the advantages of unicameralism and bicameralism,
the powers of the Assembly as against those of the executive".
one continues to propose "modifications" of the electoral law:20,.
It is astonishing to this commentator "that there are still plain
citizens: who follow with passion the exchanges of oratory con-
cerning Article 9 or Article 17 of a constitution which has been
changed fifteen times in the course of one hundred and seventy
years, u21 But the number of such simple souls, though unknown,
is, I believe, quite small. The last manipulation bearing on
"Article 9 or Article 17," prior to that of early 1958, occurred
in 1953-and 1954. Among the events which interested the political
class at that time and also managed, in various degrees, to arouse
attention in the country, were: a long ministerial crisis in the
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16.
spring of 1953; sudden and large strikes of government employees
during the summer; the election of a President of the Republic
toward the end of the year; the conflict between the government
and Marshal Juin; the fall of Dien Bien Phu; the replacement
of Laniel by Mends-France as premier in the spring of 1954;
the end of the war in Indochina; a new policy toward .Tunisia,
and the rejection of EDC during the summer; the approach toward
another formula for the rearmament of Western Germany in the fall.
In the middle of all this a fairly small number of parliamentarians
specialized in constitutional questions had a "little reform" Of
the constitution voted by the Assembly, without any oratorical
jousts, and with only a few members present. The country did
not take notice. When, early in 1958, the government for the
first time proposed a major revision of the constitution, the
country did not abandon its indifference, and politicians were
only mildly interested because one believed that nothing much.
would actually happen: the revision might not be adopted; if
passed, it would not make much difference.
As to the alleged lack of interest in economics, it is indeed
possible that the political class is less concerned than is the
case in certain other democracies with important measures
intended to influence the size of the national income and its
distribution. But even if this could be established, it would
still be erroneous to affirm that this differential is linked
to the "idealism" by virtue of which, according to an observer,
"the French chambers were passionately discussing the question
of ,crucifixes in courts of justice at a time When, at the
beginning of the twentieth century, Britain and Germany were.
concerned with their economic future."22 In an already remote
past the rarity of parliamentary discussions of great economic
problems expressed a hostile attitude toward the interference
of the state into the economy. For a long time now the lack of
concern with large economic issues has been accompanied by
parliamentary absorption in a vast number of narrowly circum-
scribed economic questions, most of which appear small to every-
body except the limited category of those whose special interests
are at itake. It has often been noted that parliament adopted
the attitude of "I don't want to know anything about it" with
regard to the various "Monnet plans," but that it is indefatig-
ably concerned with, for instance, "the war prisoners' gratuity":
four hundred francs (approximately ninety cents) for one month
of captivity. A deputy could, without sounding absurd, affirm
that the. Assembly had "devoted more time to the famous gratuity
than it had to the Atlantic Pact, .the common market-, orAlgeria."23
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17.
The alleged domination of French political life by "doctrine"
is supposedly complicated by what an observer calls "the historical
nature of our discussions."A
Nothing, it is held, changes. According to an observer,
The constitutional debate has lasted from
1792 on. One never tires of it. It is
never necessary to get a new director for
this play. The old dialogue is still
effective 25
I have already indicated that in the Fourth Republic the constii.
tutional debate is conducted only from time to time and in the
midst of general indifference. In addition, the constitutional
debate bears only on certain arrangements within the framework
of the existing regime, a framework which nobody of any import-
ance proposes to change. As to the matters on which it seems
appropriate to advocate innovations, they are mainly thode which
supposedly bear on the stability of governments: provisions
concerning motions of confidence on censure and the right to
dissolve parliament. Within this restricted sphere one is
sometimes far removed from traditional alignments: _early in
1958, a "Center" or "Left Center" group (the Christian Democrats)
advocated a reform of the constitution to which a.group of the
"Right Center" or "Right" (the Moderates) objected. (The use
of the words I have put into quotation marks fluctuates as these
words have become less important. Cf. pp. 20-25.) The
objection was that the reform would make the executive too
independent of the legislative, while traditionally the :Right
is supposed to be in favor of such an independence, and the Left
inclined toward "government by the Assembly." All this Beets
very far from 1792.
References to History are supposed to be very frequent in
the rhetbric'of the day. Speaking of the conflict around EDC,
Jacques Fauvet observed that:
One is still for or against Mkinich. The partisans
and the enemies of EDC have classed themselVdi in
_ this fashion. They have treated each Other ea ten
.of Munich, though nobody was ever able to find out
. whether the anti-Munich people Were those Who re-
jected the EDC so as not to recreate the militaty
threat of Germany, or those who, it accepting'EDC,
refused to capitulate to the Soviet menace.2b
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18.
However, a detailed analysis of the rhetoric on EDC would show,
I believe; that the image of "Munich" was referred to quite
infrequently and that its emotional charge was unimportant.
"The dead," affirmed the same author, "are always dragged into
our quarrels." "When the communists,' he observed correctly,
"want to embarrass the Socialists, they bring out against them a
quotation by Jean Jaures," who is indeed one of the most alive
figures of the recent past; and "the Radicals never fail to
invoke Clemenceau,"27 an affirmation which I do not believe to
be equally correct. In parliament the Radicals almost never
mention Clemenceau, just as little as they do their other
"ancestor," Camille Pelletan. Nor would it be very convenient
to do otherwise, given the protracted conflicts between Clemenceau
and the Radical Party and his famous words directed against it,
as when he spokeabout the "deaf-mutes of the seraglio" conspir-
ing to "strangle" him. Above all, the feelings which still remain
attached to the name of Clemenceau, and the desire to look back-
ward, apart from rare ceremonial occasions, appear insufficiently
strong to Justify a frequent utilization of this or any other
figure of the past. (As to Clemenceau, a close inspection of
references to him would, I believe, also find that he is used
just as much or more by the Right than by the Left: he is now
mainly associated with 1917, a year of the Right in which he
brought treason charges against Radicals.) As long as Edouard
Herriot was alive, he was indeed abundantly cited and venerated
at the congresses of his party. But at the first Radical Congress
after his death, in the fall of 1957, his image, his words, his
name were already virtually absent.
The past often vanishes quickly. (It should, however, be
kept in mind that the dimming of the past seems to be a general
trend in the West, and one which has probablygone to greater
lengths elabwhere than in France.) Take the Resistance. "Every
year," noted a journalist less than thirteen years after the
liberation, "but more and more discreetly sad anniversaries are
being celebrated here andthere: the death of Jean Moulin, that
of Pierre Brossolette.... A speech, a bunch of flowers in front
of a marble_slab....arouse vague memories of a remote epoch to
which some still remain attached."28 There may have been deli-
berate exaggeration in this; but this would not detract from
the significance of the statement.
"It La characteristicof Frenchmen," we are assRred by an
analyst, "to think of politics in terms of history."49 Thus, in
the debate on EDC the future, supposedly, was quickly lost sight
of:
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19.
One rapidly proceeded to the realms of philosophy .
and history. The EDC was, according to its enemies,
supposed to resuscitate the Holy Roman and Germanic
Empire.... M. Jean Monnet would be a new Charlemagne
A lot of historic bric-a-brac was exhibited.
The Count of Paris [the pretender to the throne --
N.L.] wrote that France had never been in such
peril since the time of the Treaty of Troyes.3C"
But here again, I believe, closer inspection would show the slight
importance of these glimpses into the past in comparison with the
great visions which the enemies of EDC had. They claimed that
that institution would have meant. the "death of France." The
ways in which that "death" would occur were indicated with only
very few digressions into history. Only certain anti-clerical
circles and small groups of Catholics that are of "Gallican"
persuasion or particularly hostile to the Christian Democrats
evoke the past more frequently.
Current decisions, we are told, tend to be based on historical
analogy. Thus the "anti-Munich reflex" supposedly played a capital
role on the occasion of the Suez expedition in the fall of 1956.
The argument that "if one capitulates to force today, one only
saves peace to lose it more surely" gained political importance,
according to Jacques Fauvet, only by virtue of the historical
precedents which could be cited. This affirmation appears
gratuitous: the conlict with Egypt in 1956 was the first
occasion since the war when a use of French force, without_
that of the United States, appeared neither impossible (as it
had in the case of possible conflicts with the Soviet Union)
nor unquestionable (as in the French domain outside of conti-
nental France). Thus there was a real analogy with the situation
of the years preceding the war. One may be reminded of a past
experience when the present one is remarkably similar and yet
have no inveterate inclination toward harking back.'
Many, we are told by an observer, aspire to make past
regimes come to life again:
With us dead regimes possess the property of
surviving in many souls, and even in parties.
In France one's real allegiance goes to a
regime of the past.
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20.
Thus,
...the Orlians monarchy still lives on
Two masses are read on the anniversary of
the execution of Louis XVI. Two newsRfpers
speak in the name of Charles Maurras."
But what seems significant to me is precisely that royalism has
disappeared from the list of significant political forces.
Before the ver, L'Action Fran9aise was to be reckoned with on
the Left Bank in Paris, and to a lesser extent throughout France
by virtue of: its daily newspaper. Its successor, Aspects de la,
France, is an obscure sect'. While the pretender has become a
major figure in Parisian society, not a single parliamentarian
would admit-to being, anything but "republican." Instead of a
multiplication of gestures of revolt in favor of dead regimes,
a pervasive conformism appears to prevail. Recently, when a
deputy of the extreme Right was speaking in the Assembly, the
Left exclaimed, reviving the cry of the years of the popular
.front:
Fascism will not pass!
The extreme Right responded:
Fascism will not pass!
On the rare occasions when the term is /still used, everybody is
somebody else's "Fascist."
AccOrdifig to a widespread myth, France is divided against
herself to kpeculiarly high degree under the sway of doctrine
and history. The weight of the past and the attachment to ideas
are supposed to be in large part responsible for the fact that
there is always an opposition not only to the government in power
but to the existing regime itself. It may be noted, however,
that, apart from the Communists, the opposition, "aiming to
overthrow-the-regime by force if need be,"32 hardly ever enjoyed
sufficient strength during the Fourth Republic to envisage even
the approaches to such revolutionary actions, the exception being
the period from the fall of 1947 to the end of 1948 -- somewhat
more than twelve months in the course of somewhat more than
twelve. years.
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21.
There is, one affirms, a fundamental split between the Right
and the Left. Nobody could deny the importance of this division,
but neither should it be exaggerated.
It is exaggerated when one accepts the myth of a frankly
anti-democratic Right:
The Right desires passionately a reform of the-
constitution.... The Right feels that any con-
stitution based on "the stupid law of numbers"
ought to be abrogated.33
But-whatever the unexpressed desires of the men of the Right
may be, nobody can publicly question "the stupid law of numbers"
in the Fourth Republic without thereby condemning himself to
political insignificance.
To the myth of a passionate Right corresponds that of a
Left sufficiently ardent to induce politicians who really do
not harbor Left sentiments to use its sacred vocabulary. One
always cites instances of this practice from the period between
1879 and 1914; and one forgets to add that this phenomenon has
since then very much declined. Jacques Fauvet recalled that
"men of the Right sitting at the Center" of the Chamber called
themselves during the Third Republic "Republicans of the Left,"
or were members of the "Radical Left," and that their successors
in the Fourth Republic might belong to the "Concentration of
Left Republicans."34 But by now the use of Left vocabulary has
become even more superficial than it already was at the time when
Raymond Poincar4, a "Republican of the Left," could proclaim
that he was separated from the Right by "the whole extent of the
religious question." Today, the president of the Concentration
of Left Republicans, Edgar Faure, can easily admit to a journalist
that "the ideas of 'the Left' and of 'the Right' can be considered
as, in part, outdated. I see myself, and have doubtlessly always
seen myself, as a man of the Center," who "remains a member" of
"what one continues to call in traditional fashion the 'Left.'"35
(The weakening of traditional verbal Leftism indicated by
these words is not contradicted by the diffusion of the term
"social" in the name of parliamentary groups and parties which
do not belong to the Left; for it does not seem that "social"
is at present a word with a Left connotation.)
While the Right disguises itself less and less as the Left,
the Left presentsitself less and less as such: another sign of
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22.
the decline of this division. Because everybody is "republican"
the Socialists, when they returned to "participation" in' the
government in 1956, were looking for a somewhat less widely
applied word to designate partners acceptable to them. For a
time they tried "democrats." But they had to abandon this
attempt; for all parliamentary groups, with the exception of
the communists and of the Poujadists, were "condemned" to "live
together" in order to constitute a majority; and none wanted
to be anything but "democrats."
In the new atmosphere a Radical, a Secretary of State, and
an aspirant to the presidency of the republic (Andre Cornu) could
eliminate an esthetically offensive statue of Gambetta from the
court of the Louvre without creating any upset. Pierre Poujade,
on the other hand, "invokes in his speeches Jeanne d'Arc as well
as 'our Robespierre."36 This despite the fact that Robespierre
has until now been excluded, with a few other Jacobins and members
of the extrane Left of the period, from the benefit of the good
feelings which have developed toward all participants in the Great
Revolution, from Charlotte Corday to Danton, from the Chouans to
the Jacobins. However, in the spring of 1957 a proposal was
made in the Assembly inviting the government to celebrate offi-
cially the 200th birthday of Robespierre. Among the signatories
of this proposal one finds not only, as one would indeed expect,
a Socialist, a Left Radical, and a Radical of the Right (Edgar
Faure), but also a Christian Democrat (Maurice Schumann) and,
astonishingly, the very incarnation of the Right, Antoine Pinay.
According to one journalist, personal motives are now necessary
if somebody wants to resist everybody's tendency to approve
everything: M. de Baudry d'Asson, a deputy from the Vendee,
belonging to the Moderates, protested in the corridors of the
Assembly against Pinay's concession:
This is an insult to the memory of my
guillotined ancestors .37
The incident (Antoine Pinay finally withdrew his signature)
permits one to appreciate the extent to which the revolution,
which was still so alive a hundred years after its occurrence,
has receded into history as its 175th birthday approaches. In
the Third Republic every major political tendency had its master
historian of the revolution, from Taine to Mathiez. No more so.
Unsettled questions have somehow been. left in suspense. Mathiez,
for instance, wanted to prove that Danton was mainly a scoundrel.
The charge appeared to be Serious, but it has not led to any
definite grouping of defenders and detractorsof that personage.
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The issue has petered out. The interest both of historians and
of the general public in the revolution has sharply decreased:
during the entire course of the Fourth Republic there has not
been a single work on the revolution which has evoked great
academic or general interest. (I am, here again, not talking
about the communist domain, where a central directive seems to
impose a higher level of attention to the revolution. It is,
of course, significant that such a directive is being maintained;
but it is-equally significant that the revolution seems to be in
the process of being forgotten in the less organized sectors of
the Left.) On the French stage, anti-revolutionary sentiments
predominate on the rare occasions when the revolution is evoked.
But even then history mainly serves as a vehicle for expressing
themes which are beyond time (Bernanos' Dialogue of the Carmelite
Sisters) or which refer to the present (Anouilh's Poor Bitos).
In Parliament the apparent cordiality of relations between
the Right and the Left often goes beyond mere politeness. After
all, one is condemned to live together. Parliamentary "arith-
metic" associates everybody with almost everybody else in the
formation-of this or that majority. A Premier, when asking the
Assembly to terminate its existence (Edgar Faure in the fall of
1955), could insist that personally he had no complaint against
it: only thirteen of its members had never voted for him.
In the name of the Moderates a deputy addressed himself to
a Socialist Premier in the following terms:
You lack neither courage nor good sense nor
honesty. This is more than is required for
leading the country to a better future.38 ,
Speaking of an attitude which he believed to be
founded in a preference for "France going it alone," a
preference often attributed to the Royalist Charles Maurras,
a Socialist leader declared:
To be sure, the old doctrine of Maurras
is not without grandeur.39
-- an admiision which contrasts with the violent tone, which had
O almost-inViriably been adopted by the Socialists in the past
toward the Royalistenemies of the Great Revolution. ?
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24.
On the occasion of a debate on Morocco, a Socialist who is
sometimes still said to belong to a "Left" wing of the party
(Edouard Depreux) was repeatedly interrupted by a Moderate
belonging to the right wing of his group (Jean Legendre). When
the speaker threatened the disturber with a parliamentary penalty,
the Socialist reacted in this way:
I beg you not to do this. If our opinions
diverge, we are all profoundly moved by the
abominable Franco-Moroccan drama .40
When, in parliament today, an opinion approved by someone
on this side of the chamber is expressed by somebody else at the
other end, this will not always prevent the first person expres-
sing his full accord with the other. Thus, for instance, on one
occasion the Assembly listened to a general (Adolphe Aumeran),
who had the reputation of being a "fossil," conclude a violent
polemic against the EDC in a fashion which according to prevailing
usage would be called "nationalist" (a term which has now become
negative with everybody except a fringe on the extreme Right).
, There was applause, "on some benches of the Right" and "on the
extreme Right," but also a "Very good!" from a Socialist, Max
Lejeune.41 This Socialist was, to be sure, viewed as somewhat
special in his party: he began his parliamentary career on its
left wing and finished it on its extreme right wing. (Such
marked shifts of individual position, which were frequent in the
Third Republic, are now less customary.) Still, Lejeune always
expressed his "nationalist" sentiments, and yet he acceded to
high positions in Algeria and in the Sahara. On another occasion,
another "reactionary" general (Joseph de Monsabert) stated his
agreement with a prominent Socialist, a former governor-general
of Algeria (Marcel-Edmond Naegelen). When the general proceeded
to affirm that "the correct policy in North Africa is to lean on
former Moslem soldiers whom we must make into a privileged group,"
the Socialist, in his turn, exclaimed: 'Wry good!"42 But it
was this very same Socialist who, half a year before, was the
candidate of_the Left (the Communists included) at the election
of the President of the Republic; it was around his name that
there arose, at certain moments of that election, what some
observers called a popular-front atmosphere. And it was of him
that another-Moderate whom the Left regarded as the representative
of heavy industry in parliament (Pierre Andre) could say:
We all know the magnificent work which .
M. Naegelen has accomplished in Algeria.43
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Yet another general, a right-wing Gaullist (Pierre Koenig)
attributed to the Socialist Robert Lacoste "a conception of a
powerful France which is very close to mine, "44 without thereby
creating any difficulty for the man of the Left in his own party.
A certain community of views of all the "national" parties between
the Communists and the extreme Right was equally implied when a
Socialist (Edouard Depreux) spoke of those "whom M. Pinay once
excellently called the aggressive extreme Right."45
At the fair of Lyons in 1952, Edouard Herriot, mayor of the
city.and "demi-god" of the Fourth Republic, posed for photographers
between Cardinal Gerlier, the Archbishop of Lyons, and the Count
of Paris, pretender to the throne of France. In the summer of
1957, on the occasion of the marriage of the "Dauphin" at Dreux,
numerous parliamentarians attended.
M. Edgar Faure is present. A joke is attributed
to him, which he surely did not make, just as little
as the Count of Paris pronounced the words With
which he is credited. Here is the story. So many
parliamentarians were present that the prince
exclaimed with a smile: -- Well, gentlemen, why
don't we use this occasion for a small Council of
Ministers? -- Oh, no, Monseigneur, answered
M. Edgar Faure, not in this heat.46
The mayor of Dreux was a Radical of the Left, Maurice
Viollette. Uniting the royal couple, he declared:
A Frenchman should be able to greet the
tricolor without insulting the fleurs-de-
lys.46
The weakening of the conflict between the Right and the
Left is accompanied by the rise of the feeling that the policy
to be-followed in any given situation is commanded by "facts"
rather than by doctrine; that facts usually admit only small
differences between the policies which reasonable men might
advocate.
"Most of the speeches made by Premiers," an observer noted,
"tend_to prove that anybody else in their place would have acted
just as they did."47 And a minister (Edgar Faure) observed,
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'That_ the coalition, on which the government is atpresent based,
should be enlarged," by adding the Socialists to all the other
"national" groups already participating in it, "is an opinion
which I am expressing all the more gladly as I have always
indicated to our Socialist friends that only their own refusal
keeps themaway from power."
But whatever the composition of the majority,.
it could not pursue other aims, in the economic
sphere, than those which we have set ourselves.
I should even like to affirm that no majority
could use other means than those which we are
using .48
The same politician, when violently attacked in an/election
campaign, protested "that he has not been able to discover 'the
smallest difference of doctrine' between him and his enemies."49
"It has been said," he noted with approval when he was Premier,
"that all previous governments have pursued an identical policy."
This is true: "We ought to become aware of this." But what
about the preceding government, that of Pierre Mendes-France,
"which seemed in so many ways to depart" from the line of the
other governments? Even that cabinet, he maintained, "pursued
the same policy as the others," just as "my government pursues
the same policy as that of Mendes-France."50 A Socialist
leader -- seeking the premiership at a moment when his party
had not participated in governments for more than three
years 7- expressed this theme in a less trenchant form:
If the continuity of governmental activity
does not always express itself in the conflict
of our ideas, it remains an important fact of
the political life of the nation.51
Answering a near-communist (Pierre Cot), a Premier (Filix Gaillard)
recalled how. narrow the margins are within which one chooses when
in powa.:
As a "goockstudent of the School of Political
Science," as you have called me, I greet you
as the great rhetorician who has been reasoning
in the abstract for so many years...where one
does not have to deal with the human and material
reality of a country. Under these conditions
it is easy to choose....
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You choose...to abandon Algeria. I don't.
That choice is impossible.
You cannot choose either to have the French
economy stagnate.
You cannot choose either to sacrifice youth and
the future. There are many things which you
cannot sacrifice. It is for this reason that
to govern this country is difficult, and it is
for this reason that governing it proceeds by
decisions which are being made every day. As
things are, one does what is possible.
One does not proceed by major choices but by
small settlements which have to be made every
day. One subtracts a little from what one
wanted to do. One asks the overseas terri-
tories to slow up their plans a bit, as
continental France has been doing; one asks
the nation to deprive itself a bit. ? ? ? One
is manipulating not intellectual data but real
margins, and that is where the difficulty lies.52
The "difficulty" -- apart from that of being an "umpire"
between conflicting demands (see Chapter 5, pp. 145-146)
is that of making the right "wager" rather than that of applying
true doctrine. Thus, a man of the Right, opposing in the fall
of 1955 the policy of Edgar Faure toward Morocco, a policy
approved by the Left, explained:
I affirm that if Mohammed Ben Youssef returns to
France, he will, after some time, inevitably also
'return to the throne of Morocco. You do not be-
lieve that this will be the case, and we believe
that it will. This is the wager.... ? ..as I
said a moment ago, it is a matter of a wager.
There are those who believe that the present
policy is correct; they are sincere. I ask
them to believe that we are equally sincere
when we tell them that we don't think it is.53
- Another Moderate deputy emphasized the same theme, by virtue
of which the earlier abyss between the Right and the Left was
being replaced by simple divergences between forecasts concerning
a future which it was, in any case, impossible to predict with
certainty:
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As M. Barrachin said a moment ago, it is not
surprising that we are divided on difficult
and anguishing subjects. Future events will
decide between us, events which are unknown
to all of us.54
The abatement in the conflict between the Left and the Right
implies a reduction in the antagonism between what used to be
called the clerical and the anti-clerical parties.
The Left has, in fact, accepted the numerous changes which
have made the separation between church and state less "rigid."
Jacques FaiiVet recalls:
Intransigent partisans of a meticulous separation
between church and state feel that it has been,
unnoticeably, undone. In 1956 a deputy called
for full observance of the law of 1905 establishing
that separation. This parliamentarian, a Socialist,
pointed out that representatives of the government
have been participating in ceremonies of beatifi-
cation; that members of the clergy and deans of
schools of Catholic theology have been given
official recognition on public occasions; that
priests are receiving compensation in their
quality as guardians of churches which are public
buildings: 16,000 francs per year. Finally,
.iiibsidies to Catholic schools are considered a
direct violation of the principle of separation.55
But apart from the last point, the few deputies who get excited
about sudh2clerical offensives" or "the capitulation of the
government before the priests" appear by now archaic, like the
few remaining Marxists outside the communist camp. According to
the conventional phrases of the present, the noun "anti-
clericalism" calls for the adjective "outdated", just as much '
as does the noun "nationalism." Only provincials of the "French
desert" of the southwest are still supposed to be engaging in
that sport of 1900, "eating priests" -- just as the dream of a
return to a state religion is supposed to be entertained only in
other backward areas, for instance in the west. According to
Jacques Faavet, "the problem of Catholic schools...could be
managed in_concrete fashion," if it were left "on the municipal
or regional level," while it becomes "insoluble" once it has
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29.
been tiansferred to the national level.% Actually, the opposite
is the case: while in some areas the conflict between clericals
and anti-clericals has maintained some of its earlier intensity,
it is precisely on the national level that it has abated.
Each camp is afraid of exploiting temporary advantages:
might it not thereby provoke a later disastrous counter-offensive
of the other side which would have been unduly exacerbated.? ThUs,
the slight parliamentary majority in favor of Catholic schools
which resulted from the elections of 1951 did not go beyond grant-
ing a quite limited subsidy to these schools in the so-called
Barange Law of 1951; and the equally slight majority hostile to
Catholic schools which resulted from the elections of 1956 has
refrained from abrogating that law. In the campaigns preceding
both these general elections, the problem of state subsidies to
Catholic schools -- the only major problem in the relations
between church and state which does not yet appear settled --
played but a minor role, by virtue of mutual restraint. In
order to survive, governments tend to proclaim their neutrality
when this question comes up before parliament (Rena Pleven in
1951; _Guy Mollet in 1956).
The tacit agreement to preserve the status quo is accompanied
by a rather strict taboo: in national politics one must avoid
publicly pronouncing words which might make the quarrel flare up
again. 'Affirming that "the problem of Catholic schools" becomes
"philosophic" when it appears in parliament, Jacques Fauvet
maintains:
When that matter comes up, the deputies soon
begin to discuss the existence of God.57
But it has become impossible in parliament even to name Him,
whether one be for or against. Fifty years ,ago a leader (Rent
Viviani)1, justifying the creation of a Ministry of Labor,
exclaimed:
We have been devoting ourselves, all of us
together,...to an enterprise hostile to
religion. We have torn faith out of the
human conscience. When a human being living
in misery bent his knees, fatigued by the '
burdens of the day, we have helped him to
stand erect again, and we have told him that
behind the clouds there are only chimeras.
All together, in a magnificent gesture, We
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have extinguished the lights in heaven; they
shall never be lighted again.58
The chamber voted, 340 against 128, that the speech of the
Minister-of Labor be printed and posted on walls throughout the
country. Today a parliamentarian using such language would be
regarded as mad. Militant atheism has greatly declined, and
the expression of whatever there remains of it is ruled out in
parliament -- just as religious believers in the Assembly are
very discreet about their faith. It is extremely rare for them
to mention the name of their religion; the Christian Democrats
call themselves the Popular Republican Movement and very rarely
use words referring to ragion. The battles of oratory of half
a century ago have been replaced by tiny incidents. When some
Christian Democrats in the Assembly recalled "Munich" to Edouard
Daladier, he answered rudely, "Stop croaking," the raven being
a popular image of a priest. Depicting the future reduction of
the country's current deficit in power by virtue of nuclear
energy, a Moderate (Andre Mutter) recalled that a Socialist
(Felix Gouin) had said that this new source of energy was
arriving "providentially." The Catholic Moderate added:
If a member of another group had used this
adverb, it might have appeared suspect. Coming
from M. Gouin, it is perfectly apt (Laughter).9
These are the kinds of asides in which the former war
between clericalism and anti-clericalism survives. When an
observer of high reputation maintains that
...it is always possible to stage another
performance of Faust in the Opera, and another
debate on clericalism in the Palais Bourbon...60
he is expressing a belief which, for all the frequency of its
occurrence, is quite far from incontrovertible facts.
During the first half of the century the importance of the
conflict between clericals and anti-clericals was expressed in
the fact that insistence on a strict separation between church
and state seemed to be central to the position of the most power-
ful party of that period, the Radical Party. In 1951, a minority
of the Radicals in parliament voted in favor of subsidies to
Catholic schools, thereby contributing to the most important
victory of-the "clericals" since the beginning of the century.
The vote of the Radical minority, however, did not lead to any
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31.
major conflict within the party. While it has been rent by
various divisions in the course of the present decade and, for
the first time in its history, beset by major splits, the exist-
ence of _a minority which in 1951 had voted with the "clericals"
on the "school" issue played no role in this action. In these
circumstances it is difficult to perceive, as many nevertheless
do, a continued attachment of the Radicals to their tradition
of insisting on a separation between church and state.61 A
Radical who had voted for the Barange Law was subsequently
Minister of Education throughout several governments (Andre
Marie). Another Radical who occupied this post later (Rene
Billeres) is supposed to be a practicing Catholic. Near the
beginning of the century this rumor, or this fact, would have
been of political importance: today it is not. It was only in
1955 that the party forbade its members to belong to the Asso-
ciation for the Freedom of Teaching, the most important clerical
pressure group in the fight for subsidies to Catholic schools.
Why did the Radicals outlaw membership in an organization to
which, according to the usual notions, no Radical could be
expected to belong? Simply because the vice president of this
organization was a prominent Radical (Bernard Lafay) who parti-
cipated, for instance, in a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela
in which France was dedicated to the local saint.
The general election of 1956 seemed to have furnished a
slight majority in favor of the abrogation of the law of 1951
granting subsidies to Catholic schools. But February 17, 1956,
the Assembly refused, 288 against 279, to set a date for a dis-
cussion and vote on the proposal to abrogate that law. Among
the 288 deputies who, in fact, thus voted for the maintenance
of the law, there were nineteen Radicals, and among them not
only individuals belonging to the right wing of the party but
also several deputies close to Mendes-France. One week later
the Assembly repeated its stand, this time with 301 against
276 votes, and the Radicals played the same role on this occasion.
Toward the end of the year, the Assembly reaffirmed its stand,
291 against 282. Among the 291 who, this time, decisively ,
perpetuated the granting of subsidies to Catholic schools, there
were 26 Radicals, and among them again various deputies devoted
to Mendes-France. If all those Radical deputies who followed
Mendes, say, on Algeria, had been determined to have the Barange
Law abrogated, it would have been. Thus, the victory obtained'
by the clericals in 1951 was consolidated in 1956 by Radicals :
belonging-to the left wing of the party, particularly those who,
on January 2, 1956, had been elected in the metropolitan area of
Paris by voters who had previously favored Gaullists or Christian
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Democrats, and by young voters of the "Christian Left." In
these conditions it is fair to say that the "classical" division
between Right and Left has ceased to exist.
But when "a period of intense conflict" arrives, does one
not then encounter again, in the words of an observer, "the Left_
and the Right facing each other, ready for battle, excluding all
compromise "762 This does not seem to be the case either.
The division of the political class of 1939 among those who
"resisted" the Germans, those who took up a "wait-and-see" atti-
tude, and those who "collaborated" split both the Right and the
Left: members of both these pre-war halves of the political
class were found in substantial numbers within each of the new
groupings. A parliamentarian (Paul-Boncour) recalled the 10th
of July, 1940, in Vichy when he was one of the eighty who refused
to vote the end of the Third Republic:
Upon meeting others taking up the same position,
one was amazed to find oneself together, as so
many among us had fought in opposed camps. Num-
erous parliamentarians among those who voted
together on this occasion told me: "If I had
only known!"63
The EDC treaty was rejected because numerous Socialists,
Radicals, and Moderates voted against it, so that three amon&
.th.t.livelar-enoncon".ME2_?.1.1arlcP-1.11.?Adedon
that issue. As to the problems of North Africa since 1954,
each group had its "liberals" as well as those who were in
favor of a _!'strong" policy. Among the Moderates, where the
latter prevailed, there was Antoine Pinayolho granted independ-
ence to Morocco and was supposed to have been for a long time
in favor of greater concessions to the Algerian Nationalists -
than the governments since 1956 were willing to grant. Among
the ex-Gaulligts, Jacques Soustelle was in favor of "firmness";
but many attributed to the silent General de Gaulle a willing-
ness to envisage rather loose forms of association between
metropolitan France and her domain overseas. Among the Christian
Democrats, Georges Bidault was close to the majority of the
Moderates, but Robert Schuman was said to envisage "liberal"
solutions. As to the Radicals, Maurice Bourges-,Maunoury, Felix
Gaillard, and Andre Morice were responsible for a policy on
Algeria which was violently combatted by Pierre Mendes-France,
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33.
and discreetly disapproved by Edgar Faure. The Radicals in power
collaborated on Algeria with the Socialists Robert Lacoste, Guy
Mollet, Max Lejeune, who were in turn opposed by their comrades
Gaston_Defferre, Edouard Depreux, Daniel Mayer. Thus, many mem-
bers of the Right felt close to Lacoste, while on the Left many
counted on a man of the Center such as Edgar Faure, and even on
the very incarnation of the Right, Antoine Pinay.
"Within one month," Jacques Fauvet recalls, "a Radical
leader was overthrown by another Radical and replaced by a third
one."64. Early in February 1955, Rene Mayer's conduct was decisive
in having Pierre Mendes-France overthrown, to be replaced, toward
the end of the month, by Edgar Faure. Mayer, whose constituency
was the Department of Constantine, seems to have feared that
Mendes-France would initiate an unduly "liberal" policy in Algeria.
A convinced "European," he may have held Mendes responsible for
the rejection of the EDC. His rather unsatisfactory four months
as Premier early in 1953 may have disposed him against the so
much more brilliant and noisy record which Mendes made fortimself
in the same position; and his hostility may have been increased
by the frequent allusions of Mendes to the unsatisfactory per-
formance of his predecessors. As to Edgar Faure, it was difficult,
in the winter of 1955, to indicate the differences between his
general-orientation and that of Mendes, in whose government he had
played a leading role, first as Minister of Finance and then as
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Ten months later the conflict
between these two men was to be a major factor in French politics:
but even then it had not become much clearer what their actual
differences were, as to policies recommended or executed. In
the meantime, Edgar Faure, as Premier, had continued the economic
policy for which he had already been responsible under Mendes.
He had not changed the country's foreign policy. He had pursued
Mendes's new line toward Tunisia, granting it "internal autonomy."
He had "opened the Moroccan file" and arrived at a solution of
unsurpassed "liberalism," namely the independence of Morocco --
an outcome which everybody would have refused at the beginning
of the -year had it at all appeared as a practical possibility.
In Algeria there resided a governor general whose designation
by Mendes-France had been a major factor in his downfall, Jacques
Soustelle, who was then regarded by those attached to the status
quo as a dangerous innovator. But Mendes presented himself to
France as a reformer, while Faure gave the impression of pursuing
day-to-day compromises which were supposed to render possible
the continuation of the rapid economic advance started in 1953.
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Thus a seeming opposition in ways of pursuing political activity '
corresponded more to a conflict between personal destinies than
to any marked difference in actual behavior in power.
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Chapter 2
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST RESPONSIBILITY
Members of the political class often attempt to diminish
their responsibility by claiming a presumption of innocence
(p.35); by affirming that reality and the government are too
complex to allow the imputation of definite responsibilities
to definite persons (p. 36); by avoiding the very question
of responsibility (pp. 36-4); by passing the buck (pp. 40-41);
by arranging for a diffusion of responsibility (pp. 41-48);
by avoiding being put into positions of committing
actions, which might burden them with responsibility (pp. 48-51)
however strong the need for such actions may be on other
grounds; by arranging for others to act in their place
(PP. 52-59); or, if they have to act themselves, to do so as
little as possible ( p. 60), by provoking others to
commit an overt break or refusal through the device of
attaching impossible conditions to ostensible agreement
(PP. 61-65); by appropriately timing their alternations
between being in and out of power (pp. 66-73); by keeping
themselves ignorant of actions of subordinates (pp. 73-74);
by tacitly or explicitly delegating their powers at awkward
moments (pp. 74-75).
The Minister of Foreign Affairs (Yvon Delbos) had to
inform the Council of Ministers of numerous developments un-
favorable to France; it was in-the winter of 1937. Wanting
to break "the depressed silence" which followed his words,
the Minister assured the President of the Republic and his
colleagues "with forced good humor" that he would have preferred
giving-them "less distressing information." At that moment
the President (Albert Lebrun) gave him a friendly slap on the
shoulder and claimed with "affectionate sympathy": "But, of
course; my dear Minister, everybody knows that this isn't
your fult!"1 The words of the President of the Republic
illustrate the myth of its own egoism so largely accepted in
the political class: Why should Yvon Delbos have been dis-
tressed by the perils of the situation if they did not en-
danger his personal position? But also, and this is what
interests us here, it appears that if things in the important
? domain with which I am charged go quite badly, there is no
presumption that I am in any way responsible: I am held to
be innocent until a proof to the contrary is furnished.
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Such a proof seems singularly difficult to establish.
Often it appears impossible to locate those responsible;
such is, to-those who know politics from the inside, the
jumble of jurisdictions and activities. Only the ignorant
public will easily and summarily attribute responsibilities.
"Please recall the last electoral campaign," an eminent
parliamentarian (Pierre-Henri Teitgen) asked his colleagues.
"Whichever your party, you were then vehemently reproached
with attitudes which you had not adopted or which you had
combatted, with decisions which you had disapproved."' This
Professor of Law wanted to illustrate the consequences of
existing institutions which should be reformed. But beyond
this, the errors of the public in imputing responsibilities
seem natural to the political class: only specialists can
judge.
On its part, that class uses but
attributing responsibility to persons
levels of the apparatus of the state.
is an important tendency to avoid, in
question of responsibility.
little the device of
or agencies on lower
On the other hand there
various ways, the very
It repeatedly happens that politicians of the first rank
view the past in which they have been operating as if they
had been nothing but particularly well-informed observers. on
June 16, 1940, Sir Edward Spears, Winston Churchill's repre-
sentative lb Bordeaux, met Paul Reynaud who had just resigned
from the.Premiership, and listened to his account of the
beginning of the last ministerial crisis of the Third Republic.
He was going through a necessary formality, a
producer giving an account of the last disastrous
-performance of a play to its backers. The.curtain
had been rung down, it was over, he must think of
his own plans.? The occasion was one which no
longer concerned him, and the details did not
gteatly matter. He was at pains to underline
his detachment.3
Weygand, with a look of absolute exasperation,
lifted his hand, turned his head toward Reynaud
and said with a voice like a saw on steel:
"This war is sheer madness, we have gone to
war with a 1918 army against a German army of
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37.
1939. It is sheer madness. What sort of Air
Force have we got? Four hundred fighters and
thirty bombers capable of flying by day, and
that for the whole of our front; our tanks
are inadequate and insufficient, ridiculously
few in numbers." He went on in this-strain,
finally declaring that not only were the prac-
tical means of waging war totally lacking, but
the whole strategic theory on which our plans
had been made was mistaken.4
Not until 1956 did General Weygand publish the volume
of his memoirs in which he attempted to prove that these
judgments merely repeated views which he had formulated as
long as ten years before the collapse when he occupied high
positions in the French armed forces. But apparently many of
those to whom Weygand talked in 1940 did not know this. To
them his attitude appeared as based on a forgetting of his own
responsibilities which seemed both "normal" and shocking. This
was also the reaction of General de Gaulle, who listened to
a similar statement by Weygand two weeks later:
The Commander-in-chief, who had been chief
of the General Staff between 1930 and 1935,
set forth the reasons for the defeat of the
armies commanded by him in the sober, though
aggressive, tone of somebody who complains
about a stat @ of affairs for which he is not
responsible.'
These words seem applicable to an attitude taken by
another leader in another issue at another point in history.
In the spring of 1953 Robert Schuman, who had left the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs a few months previously after
having occupied that office for several years, analyzed in
a public statement the relations between France and her two
protectorates:
It is said that France has no policy in North
Africa (Morocco and Tunisia). That is true
in the sense that she has not yet chosen
between several possible policies....
The two Residents General form the highest
level of the hierarchy....Their field of
initiative is vast...and they have tended to
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38.
enlarge upon it, particularly in those cases
where their own views coincide with those of
the local French population....The technique
of the fait accompli is the great and incessant
,temptation which the Residents General meritori-
ously resist, to the extent to which they do
not succumb to' it. The relation between the
government and the Residents General is-to
some extent reproduced by that between the
Residents General and certain among their
services (-Police, information, etc3...which
are not effectively controlled by them.
Above the Residents General the Minister of
Foreign Affairs is responsible for their
acts which are supposed to conform to his
own views. This is one of those fictions on
which democracy is based....This fiction does
not take account of the fact that, first of
all, the government exercises but limited
influence on events in North Africa and on the
men who represent France there, and controls
them only to a limited extent. In addition...
the determination of policy is entrusted to the
government, that is, to a collegial body within
which the advice of the responsible Minister
does not necessarily prevail. He may, of course,
resign....But can he easily take it upon him-
self to provoke such an upset? ...In addition,
democracy implies that the decisions of the
executive be the result of divergent opinions.
I have gained the conviction that no important
feform in the relations between France on the
one hand and Morocco and Tunisia on the other
will be possible unless everybody returns to ?
the exact notions of responsibility and hierarchic
subordination.
There should be no further delay in developing '
a policy towards Tunisia and Morocco....We must
propose a comprehensive. program..
For such a policy courage s needed as much as
clearsightedness, benevolence as much a9 firm-
ness. Our worst enemy.. .is routine... ?0
?
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39.
The article created a sensation in the political class.
Nothing was said in it that those who were well informed did
not already know. But what outsider would have suspected
that the person who talked in this way had been for years
responsible for the sad state of affairs which he was
describing so calmly? "Since the former Minister of Foreign
Affairs has left the Quai d'Orsay," wrote a journalist who was
expressing a wide-spread opinion, "he writes and he speaks as
if he had not been for three years the absolute master of our
diplomacy." As Robert Schuman was viewed as a politician with
particularly high moral standards, this journalist interpreted
his conduct as falling under the great law of the discrepancy
between the pretensions and the conduct of authority. "This
pious man makes his mea culpa on the breast of others."7 In
fact, an examination of Schuman's statement reveals no allega-
tion of new developments which had intervened since his de-
parture from the Ministry, and which might have permitted him
to differentiate between what should have been done before
1953 and what was to be done henceforth. But if this is so,
what if one were to apply to the author himself "exact notions
of responsibility?" Was it only after the end of his tenure
as Minister of Foreign Affairs that "the establishment of an
adequate policy" began to be a matter which "brooks no delay?"
Two and a half years later, the Premier, Edgar Faurel,
described to the National Assembly the aggravation of the
tension between high French officials in Morocco and the
government. This politician, who habitually speaks in a tone
of studied moderation, expressed his indignation about mis-
conduct ighich had become almost normal:
It is high time that all this stop: Such
resignations, taken back and then' offered
again, must occur no more:...No resignations
of high civil servants anymore, let us have
obedience: I do not know whether the govern-
ment over which I preside in these difficult
circumstances will last. But I can say that
I have finally understood what I had sometimes
only guessed. There must be an end to conduct
which leads to the disintegration of the state.
It is the government which governs, and if this
government remains, it will govern:8
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40.
At the moment at which he talked in this vein the Premier
could look back on seven months of office, which is more than
the average life of a government.
In the fall of 1953, after the surprising strikes of the
summer, various parties represented in the government thought
it wise to distantiate themselves from it without, however,
withdrawing their support. A journalist observed: .
All these groups expressed themselves as if
they did not belong to the majority and as
if they were not represented in the govern-
ment, which, however, most of them have been
for the last seven years.9
That politicians treat as non-existent the responsibilities
which they have incurred in the past is, no doubt, a reaction
which may be observed anywhere. What is perhaps distinctive
of contemporary France is that this reaction appears both as
"normal" and horrifying to members of the political class
themselves. This conduct is one of the many aspects of that
permanent scandal, the behavior of those in power, not only
according to a sentiment widespread in the country, but also
to a feeling important within their own ranks. The incidents
which I have quoted thus often seem not so much to illustrate
the point that anything may happen, but rather to render starkly
visible the very nature of the political animal: If he speaks
so easily of the past as if he had had no share in determining
what happened, is it not because he possesses (and must possess
to survive and to rise) a remarkable capacity for disengagement
from past responsibilities? And is that capacity not one of
the many signs of his basic egoism?
*
If I do not avoid the very question of responsibility, I
may as a politician still attempt to reduce my own. Of course,
I may say, I have been connected with such and such a policy
which now appears in a dubious light; but it was above all the
policy of certain of my colleagues. (If they apply the same
device, there arises the classical situation in which every-
body places responsibility on someone else.)
In' 1952, at the time of the signing of the treaty
instituting a European Defense Community, two men appeared to
be the protagonists of the "European" tendency: Robert Schuman,
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41.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Rene Pleven, Minister of
National Defense. Towards the end of the year the government
fell:- "Parliamentary arithmetic" indicated an extension of
the majority to include the "anti-European" Gaullists. Their
"entrance" into the majority, which was accomplished after two
weeks of crisis through the new government of Rene Mayer, was
prepared by the semblance of an effort at forming a government
made by the Gaullist Jacques Soustelle. Received by him,
Rabert Schuman supposedly let it be understood that it was
not he who had been chiefly responsible for the EDC treaty, but
rather Rene Pleven. Whether Schuman said this or not, the
story -- and this alone is important here -- gained currency
in the political class.
A few days after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, a deputy
described the reactions of those ministers who seemed in various
ways especiallyimplicated in this defeat:
One had the impression that the Ministers placed
the responsibility on each other and diffused
their several versions of who was responsible
through their attaches in the corridors of the
Assembly.10
A picturesque manifestation of the limits of ministerial soli-
darity. A year and a half later, during the electoral campaign
of Deoember, 1955, a candidate "is being reproached at a meeting
for having been a member of the government at the moment of
Dien Bien Phu." He answered: "I was Minister of War and not
Minister for the Associated States of Indochina."-
Given the way in which jurisdiction over operations in
Indochina was divided in Paris, this argument does not lack
validity. But on the level of feelings it is not entirely
conviticing, not even in the political class: it is often easy
to perceive a determination to "pass the buck" at any cost even
behind quite good excuses, if they are not one's own.
7 What is much more persuasive there is to say: to be sure,
I am responsible. But so are you; so is almost everybody --
an insistence on the diffusion of responsibility which is a
special form of "buck-passing."
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42. -
As the life of a government is so short (which makes one
sometimes overlook the fact that the average presence of a
Minister in a given Ministry lasts noticeably longer), it is
very often possible to affirm that the life of a certain policy
extended over several governments; why, then, pick on any one
of them? The actions which it took may have been rendered
inevitable by those of its predecessors; and it may have done
nothing more than maintain an already established ?groove."
The possibility.of having recourse to such arguments
constitutes one of the many advantages of governmental in-
stability, advantages which are, of course, rarely mentioned,
but which contribute to perpetuating this instability despite
its universal condemnation in public statements, and in the
face of the intermittent onslaughts of reformers.
Thus, to take a minor instance, a parliamentarian can
conclude a speech with these words:
I have shown that all organizations for the
unification of Europe have been permitted to
be inactive for years. Thus I have no parti-
cular criticism to address to the present
government... 12
As my critics are not always so reasonable, I may have to
remind them of how many share a certain responsibility. Thus
a Premier made the following request of the Assembly: "Do not
ask one particular government to present the balance sheet of
the entire tenure of this Assembly!"
He explained:
- Every government finds itself bound; even those
among, us who have rtrongly criticized...
certain tendencies of the preceding governments.
We' are so much enmeshed, by the very force of
things, in. the continuity of French politics
that they are unceasingly obliged to orient them-
selves on what had been done before. It is im-
possible to judge governments as short-lived as
the current ones)i
Those whaDI cannot claim as accomplices, as it were, be-
cause they have preceded me in power, are often implicated by
the stands-they have taken. A few weeks after the agony of
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43.
Dien Bien Phu, and in the middle of that of his own government,
Joseph Laniel ascended the rostrum. "Before examining the way
in ,which the government...has conducted the war in Indochina
or tried to make peace," he wanted to issue a reminder:
I should like to recall that four candidates
for the Premiership have at the occasion of
the last crisis taken a stand on Indochina
before I did. Three among them, Messrs. Reynaud,
Bidault and Andre Marie, agreed to enter my.
Ministry in which they are associated with all
important decisions. As to the fourth, M. Mencres-
France...he did not on that occasion enumerate
aims which were different from those stated by
the three personalities whom I have just named.14
In the winter of 1956 a former Minister of Foreign Affairs
(Georges Bidault) pointed out to the Secretary of State charged
with Moroccan affairs (Alain Savary) that the official formula
describing the new relations between Paris and Rabat, "inde-
pendence in interdependence," "means nothing in French." But
the Secretary of State could answer with ease that the Mollet
government "was not the father of this expression," -- which
had in fact been created by Antoine Pinay and Edgar Faure in
the course of the preceding autumn -- and that "his only task
was to attempt to give the formula a content," implying that
the previous government had imagined an empty, and for that
reason dangerous, slogan. A year later the successor of the
Minister whom I have just quoted (Maurice Faure), attacked in
similar fashion, responded with greater explicitness:
It would not be appropriate for me to describe
the conditions under which...Morocco and Tunisia
passed from being protectorates to the status
of independent states. It is even less appropriate
for me...to allocate responsibilities which --
I think we might agree on that -- are rather?
evenly distributed among all the non-communist
groups in this assembly.15 ?
This polite way of talking is viewed as more skillful,
and moredamaging, than the rudeness of an innovator. Address-
ing himself to the Premier, Pierre Mends-France, a speaker
said about the relations between France and another state
(Libya): "Now you must obtain the price for the concessions
which_Trance has granted, for you are the successor of
yesterday's government."16, To which the Premier responded
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44.
with: "Un-fortunately!" He was to be overthrown the same day,
and knew it; his frequent charges against his predecessors
had significantly contributed to his fall.
For it is imprudent to give in to the inclination which .
ushes those in ower to "draw u the balance sheet" of those
who came before them. Sooner, rather than later, one will
need their support in a world in which the various sectors of
the political class are almost all "condemned to live together."
It is thus of first importance to avoid antagonizing anyone.
In addition, the sharing of responsibilities by so many gives
those who are attacked excellent possibilities for replying
effectively. They can answer with a tu quoque, or even point.
. out that the imprudent censor has, in fact, implicated himself,
too. "Since the war," a parliamentarian recalled "we have '
lost Indochina, the French establishments in India, the Fezzan,
,Tunisia, the Saar, and Morocco. In addition, a revolutionary ?
war is now being Conducted against us in Algeria." He added:
Who is responsible? Nobody. If you pronounce
one name, the one you have designated protests
immediately and cites in his turn the names of
two or three of his predecessors.17
In the course of the acid debate which followed the re-
jection of EDC by the Assembly, Pierre Mendes-France permitted
himself to say this:
I believe, in contrast to M. Antoine Pinay,
. in contrast to the other governments which
have followed him....
A provocation to which an enemy (Robert Bichet) replied:
Fortunately France has got you
This induced the Premier to intensify the attack against his
predecessors:
I have never believed ...that it was so lucky
-for France to have me, but I have often felt
that it was very unlucky for her to have certain
_others.
But, perhaps, Mendes had gone a bit too far at this
point; for it now became possible to remind him that he had
?
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45.
not been as strictly separated from those in power as he
wanted to make out:
As you have always voted for the candidate to
the Premiership, you too are responsible."'
When Mendes-France as Premier spoke of the responsibilities
for the unfortunate outcome of the war in Indochina, Georges
Bidault could answer:
I have heard it said...that the policy pursued
at present succeeds eight years of errors. This,
I must say, involves maby governments and many
ministers. Among them are perhaps some who are
members of the present government....19
A candidate for the premiership (Guy Mollet), when
attacked (by the Moderates), declared:
You have spoken of the increase in public expen-
ditures....The only increase for which I asked
when I was Premier concerns old age pensions. In
this case, by the way, the expenditures, though
not the corresponding revenue, were voted by al-
most all members of this Assembly. This, I repeat,
is the only increase in expenditure for which I
can be held responsible. The other increases
which have occurred are due in equal measure to
all parties. This is a common responsibility....
You have no right to unload this responsibility
on one group rather than on another. In this
Assembly all of, us share in it.2?
Those who ask me to draw up the balance sheet of my
predecessors when I am in power want to lead me into a trap
or, in the best case, hardly care whether I will be politically
damaged or not. Only toward the end of his long ministry did
Guy Mollet dare to affirm that the preceding governments "had
not come to grips with the fundamental causes of our economic
disequilibrium," a circumstance which "has rendered a solution
of the problem so much more difficult."21 It is prudent to
abstain even from such words, weak as they sound to those who
accept the myth of a parliament in continuous uproar. The
cautious premier will conduct himself rather more like Joseph
?,Laniel when Pierre Mendes-France credited him with the insight
that preceding governments had committed an error which he,
-
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46.
Laniel, was now going to rectify. Laniel did not fall into
this trap but corrected his opponent: "I have just paid
homage to all my predecessors," content to hear the innovator
reply: "This is precisely one of my charges against you.!'22
It is just at the moment when I abandon a policy of my pre-
decessors that it will be politically useful to allege that I
in some way continue it. It is particularly when I cannot
avoid giving an unfavorable account of the state of affairs
in a certain domain that it is appropriate to add:
I am not incriminating anybody, I am
not here to incriminate anybody. 43
One needs, in general, strong incentives to make one
abandon this prudence. When the Pinay government, which was
held to be the first popular government of the Fourth Republic,
after that of General de Gaulle, fell towards the end of 1952,
the Moderates charged the Christian Democrats (M.R.P) with
having "assassinated" it. Perturbed by the possible impact
of this charge on those among their supporters who were close
to the Moderates, many Christian Democrats demanded during
the first half of .1953, that the "true balance sheet" of the
Pinay government be made public. Nothing happened, even after
the creation, in the early summer of 1953, of a government
headed by a rival of Pinay, Joseph Laniellwho took care not
to reappoint those ministers of the preceding government who
were viewed as close to his competitor for the leadership of
the Moderates. But Laniel did not go farther than that. The
blows which one publicly inflicts on others must be within the
bounds of certain conventions; most of the conflicts between
the various sectors of the political class are, as far as public
pronouncements in parliament are concerned, strictly limited
wars (always excepting conflicts with the communists and the
extreme right).
When the truce is broken and charges, hitherto restrained,
pour forth from all sides, the several parties concerned, all
regretting this unleashing of aggression, attribute to each
other the provocation which caused the breakdown.
After the fall of the Mollet government in the spring of
1957, the Moderates, not content with the accomplished "assassi-
nation," 'Continued to attack the financial policy of the fallen
cabinet....- At this point a socialist deputy (Marcel David) re-
called certain unfavorable aspects of the financial policy
adopted by the Pinay government of 1952. The former Premier
protested:
?
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47.
I strongly regret, Monsieur David, that you
have opened a debate on these points and
these figures.
But another socialist (Charles Lussy) retorted:
We did not start all this. You have M. Courant
to thank for this. (the Moderate whose speech
preceded the intervention of Marcel David --NLD
Marcel David intervened again:
Monsieur Pinay, let me tell you that neither
I nor any other member of the socialist group
intended to speak in this debate. If others
had imitated our reserve...we would have been
silent.24
And silence set in again.
To supplement this handling of the past, the politician
tries to ensure that he will be in appropriate company when
he proceeds to a "delicate" action -- an elementary maneuver
which is hardly distinctive of French politics, but also a
concern which perhaps is especially acute in France. One of
the worst things which might happen to me is to find myself
alone in taking a stand which might arouse antagonism. It is$
, of course, precisely my most dangerous rivals and enemies '
whom I must induce to become my "sureties." If they refuse
to do so, I.should not venture out myself. In the words of an
observer:
When sacrifices are demanded of an assembly...
every political group turns towards its most
dangerous electoral neighbor an declares:
"With him yes, without him no.""
According to a journalist of the extreme rightla future premier
(Felix Gaillard) declared on the eve of an important vote
(that concerning the ratification of the Paris agreements
establishing WEU):
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48.
If the ratification, is voted by 11004 250,
I do not want to be among them: But if the ..,
majority attains 380, I shall be one of them."
The story appeared plausible enough, or well enough invented,
to gain some currency in the political class.
I may even abandon the pretense of determining my position
by the sole merit of the measure to be evaluated or the man to
be Judged. On November 12, 1957, the finance committee of
the ?Assembly voted on the question whether it should take as
a basis of its discussion the financial proposals of the
government:
M. Boisd4 (Moderate) was the first to announce
his vote: against. M. de Tinguy (Christian
Democrat) declared himself in favor, but added:
"I reserve the right of rectifying my vote,"
wanting in this fashion to indicate that he
would renounce voting for the proposal of the
government if the Moderates...were.to refuse
their votes. M. Courant (Moderate) announced
in his turn: "The same vote as M. de Tinguy."
But as M. Guy Petit (Moderate) voted against,
the Christian Democrats changed their vote to
abstention; the Moderates who had voted in
favor then did the same...and M. David
(Socialist) declared that in these circumstances
his friends, while desiring to vote in favor, did
not wish to be the only ones to support the
government and would also abstain....
Thus the proposal of the government seemed doomed to fail when
M. Courant asked for a suspension of the meeting.
A few minutes later the Mbderates...announced
that they would vote in favor of taking the
proposals of the government into consideration.
A vote was taken again, an this time it was
favorable: 30 against 14."
- I may also simply refuse to commit an' act which some, with
suspicious zeal, urge me to undertake and which might burden ,
me with a noxious responsibility one of the many occasions'
?
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49.
when wisdom commands inaction. I can then be proud of the
control which I have been capable of exercising over the
naive and crude inclination to act unnecessarily.
I may assume a similar attitude when no external demand
has been made on me. In the spring of 1954 Marghal Juin was
in oifert conflict with the government, some of whose principal
members were at the same time being physically attacked by
elements of the extreme right at the occasion of a ceremony
near the Arc de Triomphe. The rumor that the Marshal had
been connected with these disorders was denied by his staff
officer in the following way:
The Marshal is satisfied not to have attended
these demonstrations. He has no desire to be
associated with them, and does not wish to
assume any responsibility in this matter.28
A major device is to affirm that the action to which I
am invited is one which it is not incumbent upon me to perform,
or even one which is outside my competence and jurisdiction --
the action-parallel to "buck-passing" for responsibility in
past activities (p. ),
A historian (Marc Bloch) remembers an episode of his life
as an officer in an army headquarters during the "phony war."
He was attempting "to obtain a common action of the second
and fourth bureaux" in an important matter. Before failing in
this-he did succeed in arranging for a telephone conversation
between the officers representing, respectively, these two
bureaux:
Each one passed the buck to the other. After
a few minutes the Second Bureau ended the con-
versation with a dry: This does not concern
me." I was reminded of the way in which
property owners quarrel about a wall in which
they both share. :Mere was only one interest
of which noblgi4y seemed to think, that of the
French army.'
Again a situation which could reasonably be considered
universal. But Marc Bloch, I would guess, felt he was talking
about contemporary France and not-about human beings in
general; on the basis of my direct contacts with members of
the political class. in Paris, 1953 to 1957, I would surmise
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50. ?
that an important fraction among them would view the story told
by Marc Bloch as a parable illustrating a grave problem of
contemporary French politics.
In thiscontext I should like to recall the famous
squabble"3? which took place, June 15, 1940, in Bordeaux,
between thePremier, Paul Reynaud, and the Commander-in-chief,
General Weygand. Reynaud proposed that Weygand follow the
example of the commander-in-chief of the Dutch forces who had
issued an order to cease fire when further resistance became
impossible. Though the Premier offered to give the commander-
in-chief a written order requesting him to bring about "a
capitulation of the land army,"31 Weygand refused. He argued
(1) that the French army would be dishonored if it acted in
this fashion (he spoke of "dishonor," "infamy," "the shame to
our flag,")3' while the French government would incur no such
stigma if it concluded an armistice; (2) that, in any case,
it was incumbent upon the government, and not upon the
commander-in-chief, to assure the cessation of hostilities;
"the cessation of hostilities," Weygand said according to his
memoirs, "was in the domain of the general conduct of the war
which IA the governmenVs job. Let the government assume all
its responsibilities ."2
Having presented this ad hoc doctrine, the general ex-
pressed his personal reactions to the request which had been
made to him:
Did they take me to be a child? Had they made
? me come from Beyrouth in order to throw me into
this trap?32
This was a "shameful maneuver" with the aim of making
him assume the responsibilities of ,others:
For too long a time had I been informed of
affairs to ignore the real responsibilities
behind the defeat. As the President of the
Republic.. .tried to impose silence on me, I
recalled to him that in 1933, when I commanded
the army, I had had recourse to him against
certain measures taken by the government against
my advice....The President of the Republic
answered me that these had been questions of
little importance. I told him thatjon the
contrary, grave matters had been involved.32
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51.
At this point the two doctrines on which Weygand had,
to start with, based his great refusal, that of the dishonor
of any military capitulation and that of the government's sole
jurisdiction in the matter of the cessation of hostilities,
seemed to have been well forgotten. There remained, in a
fashion both surprising and "normal," a purely personal question:
If Weygand had in the past committed a sufficient number of
errors or other failings, it would, according to his final
position, be just to inflict on him the punishment of signing
-ehe document of capitulation. If Weygand, in 1933, had not
opposed but approved "the dismissal of five thousand officers"
and "the refusal of several hundred millions of armament
credit,"32 Reynaud's request would apparently have been much
less shocking. Thus the struggle between the various individuals
in command, each one trying to unload the maximum of responsibility
on the other, does not cease in moments of gravest peril; it
is in this sense, I believe, that the incident of June 15, 1940
may appear significant to the contemporary political class.
To the dismay evoked in me by someone who tries to burden
me with responsibility corresponds the pleasure with which I
111 learn that such is not his design.
On November 29, 1955, an absolute majority of deputies
voted against the government, a fact which in the circumstances
rendered a dissolution of the Assembly possible. As no such
event had occurred before in the Fourth Republic, and as
'-'dissolution" recalled the exercise of his authority by.
President MacMahon on May 16, 1877, the unjustified impression
had spread that the present constitution, too, gave the
President of the Republic powers in this regard. President
C6ty himself was said to share this idea; but in contrast
to Marshal MacMahon.he was supposedly little inclined to make
use of this imaginary prerogative. In the Council of Ministers
in which the matter was to be decided, a partisan of the
dissolution, a Minister who is a Professor of Law could
assuage M. Coty's disquiet:
M. Pierre-Henri Teitgen spoke as a jurist....
He tried to establish that the chief of state
would have no political or moral responsibility
in the decision to be taken. Everybody agrqqd
to the great satisfaction of the President."
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52.
If I desire that a certain decision be taken, it does
not follow that I will support it openly and with all my
strength... To engage myself fully might involve disadvantages
which it may not be necessary to assume. Might it not be
possible for others to replace me? What if I could induce
them to act in my place so that I myself could choose another
conduct less burdened with cost and risk? This is a parti-
cularly attractive calculation; beliefs that it is being
applied abound. A prominent journalist alleges:
Faced with the breakdown of June, 1940, the
French leaders split into two hostile groups.
There were the partisans of a cessation of
hostilities who did not dare to ask for it,
and the irreducible opponents of an armistice
who arranged for it to be signed by Marshal
Petain.34
At the moment of the Assembly's vote on the Paris Agree-
ments establishing WEU, a majority of deputies felt that they
should be ratified. But a majority also predicted that they
would be. Hence, the treaty was first rejected, as numerous
deputies believed that they could abstain or vote against,
without modifying the predicted result, everyone counting on
others to take the burden of ratification upon themselves.
"I admit that I miscalculated," a leader (Maurice Schumann,
a Christian Democrat) is supposed to have said after the
surprising announcement of the ratification having been re-
jected. "I believed that voting discipline among the Socialists
(iaho were suppos0 to vote for the treaty -- NID would be
more effective.'"
The prevalence of the belief that the treaty would be
ratified,'-at the moment of the vote, December 24, 1954, had
been preceded, in the course of the month of November, by the
impression .that the passage of time was rapidly reducing
support for the treaty. At that moment those who wanted the
treaty to pass, but did not want to vote for it themselves,
tried, it was said, to have the treaty come before the Assembly
as quickly as possible, that is at a moment at which it would
not yet have become necessary for them, too, to vote for it.
It was in this atmosphere that a teacher recalled Kant's
categorical imperative which, he believed, was particularly
valid in parliament:
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53.
Everyone of us has the duty to ask himself
what would happen if all his colleagues
voted or abstained in the way he proposed
to do.36
Three years later a parliamentarian, surveying his colleagues'
reactions before an imminent vote of confidence on the special
powers in economic and financial matters demanded by the
government, could still observe this:
And there are those who believe that, as a
majority is in any case assured, they can
personally afford the luxury of being smart
and leave to others the burden of votiqg
for measures which might be unpopular.'"
On the other hand, I may also act in favor of a certain
decision while foreseeing that it is not going to be taken,
as it should not be taken according to my real sentiment:
Let others "kill" it for me!
At the time of the strikes of August, 1953, the communists
and socialists demanded the immediate convocation of the
Assembly which was obligatory if a third of the deputies (which
would have amounted to 209) were to ask for it. Everything
depended on the left radicals. The rumor spread that their
leader .(Jean Baylet) and one of the members of the group (Adrien
Laplace) had sent the speaker of the Assembly requests for its
convocation "on condition that this act were not to depend on
their twb votes."38 To be sure, according to a journalist
close to these'deputies this rumor was slanderous:
Messrs. Baylet and Laplace addressed to M. Herriot
a telegram and a letter asking for the convocation
of the Assembly. They heard that the bureau of
the speaker of the Assembly affirmed having re-
ceived a new letter from them according to which
their original letter should be annulled if
there were only 207 such demands, their own
excluded. They denied. ..this singular invention.39
The invention was, to be sure, singular; it seems to ex-
press the attraction felt for an action shorn of the conse-
quences it is supposed to have.
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54. ---
More rarely one finds, in contrast, a special interest
taken in an action credited with decisive consequences. On
October 18, 1955, the government of Edgar Faure, which seemed
in danger, obtained, to everybody's surprise, a quite
comfortable margin of "confidence." The reason was a sudden
turn in the government's favor of the group of Moderates
known as ARS, or as "dissident Gaullists":
During the entire day parliamentary forecasts
remained quite uncertain as to whether the
government would survive or not. Paradoxically,
this fact favored a change of attitude on the
part of a group which had up to that moment
been rather hostile to the government, the ARS.
Assuming that the hmargind in the vote would be
extremely narrow and probably even negative,
this group came to believe that the occasion
might be propitious to demonstrate that the
survival of the government depended on their
votes. Together with considerations of a higher
order, this calculation led the group to reverse
its position and to voteznin its majority, in
favor of M. Edgar Faure.'
I may also vote for a measure to which I am really opposed,
but which is favored by some on whom I depend, if I foresee
that later developments will render it inoperative, even
though it will have been passed by parliament. This seems to
have been the calculation of a certain number of parliamentarians
in the matter of the common market, as one of the opponents og
this institution (Pierre Mendes-France) pointed out, perhaps
with some exaggeration:
Those who are going to vote for the common
market do not hide -- in private conversations,
of course -- that once we have entered it, our
first concern will be to ask the new inter-
national organization for an authorization to
do all the things the common market forbids
its members to do. These parliamentarians
stress...that there are certain clauses in the
treaty whose.purpoge it is to permit that.
They say...that in this fashidn everything
will be conveniently settled and that there
is therefore no disadvantage in ratifying the
treaty instituting the 'common market. For
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55.
while they believe that if the treaty were to
be applied it would be very dangerous, they
also foresee...that it will not be really applied.41
In a similar vein, in November, 1957, Moderates who had
made the framework law for Algeria fail earlier that fall, be-
came resigned to voting for it. According to a journalist,
They accept with resignation a proposal
for a statute of which many believe that
it will never become applicable.42
To return to the occasions on which one presents oneself
as not at all being definitely against a certain decision,
while counting on others to foil it, this calculation plays
a particularly great role in the "investitures" of a
candidate for the Premiership. Though deputies are strongly
inclined to frustrate the efforts of a candidate for power
and to "massacre" the one who exercises that power, their
feelings about these great acts of parliamentary life are far
from serene. Ordinarily the act of "assassinating" a
candidate for power or a power holder, though quite normal,
seems in some way also immoral, and dangerous to the one who
considers committing it, particularly when he is seated in the
center of the Assembly. First of all, in public everybody
deplores the instability of governments, and the length of
crises. (This is frequently an attitude which is not consciously
hypocritiCal. It is rather that institutions which others
refuse to modify, and the offensive maneuvers of other groups,
cliques, individuals leave me no choice but to engage in a
course of action which entails instability.) Hence it is wise
not to appear too clearly responsible for the "death" of a
government. Second, there is a-widespread belief, 'among the
members of the political class, in a "rule of the game" which,
at the next distribution of ministries, punishes those groups
and individuals who have "marked" themselves as "assassins."
In one variant of this belief a leader of such a voup will
be the first one to be asked by the President of the Republic
to resolve the crisis; that is, he will be asked too soon and
will.fail. In another variant, the "assassins" will be overtly
debarred from enjoying the fruits of their crime. Thus, after
the resignation of Antoine Pinay, Georges Bidault tried to form
a government and failed. It was widely believed that the
Moderates were punishing in this fashion the group (the
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56:
Christian Democrats) viewed as responsible for the end of
the Pinay government, this despite the fact that Bidault had
scrupulously abstained from personally acting in any way
against that government when it entered the last phase of its
existence (an abstention which was also widely interpreted
as-having been an effort to escape the debarment by which this
leader felt himself menaced).
Often one tends, in fact, to treat as slanderous any
affirmation according to which one played a special role in
the "death" of a government. Whenever possible one will even
ddny that there had been any "murder" at all. About Antoine
Pinay who resigned before a vote was cast which he had reason
to believe would turn out unfavorably for him, the "theoreti-
cian" of the Christian Democrats (Etienne Borne) maintained
that "this was a case of suicide dressed up as murder by the
victim and his friends."43
When one is about to commit what is clearly "assassination,"
one feels rather ill at ease. At the occasion of the vote of
confidence by which the Mollet government was overthrown, the
Moderates maintained their decision to vote against, despite
the Radicals' intention to abstain, an intention commanded
by the wish to make the Moderates "face their responsibilities":
The Right...was a bit upset by the "courage"
which it was forced to show....There were
cries of "Mendes," as if they wanted to require
of the Radicals an 93cplanation of their vote.
But it was in vain."
-Such a situation is so unpleasant that it can easily lead
to &retreat at the last moment. Thus, early in February,
1952, the attitude of the Moderates who were threatening the
first government of Edgar Faure was apparently softened by
an intervention of the Premier who presented the following
view of the situation to them: The Radicals would vote
solidly for the government; if the Moderates were to vote
against it, they would clearly be responsible for the crisis;
in these circumstances the Radicals would not admit a Moderate
as a_successor of the Radical Premier thus overthrown. The
Moderates gave in (for the moment).
,What shall I do if I am against a certain government and
yet do not want to contribute directly to its undoing?. I
shall attempt to act through others.
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.57.
First of all, I must not neglect the possibility that
others are, for reasons of their own, ready to vote against
the government in numbers sufficient to spare me the necessity
of joining them in this. When the government appears "con-
demned," it is appropriate for me to support It costs me
so little and will permit me to ask those in whose favor I
appear to act to do me a favor at a later moment when I will
be in need of it.
This maneuver is hardly distinctive of the Radicals,
though they are often said to be particularly inclined toward,
it, and especially skillful in executing it. When Pierre
Mendes-France was a candidate for the premiership in the
spring of 1953, an important fraction of the socialist deputies
was hostile to him, but nevertheless voted for him, predicting
correctly his defeat. When, a few weeks later, Antoine Pinayi
attempted to form a government, the ex-Gaullists, bitterly
opposed to him, "contented themselves with expressing
hesitation rather than formulating a categorical no. For on
the thirty-third day of the crisis they thought it to be more
'politic' to leave, once more, to the Christian Democratp the,
role of 'killers' of the candidate for the Premiership."45
In their turn the Christian Democrats tended to revolt
against the role, or the image, of simpletons whom one can
manipulate to perform disagreeable chores, or on whose im-
prudent acts one can rely. They tried their hand at the
maneuver which others had applied at their expense. When
the parliamentary position of the Laniel government declined
in the spring of 1954, one of their leaders (Maurice Schumann)
stressed after a conversation with the Premier:
Everything goes very well between the Christian
Democrats and M. Laniel. In any case there is
no point in counting on the Christian Democrats
to provoke a crisis.46
During the following winter, the Christian Democrats
voted -- as the Radicals, too, of course -- eagerly in favor
of-a socialist candidate for the premiership (Christian
Pineau) though the socialists had reacted unfavorably to one
of their own (Pierre Pflimlin): in voting for the socialist
.candidate they could present themselves as a part of the Left,
arid at the same time they knew that nothing would come of it.
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58.
Reformers do not always disdain this maneuver. At the
Congress of the Radicals in the spring of 1957, Pierre Mends'
France declared himself clearly against the Mbllet government,
but did not ask the Radical ministers to leave it. According
to a widespread interpretation,
Pierre Mendes-France calculated...that it
would be tactically unskillful to make .oneself
responsible for the downfall of a government
which others might execute. . He is convinced
that the Right is going to overthrow the
government,47
and so it did.
As with. so many other maneuvers, this may require a great
deal of patience. From the very beginning of the Pinay govern-
ment, the left wing of the Radicals apparently aimed at its
overthrow, but decided to wait for the Christian Democrats to
develop a sufficient inclination to "murder" the Moderate
leader. Spring, summer and autumn passed, and finally this
calculation came true. Though furious about the reputation
they thus acquired, the Christian Democrats were ready to
play the same role at the occasion of the subsequent efforts
of Antoine Pinay in June, 1953, and in February, 1955. A
.few days after the fall of Pierre Mendes-France the Radicals
had to take a stand on Pinay whom the President of the Republic
had asked to consider whether he might agree to be designated
as a, candidate for the premiership. According to a journalist,
Sensing that an opposition against Pinay might
develop elsewhere, the Radicals did not care
to take a stand against him. They followed
in this an established tradition 'i8
One waits, and finally, when the situation has "matured"
one "pushes one's neighbor to perpetrate the crime."
One of the principal means of inciting him is to "intoxi-
cate" him about the distribution of votes in my own group. If
I Can induce in another group an exaggerated estimate of the .
number of votes for the government in my own, I may decide
that other group to vote against the government or to abstain,
while still believing that the government will survive or, in
'another situation, because the other group is determined that
it shall "die." For instance, at the occasion of the vote of
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59.
confidence of March 28, 1957,
The Premier and his friends were greatly irritated
by the attitude of the Poujadists. The whole
day rumors had been spread according to which the
Poujadists might abstain rather than vote against
the government. Finally, these 47 deputies did
all cast their ballots against Mollet. But-the
Premier had grounds to believe that this maneuver
aimed at inducing a good part of the Moderates to
vote against the government by making them believe
that their votes would be compensated by the
abstentions of the Poujadists and thus not en-
danger the cabinet. However, the Moderates,
better informed than the Premier about the real
intentions of the Poujadists, did not fall into
the trap.49
If the game called "murderers wanted" is mainly played
411 in a spirit of who-will-deceive-whom, the feeling of parlia-
mentary camaraderie may also appear in it. My group and
another may tacitly agree that it is easier for us to "kill"
their candidate, or somebody close to them, and vice versa.
"On the twentieth day of the crisis," observed a journalist,
"there is less interest in discussing the merits and demerits
of men and programs," than in looking for "one or more
murderers":
?
It is know to everybody in parliament that
many Radicals, while voting for M. Mendes-
France, counted on the Moderates to foil his
attempt, and that certain Moderates expect
that the Radicals will render them a similar
service with regard to M. Bidault."
Apart from such exchanges of services between equals,
there are the chores which the rank and file of a clan must
Perform for the leader who does not want to expose himself,
a-it rather adopts the maxim: do what I tell you and not what
I do myself. During the long agony of the Laniel government
in the spring of 1954 Rene Mayer publicly expressed himself
jn its favor and voted for it, but also, it was widely believed,
asked the coming younger men depending on him (Bourgs.-Maunoury,
Gaillard, Maurice Faure) to take the opposite stand.
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60.
All too often; however, the estimated contribution of
others to an indispensable "assassination" appears insufficient.
If my_group, my clan or even myself, then, have to contribute
directly to the desired result, let this contribution at least
be limited to what is strictly necessary! In the parliamentary
myth the exemplary event in this connection is the Assembly's
refusal to invest Georges Bidault, in the spring of 1953, by
according him 313 votes where 314 (the absolute majority of
deputies) were required. Similarly, in the autumn of 1955 the
return to a system of electing the Assembly by one-member
districts and two ballots -- a system held to be popular at
the time -- was refused with an economical majority of 5 votes.
This was widely held not to be accidental as many Radicals and
Socialists supposedly voted for this electoral law only after
calculations had shown that it would not pass.
As was already mentioned, economy of effort in such a
situation requires that my group obtain intelligence about the
distribution of votes in other groups and then adjust its own
conduct in consequence. A group which sees itself as the
target of such espionage will defend itself by dissimulation
and deception, methods which are of course also used
offensively. A major vote then becomes a complicated campaign,
particularly when the procedure of voting makes it possible
to utilize intelligence which flows in during the course of
the voting itself.
Around such practices there develop extreme beliefs,
whose relations to reality are often obscure. Thus, a news-
paper has dared to publish the following story which enjoyed
some currency in the political class: The leader of a group,
the Gaullist Jacques Chaban-Delmas, charged with protecting
the secret of how his group was going to vote at an important
occasion, betrayed this secret to a redoubtable enemy (the
Radical Leon Martinaud-Deplat); for this politician, then
Minister of the Interior, had the Gaullist leader at his
mercy: Chaban-Delmas was Mayor of Bordeaux; his position
there was menaced; in centralized France his survival depended
on the good will of the Minister of the Interior.
The calculations discussed do not always work out; far -
from it. During the hours before the Assembly refused to
invest Paul Reynaud in the Spring of 1953 an observer finds
that:
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61.
The groups count on each other to accomplish
the murder. Hence one may ask oneself whether
a surprise victory is not in the making comparable
to that from which M. Pinay has benefited.51
This did not happen. Still, an event as important as the
coming to power of Antoine Pinay seems to have been due to
errors in calculations of the kind just considered. In the
account of a journalist:
The investiture of M. Pinay seemed excluded:
the eleven Gaullist votes in his favor which
were predicted would not permit him to obtain
the absolute majority of all deputies. Given
this prediction, the Radicals decided to vote
unanimously for M. Pinay; they thought that
this gesture would be without consequence and
yet courteous....This vote was supposed to
oblige the Moderates morally to vote in their
turn in favor of a future Radical candidate for
the Premiership. Even M. Mendes-France thus
voted for M. Pinay. The same calculation was
made among the Christian Democrats. The UDSR
Ca small group near to the Radicals - NI)
decided to vote for the candidate in order to
encourage defections from the official Gaullist
line which was hostile to him. But at that
point a deputy speaking for the Socialists took
a clear-cut stand against Pinay, and this inter-
vention sufficed to detach sixteen more Gaullists
from the official position of their group. The
other groups did not notice this c#Rital event.
Thus, M. Pinay received 324 votes,''
11 more than he needed.
As one often finds it advantageous to vote for what one
believes will be rejected, one likes to propose what one fore-
sees will be refused.
One agrees to an offer, but qualifies the agreement by
conditions which one knows to be unacceptable. It will then
be the other who, one hopes, will bear the responsibility for
the failure of negotiations. If this maneuver (close to that
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62.
of the so-called lifting of the mortgage which will be analyzed
in Chapter 3) is frequently employed in the relations between
groups in parliament, it may also be used on great occasions
in foreign policy. Towards the middle of June, 1940, the
Premier, Paul Reynaud, recognized that the army was incapable
of continuing to pursue the war in continental France. He
addressed himself to the President of the United States and
demanded of him an intervention which would amount to America's
immediate entrance into the war against Germany. In this case,
he implied, the battle of France could go on. This was, how-
ever, a condition which he knew to be impossible of realization.
One year later the German government proposed that Vichy become
a co-belligerent of the Reich, offering in exchange unspecified
"political and economic concessions." General Weygand, hostile
to such a change of policy, suggested that Vichy ask for the
following "concessions" as a compensation for co-belligerence:
a German obligation to respect in the future treaty of peace
the territorial integrity of France in Europe and overseas;
the liberation of the French prisoners of war; the cessation
of the tribute demanded by the German authorities in France
under the guise of compensations for the cost of occupation;
the abolition of the line of demarcation between occupied and
unoccupied France. According to one version of the events,
this maneuver gives Petain the means of refusing
military collaboration with Germany without
taking himself the initiative of interrupting
negotiations .53
Towards the end of 1941 the same technique was once more applied
with regard to the same German demands:
December 22, 1941 the French government delivers
its answer to the German Embassy. Always the
-same tactics: the French government admits the
principle of collaboration, but makes its
realization dependent on concessions which one
knows to be unacceptable to the Germans, and
Which amount to-the abrogation of the Armistice
for North Africa.54
Again, when the Allies invadedNorth Africa:
The Germans propose to put the German Air
Force at our disposal in order to repel the
.-assailants. Laval appears to leave the -
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63.
decision to Darlan. It would be showing a
poor knowledge of the Admiral to believe
that his answer to such a demand might be
a clear eyes" or "no." While he does not
refuse, his consent is tantamount to a
refusal: he accepts the participation of
the German Air Force in the fight against
the invaders on condition that the Germans
act from their Sicilian and Sardinian bases.
That is, he is Willing to authorize the German
Air Force to use its habitual fields! These
are, by the way, at such a distance from the
new front that they are practically useless.55
In the course of the twenty-seven months which separated
the signature of the EDC Treaty by the government from its
rejection by the Assembly, many "preliminary conditions" and
"protocols" to the treaty were suggested in Paris; some were
proposed by the government and accepted by the other signatories
of the Treaty, or by Great Britain and the United States. Among
those who insisted on the necessity of such amplifications or
modifications of the treaty were numerous hidden opponents of
EDC who foresaw that such demands would be refused. The re-
jection of the treaty was, in fact, preceded by the refusal,
on the part of its other signatories, to accept those modifi-
cations which the Mendes-France government proposed at the
Brussels Conference; and the speech of the Premier, when EDC
was debated at the Assembly, consisted largely in an analysis
oE these refusals.
There are several variants to this maneuver. I can, for
instance, attempt to detach the other from his position by
pretending to insist on an extreme variant of it,- When it
seemed, in the fall of '1955, that a serious parliamentary
battle would develop around the proposal to return to electing
deputies in one-member, districts and by two ballots, the
opponents of this system intended, it seems; to form the
semblance of a coalition between themselves and its extreme
proponents so as to render the system unacceptable to its
Moderate; partisans.
Or I may render my acceptance of a certain measure de-
pendent on conditions which are formulated with sufficient
ambiguity to permit me to call any concessions which might
be made to me insufficient. If my conditions are, on the
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64.
other hand, rather well defined, I can choose them so that it
is within my power to prevent their realization. After the
fall of Pierre Mendes-France in the winter of 1955, Pierre
Pflimlin (Christian Democrat) tried to form a government,
offering the Radicals four ministries. Rene Mayer, a Radical
leader hostile to a Pflimlin government, made the Radicals pose
the following condition for their entry into a cabinet headed
by the Christian Democrat: two of the four Radical ministers
should have belonged to the government just overthrown (which,
by the wa-y, had been overthrown largely due to the activities
of the same Rene Mayer). Pflimlin could address himself to
those individuals satisfying this condition who were devoted
to Mendes; in this case it was exceedingly improbable that
they would accept his offer as the fall of Mendes-France
appeared to them, at the time, as a national tragedy. Or
Pflimlin could approach those members of the preceding govern-
ment who, while Radicals, were by no means closely connected
with Mendes. But all these were apparently induced by Mayer
not to accept any bids from Pflimlin. Thus, the Christian
Democrat encountered what first seemed a mysterious streak of
refusals, and finally abandoned his attempt to form a govern-
ment.
When a maneuver of the type which has just been described
is used against a person or group, the victim may attempt to
defend himself by unmasking the nature of the operation. In
the debate on the ratification of the Paris Agreements, a
parliamentarian called a proposed amendment "one of those
unrealizable conditions which are tantamount to a hidden
refusal."56 Discussing a "preliminary condition" suggested
for the entry of France into the common market, a deputy
spoke of it as "an indirect and elegant fashion to prevent
the signing of the comnon market treaty."57 And a Premier
declared: ?"Some preliminary conditions are nothing but
disguised refusals."58
But the same leader was, needless to say, willing to adopt
this technique in a crisis precipitated by his own downfall
when it was a matter of "torpedoing" an undesirable candidate
for the Premiership (Pierre Pflimlin) and of assuring the
success of his own candidate (Maurice Bourges-Maunoury).
When Pflimlin tried to form a government, the Socialists
presented him with a set of demands which they knew to be
unacceptable. Their paper wrote:
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65.
The Socialists have indicated the minimum
conditions for their entrance into a coalition
government. They have done this not in
order to create an alibi for themselves, but
in order to remain faithful to the obliga-
tions which they have assumed before the
entire French people ....59
A few days later it became evident that the operation aimed,
precisely, at creating an alibi: once the withdrawal of
Pflimlin had been obtained, the Socialists granted their
participation to Bourges-Maunoury without obtaining his
consent to any special conditions. The socialist minority,
opposed to participation, objected that "the catalog of demands,
which had been established for M. Pflimlin but which was valid
for any candidate for the premiership, had not even been
presented to M. Bourges-Maunoury." True, answered Guy Mollet,
but "M. Bourges-Maunoury has in the past demonstrated his
solidarity with a government directed by a Socialist (Duy
Mollet himself -- NO.; this is an adequate guarantee."60
Naturally, little was heard from then on about the greater
part of the Socialist demands. Having fulfilled their purpose,
they could disappear.
Let us assume that one aims at preserving an established
condition which everybody condemns in public, but to which
nevertheless many are attached; for instance, an electoral
law which has acquired a bad reputation. To defend it overtly
would be disadvantageous. But as it is already.in existence,
one can perpetuate it without ever mentioning it, namely by
rejecting all the other proposed systems of voting. This
happened in the fall of 1955, in the conflict between "the
sYstem of voting by one-member districts and in two ballots,
a system which deputies feel obliged to favor but do not really
like, andthe electoral law of 1951, a law for which one does
not vote but which one likes very well."61 A deputy asked:
Are we really going to vote the electoral law of
1951 though nobody among u9 dares to say
clearly that he favors it??2
Only thus could the desired result be attained, as a journalist
explains:
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66.
It is generally said that if voting in the
Assembly were secret, the maintenance of the
electoral law of 1951 would be voted....Not
a single deputy has until now had the courage
to defend it publicly at the rostrum....Hence
the only way of maintaining the system is to
continue it tacitly.63
Besides the techniques apt to protect me against the
responsibilities which I am in danger of assuming in the
present, there are the maneuvers by which I try to forestall
future dangers of this sort.
The principle of sharing responsibility as widely as
possible suggests various precautions. When a government is
formed, a group must be careful not to be in sole command of
a sector of activity which is likely to present "delicate"
problems during the months to come (a tendency which may, how-
ever, be overcompensated by the opposed desire of a group to
possess domains in which its own influence predominates). If
this condition is fulfilled and if things then go badly, the
group can always say: If policy had depended only on us,
things would have turned out otherwise. This maneuver may, of
course, also be applied by an individual. In the election
campaign of 1951 the Secretary of State for the budget (Edgar
Faure) is supposed to have defended himself thus before his
voters: Unfortunately, I am not alone: there is the Minister
of Finance; I cannot do all that I wish to do. In his con-
stituency the Minister of Finance (Maurice Petsche) allegedly
said: Unfortunately, I am not alone; there is the Secretary
of State for the budget; I can not do all that I wish to do.
The instability of governments permits a politician to
consider whether he cannot arrange the timing of his presence
in, and absence from, the government in such a fashion as to
minimize his apparent responsibility for untoward events. It
is commonly believed within the political class that such
calculations play a considerable role.
One bust know how to abandon a post so as not to be
saddled with it when difficulties occur for which one might be
held responsible. Such an act of individual prophylaxis appears
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67.
Ifnormal" while a concern for substantive problems of policy
which have not yet become acute often appears inappropriate
(cf. Chapter 6, p. 153). When Queen Elizabeth visited Paris
in 1957, the British government supposedly insisted that the
service charged with protocol be directed by a British official.
The chief of protocol in the French Ministry of Foreign
Affairs -- as a story runs -- went to his Minister to protest,
but was told this:
You are quite wrong to complain: mistakes
will surely be made and you won't have any-
thing to do with them.64
Ah important journalist who has the reputation of being
a moral rigorist has said this of Paul Reynaud without provoking
a scandal:
M. Paul Reynaud...conducted his short war of
1940 according to all the rules of the art of
politics. He organized his military campaign
as if it were an electoral one, and was un-
ceasingly concerned to have another name
attached to defeat than his own. A postillion
whose force was insufficient for the national
coach in distress, he was fortunate, or far-
sighted enough, tojump off just at the moment
when the wagon was about to overturn.65
From the very first years of the Fourth Republic on, Paul
Reynaud became again one of the most respected parliamentarians
charged with high posts in the-Assembly and in the government.
-The coming difficulties before which I steal away may,
of course, appear to others, or even to myselfjas consequences
of my own policy. They may be the payment for immediate
benefits from which I drew advantage when in power. At least
my enemies will easily say so: the Socialists alleged this
about the Pinay government of 1952, and the Moderates about
the Monet government of 1956-1957. The one and the other
were supposed to have foreseen the critical situation which
would be facing their successors, who might, as we now know,
not even find it easy to "draw up the balance sheet," of those
who had-preceded them..
Knowing how to steal away from responsibility at a critical
moment includes the art of not attempting this in too "brutal"
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68.
a fashion, which might foil the attempt altogether. In the
crisis opened by the fall of the government headed by the
Socialist Guy Mollet, a Radical (Maurice Bourges-Maunoury)
tried to form a new government after.the failure of a Moderate
(Antoine Pinay), a Christian Democrat (Pierre Pflimlin) and
a member of a small group close to the Radicals (Rene Pleven).
Still, a tendency in the socialist party was opposed to-the
Radical, too, while at the same time no majority 'seemed possible
without the Socialists' participation. But Guy Mollet insisted
that the failure of the Radical would lead precisely to what
was to be prevented in the first place, namely his own re-
turn to the premiership. "If the Party rejected Bourges,"
he reasoned, "it would expose itself to the grave risk of being
obliged to furnish the premier again."66 "If you say no to
Bourges, too," he recalled to the socialist leaders, "you
surely prepare the return of a government directed by us,
precisely the solution you do not want."67
As the pleasure of obtaining a parcel of power is intense,
relief in abandoning it, when it becomes a trap after having
been a privilege, is also strong. This agreeable feeling of
personal escape offers some compensation for the distress
which the nation's difficulties might induce in one. Sir
Edward Spears, the liaison between the British and the French
Premiers, encountered Paul Reynaud on the day of his resignation
in June, 1940:
Reynaud's appearance and demeanor were
so different from what I expected that
amazement changed my mood....It was as if,
walking into a room to condole a widower,
one was confronted by a bridegroom....If
he was not gay, gayety rippled under the
surface of his manner; if he was not ex-
actly detached, he spoke as an expert giving
evidence at a trial. It was obvious that
he was immensely relieved, but at some pains
not to show it.?8
The same day, recalls General de Gaulle:
I went to see M. Paul Reynaud. I found him
without any illusions as to what the coming
to power of Marshal Petain would entail and,
on the other hand,. as if relieved of an in-
tolerable burden.?
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69.
Almost every relinquishment of power comes to be viewed
as a maneuver aimed at escaping responsibility. Hence a
complication of my conduct may be indicated. I may, for
instance, announce that I would want to renounce power for
such and such reasons, but that I renounce that, act of
renunciation itself, because I foresee that it would be inter-
preted as an escape from responsibility. Thus, May 15, 1957,
the Premier (Guy Mollet) offered the resignation of his govern-
ment to the President of the Republic; "accedes to the
-request" of the President to withdraw it; and explains that
he:is withdrawing his offer "first of all for reasons of
domestic politics. You know the difficulties which have arisen
between the Radical Party and the government. On the other
hand, my decision to resign came at a moment at which the fiscal
measures which we are proposing to parliament encounter
difficulties. Hence, our resignation today might have appeared,
to some, as an escape from responsibility,? It is for this
reason that we want to remain in office."'
Naturally, the tendency towards disagreeable interpretations
in this context is not eliminated by such maneuvers. Thus, the
conduct just described, adopted by a Premier who knew his
downfall near (in fact, he had only a few days to "live") was
much interpreted as a "device" of uncertain efficacy. A
journalist speculated:
The solemnity which M. Guy Mollet conferred
on his resignation and on his declaration will
lead his opponents to believe that he wanted
to impress the Assembly. His step is as li4cly
to be harmful to him as it is to be useful."
Attributing to me the design of escaping from the diffi-
culties created by my own activities (or which might easily
be_alleged to have this origin), my opponents will attempt to..
prevent my departure, so that I may myself become the "receiver"
of-my "bankruptcy."
- December 20, 1954,- the Assembly was discussing Indochina
fop the first time since it had approved the Geneva agreements
during the preceding summer. The Christian Democrats attacked
Mads who replied and, in so doing, stressed more than had
been his habit, their responsibility in the conduct of the war
Which had come to such a bad end. At that point a Christian
Democrat (Alfred Coste-Floret) exclaimed: "So you really want
tobe overthrown today?"72 This is what he alluded to. The
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70.
same day the debate on the ratification of the Paris Agreements
establishing WEU was to begin. After having undertaken the
rather-agreeable job of having EDC rejected, Pierre Mendes-
France had now to pay for this, in the view of the Christian
Democrats, by urging parliament to pass another framework of
Western German rearmament which, in contrast to EDC, would re-
establish a "Wehrmacht." Was it not natural on his part to
want to escape from that responsibility? This the Christian
Democrats were not to permit him. Voting against the govern-
ment on Indochina would, in their forecast, lead to its down-
fall; but it was imperative that it survive in order to
assume the consequences of its sins. Thus, a leader of the
Christian Democrats (Pierre Henri-Teitgen) declared:
We are not going to permit an adjournment of
the debate on the Paris Agreements....It is
for this Very reason that we shall abstain in
the vote on Indochina, but we declare that
this abstention is, in our mind, equivalent
to a vote of lack of confidence.73
(In fact, if voting "for" in a "vote of confidence" is so
often far from expressing a sentiment of trust in the govern-
ment, it is appropriate that abstention may express lack of
confidence; cf. Chapter 5, p. 127) It is the Christian
Democrats' determination to foil his design of "suicide" which
the Premier was supposedly trying to break down by his
"provocations."
By virtue of a similar calculation there are always
parliamentarians who, while declaring themselves hostile to
the government, oppose the intention of others among its
enemies to "kill" it right away; they recommend that, while
"convicted," it be given a "stay of execution" so that the
nefarious character of its actions may become incontrovertibly
clear.
In the winter of 1952 the first Faure government fell over
its proposal to increase taxes (after 40 days the life of a
government of 40 ministers was cut short by its request for
40 billion francs, it was often said, the consequences of all
this having been to make the Premier lose 4 kilos). During
the subsequent spring and summer the popularity of Edgar
Faure's successor, Antoine Pinay, was connected with the fulfill-
ment of his promise to avoid an increase in taxes. Hence, a
journalist noted:
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71.
As long as the Premier is going to avoid a
request for an increase in taxes nobody will
want to be his successor. Even those most
hostile to the present government and who
view it as having failed, will conspire not
to hinder it visibly, so that M. Antoine Pinay
may not be able to charge anybody but his own
friends for his final failure.74
For these "friends" were expected to refuse the reductions in
expenditures by which alone an increase in. taxescould be
avoided.
Three years later, a determined opponent of the policy
adopted by the second government of Edgar Faure in Morocco
explained why he was going to vote for the government in a
vote of confidence on that very policy:
It would be exceedingly naive to leave it
to others to finish this harvest in your
place, and thus to burden them with responsi-
bilities which are strictly yours....Hence, I
shall not be among those who, voting against
you today, will enable you to escape the storm.75
In the spring of 1957 certain Moderates overthrew the
Mollet government against the advice of eminent members of .
their own group, according to whom one should have deferred
the "kill" until the grave damage caused by the economic
policy of that government would have become more visible:
M. Paul Reynaud declared himself...in favor
of a stay of sentence which would permit the
Moderates to return to the charge later with
greater efficacy and to confront the men in
power with an incontrovertible record of failure.
The government would very soon have to ask the
Bank of France to proceed to inflationary measures;
one should wait for this occasion. M. Pinay
argued in the same sense.76
I may, of course, delay the moment at which I should like
to succeed the present government regardless of whether the
difficulties which I thus want to escape appear related to its
actions or not. This is how a journalist described the
parliamentary situation towards the end of the Pinay government:
. 7.=
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72.,
Most parliamentarians are pessimistic about
the future of the Pinay government-. But those
who expect to be members of the next combination
try, of course, to assure its survival until
after the vote of the budget with which they
do not want to be encumbered.77
The next autumn another journalist declared:
As long as strikes threaten, as long as
the problem of salaries and prices is acute,
the succession of Premier Laniel will be
little coveted.78
If I already occupy a responsible position in moments of
unusual difficulty, I must not forget that a promotion may be
a "poisoned gift." A Premier (Guy Mollet) told, so it is
alleged, a Secretary of State (Andre Dulin, charged with
agriculture) of his intention to make him a minister, and saw
his offer refused. The beneficiary of this promotion explained
that was his habit to recall the modesty of his position
to farmers dissatisfied with his performance. According to
a rumor published by Sir Edward Spears, General Weygand, called
back from the Middle East by the Premier in the middle of
May, 1940, to become Commander-in-chief of the French army,
regretted immediately having accepted this order:
On landing at Mhrseilles...on May 19, he
exclaimed on reading a report of the situation
and seeing a map of the German advance: "If
I had known the Rituation was so bad, I would
not have come."7
We may mention once more at this point that during his
"squabble" with Reynaud and Lebrun, a month later, Weygand
himself recalls having exclaimed, when asked to bring about a
capitulation of the French land army:
Did they take me for a child? Had they made
me come from Beyrouth to throw me into this
trap ?80
TIn the belief of the political class, flight from power
is as determined in certain situations as is, ordinarily, the
rush towardspower. In any case, when I am publicly charged
with anundue interest in power, I can always affirm that the
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73.
circumstances of the moment are sufficiently difficult to
discourage the most avid. In the declaration he read as a
candidate for the premiership in the winter of 1955, Edgar
Faure spoke of that period as of a "moment when nobody will
suspect one of wishing to be in power, as one has to settle
the question of the Paris Agreements, that of the conventions
with Tunisia, as the budget has to be voted and the question
of wage levels is going to be raised."81 A similar characteri-
zation could, of course, be given of most "moments" of the
epoch, a fact which does not, on the whole, seem to have
disgusted politicians with power.
Saddled with power in a difficult moment, I still have
the resource of applying the device: "I do not want to know
anything about it." According to a journalist, Apeaking about
the last phase of the war of Indochina,
the attitude of members of the government is
frequently one of "I do not want to know it."
This leads them to leave decisions concerning
Indochina to a limited group of Ministers.82
A superior may firmly resolve to give his subordinates
only a minimum of instructions, thus maximizing his freedom
to "cover" them, or to disassociate himself from them. Speaking
about the relations between the government and the Residents
General in Tunis and Rabat, a journalist explained:
Often governments let their high officials
act freely, reserving for themselves the
right to cover them if they succeed and
to penalize them if they fail.83 "
In the formula attributed to a minister (Francois
Mitterrand) who resigned in connection with a related issue
(the deposition of the Sultan of Morocco in the summer of 1953,
an act which apparently originated in Rabat),
the usage is to let Governor Generals and
Residents follow their inspiration in order
to be able to ratify their successes and to
disavow their failures.84
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74.
During the-war in Algeria a general commanding an operational
zone in the south is said to have explained to an officer, a
journalist in civilian life (Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber).,
fta problem which is at the root of all others":
In this region we are quite well informed about
the rebel cadres....If I do not arrest them they
continue their effective work....If I do arrest
them, they are going to be released after awhile,
as there are no precise charges against them, and
they will return with the enhanced prestige of
martyrs....The only reasonable solution would
be to arrest them and have them killed. Only I
won't do that without an order. In Algiers my
superiors tell me that they don't want to know
anything about this and that they will close
their eyes....Well, Well! Sure enough: the
dirty job is to be done by the military, and
then...one is going to charge the army for having
done it....These gentlemen will, in this fashion,
keep their hands clean....I won't go for that...
Ten times I have asked the Government General for
instructions: no answer....They don't want to
know anything about it....85
In addition there is the device of explicit delegation:
the special-powers habitually accorded to the government by an
Assembly supposed to be jealous of its prerogatives, "so that
the government may do the disagreeable things, for parliament
is there to do the others (laughter.)"86
The delegation may be tacit. The speakers of the two
chambers (Edouard Herriot and Jules Jeanneney) did not con-
voke them in Bordeaux in the middle of June, 1940, though
the number of parliamentarians then present in that city was
most probably sufficient for a quorum. Nevertheless, or
perhaps be&ause of such conduct, Edouard Herriot became the
"demi-god" of the political class during the first ten years
of the Fourth Republic. No member of that class would ask
him why he had not convoked the Chamber; and he himself never
offered an explanation.
The device of delegating powers also works within the
government . In the summer of 1955 the cabinet decided to
raise the salaries of government employees by virtue of the
special powers which parliament had granted it. But as
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75.
various trade unions of public employees declared themselves
dissatisfied with the raise, the government, in its turn,
delegated to the Premier the power of negotiating with these
organizations and of modifying, if need be, the decisions which
the Council of Ministers had taken. Thus, the circle of
those charged with responsibility was reduced to a minimum:
the government by Assembly shows a tendency to abdicate in
favor of _a single chief -- even in conditions less dramatic
than those of the summer of 1940.
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77.
Chapter 3
DESIGNS FOR FAILURE
Members of the French political class tend to draw back
at the last moment from completing an enterprise (pp. 77-78),
and often apply the deliberate technique of making a measure,
towards which they have been hostile from the beginning, fail
only at a late stage of its career (pp. 78-80). Sometimes,
members of the French political class appear to support fully
an enterprise which seems to aim at a major modification of
the status quo; but often such conduct turns out merely to
be an attempt to discover the shape of things as they are
(pp. 80-85). In a related maneuver members of the political
class try to show up the defects of a certain "solution,"
which appears tempting as long as it remains just an idea,
but which is expected to evoke negative reactions when it
materializes to a certain degree (pp. 85-92). This technique,
when applied to the world outside of parliament, may set in
motion an unexpected and undesired train of events (pp. 94-97).
Justifying to the Assembly a proposal (of an electoral
law) made by his group (the Socialists), a parliamentarian
(Edouard Depreux) insisted:
We are submitting this proposal
seriously, with the intention
that it be passed and put into
operation.1
So prevalent is the assumption that one does not believe
in the attainment of the ostensible goal of the operation in
which one is engaged, or does not even desire its success.
According to a view which is widespread in the political
class, politicians tend to draw back at the last moment from
completing an enterprise. As this appears natural, they may
overlook the bad feelings thus aroused in partners who naively
believed in the seriousness of their intentions. In the
winter of 1952 the Assembly expressed its agreement with the
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78.
major points of what was to become the treaty instituting a
European defense community, a treaty which was signed by the
participating governments in the spring of that year. In
the summer_of 1954 the Assembly, however, refused to ratify
that treaty. Similarly, on October 12, 1934, the Assembly
approved the London Agreements which outlined precisely the
Paris Agreements, signed later in the year, which instituted
the Western European Union. However, on December 24 of that
year the Assemblyagain refused to ratify these agreements
(doing so, however, a week later). "As long as it is still
on the level of generalities," says a political leader of a
"great idea," "everybody is quite glad to approve it in
principle. Then, when details come to the fore .criticisms
multiply.." It is thus typical of an "enterprise" that
"there are many who want it in the wholesale stage and
equally many who refuse it in the retail stagg."L
Related to this is the deliberate technique of nkinp a
measure toward which I have een ?stile from the ver
on.ts career. I
Ante rat er?iii towaa the ena of a certain operation, I
thereby acquire a "card" in relation to those who would like
to dissuade me from taking the final step. The smaller that
step appears to be, the more will they be willing to grant me
in payment for my not taking it. Thus, on June 13, 1940,
General de Gaulle went to see the Premier Paul teynaud it
order to ask him:
yet,*
ate stage 0
tin
?11 -a- ?
Is it possible that you are entertaining
the idea that Prance might demand an
armistice?
Reynaud answered:
eirtainly not i*aut it is necessary
to impress the British in ordpr to get
more military help from themP
According to the calculation of certain supporters, first
of the EDO and then of WW, these treaties should be ratified
by the Assetbly so as to provoke the offer of adequate
?
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79.
concessions from Moscow and thereby assure the success of a
negotiation at the summit. This, in turn, would permit the
Senate to refuse the ratification of the one or the other
framework for the rearmament of Western Germany, and in this
way the Assembly, in its turn, would be enabled to take back
its consent. To ratify an agreement is not felt to be equal
to putting it into operation. Thus, in the debate on WEU,
as a major opponent of the rearmament of Western Germany
(Jules Moch) hinted:
I shall now express fully what I have
in mind. There are many in this
Assembly, I am sure, who are in favor
of ratification only on the condition
that immediately after it the most
energetic efforts be made on the
highest level to avoid any dangerous
sequels to the act of ratification,4
the "dangerous sequels" being the application of the
measure one is about to vote for. In the words of a. more
extreme enemy of the remilitarization of Western Germany
(Adolphe Aumeran):
I read and hear every day the following
argument: We have ahead of us two years
before the German divisions will be
ready. We thus dispose of sufficient
time to act in such a fashion that the
rearmament of Germany will not be
necessary anymore. This is the hope
of one part of our Assembly which is
about to ratify the Paris Agreements,
because it believes that, in the last
instance, Germany will not be rearmed.5
A politician on the other side of the "European" barri-
cade (Pierre-Henri Teitgen) confirmed the existence of those
who
...declare that one should ratify only
on condition of not translating the
measures involved into reality.6
That which appears in such a context 'on first sight as an
approach to a major transformation of reality is revealed as
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80.
a simple counter either for the perpetuation of the status
quo, or for a change in a quite different direction.
In similar fashion, one may draw back near the end of an
operation in order to provoke concessions on the part of
those who wish it to succeed. Before the London Agreement
prefiguring the WEU treaty was approved by the Assembly with
a comfortable margin, the atmosphere had, one day (October 8,
1954), become worse. But this development appeared as
favorable to certain parliamentarians who were in favor of
WEU passing:
Many deputies maintained that the
vote of the London Agreement with a
reduced majority would not neces-
sarily be a bad thing. M. Mendes-
France would then be able, when
negotiating with our partners, to
stress that serious obstacles remain
to be overcome in the Assembly.7
Announcing to the Prime Minister the abstention of his
group (the Christian Democrats) in the vote on the London
Agreement, a political leader (Pierre Pflimlin) made this
calculation public:
Perhaps our abstention will, after all,
be more useful to you than a favorable
vote would be. It will fortify your
position in the difficult negotiations
which you are going to pursue, as it
will permit you to prove to your
interlocutors that there persist in
the French Parliament feelings of
disquiet which should be dissipated,
and a potential favorable to the new
arrangements on which it should be
possible for you to draw.8
.Not only is it often viewed as necessary that one
approaCh a certain change in order to be able to avoid it,
it may also appear indispensable to go rather far in an
enterprise which seems to aim at a major modification of the
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81.
status quo, merely in order to discover the shape of things
as they are: an action which at first sight looks like an
event in its own right is in reality nothing but a reconnais-
sance-operation. At least, once the action has failed, it is
possible to pretend that this was its true nature. .For often
it seems impracticable to evaluate the actual relationship of
forces with the mere aid of observation and calculation; the
reconnaissance operation which dons the mask of real action,
which proceeds "in the heat" of events, is felt to be a much
more powerful instrument of intelligence than the intellectual
activity of collecting data and drawing inferences from them.
When Georges Bidault tried to form a government after the
resignation of Antoine Pinay towards the end of 1952, he
explained his endeavor in a formula which became famous.
Actually, he said, the cupboard, in which the treaty estab-
lishing EDC rested since it was signed seven months ago, was
closed; one did not know whether that cupboard contained a
living organism or a corpse; in order to find out, it was
necessary to open it; that was all he wanted to do. Simi-
larly, an action of the dimensions of the Suez expedition
could be presented, after it had failed, as a reconnaissance
operation; and by no means did this always appear as a
clumsy excuse.
"As to the government," a journalist
noted a few weeks after the retreat of
the French and the British, "it does
not see how one could in good faith
doubt the results of the action. The
government claims for itself the merit
...of having opened the eyes of the
entire world...to certain important
facts of international politics which
had been hidden before then."9 -
A prominent parliamentarian referred to this affirmation with
at least an appearance of respect:
Abscesses have been opened, veils have
been torn apart, hypocrisies unmasked
....The presence of Soviet arms and
Soviet agents in the Middle East can
, now-no longer be denied by those who
- did not want to see them before.10
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82.
A deputy who was skeptical about the value of the
enterprise conceded that
...the expedition to Egypt has made it
possible...to bring into full light
what was being prepared in darkness. It
justifies itself by having reached
objectives at which it did not aim.11
On the parliamentary rostrum only one person dissented
from the dogma of the "hot" pursuit of intelligence.
Recalling that according to the official thesis "the Suez
operation is nothing but an episode in the intelligence war,"
he asked,
...whether it would not have been
possible to pay a smaller price for
ascertaining the facts in question,
an operation which would seem to be
much more in the domain of intelli-
gence services than in that of
military action.12
In a similar vein the President of the Republic seems to
have asked himself during the two ministerial crises of 1957
whether it might not be possible to ascertain the presence
or the absence of certain majorities in the Assembly with
smaller expenditures of time and energy than had become
usual; whether one could not substitute the "cold" collection
of evidence by the President himself, or by a person charged
by him with a "mission of information," for the "hot"
procedure in which one politician after the other is
"consulted," then "sounded out" as to whether he would agree
to try to form a government, then "designated" as a candidate
for the premiership, and sometimes refused by the Assembly.
(See-table on p. 83.)
Might it not be possible to avoid these habitual detours
of the ministerial crisis and rather determine immediately
the person most likely to succeed? It was with this question
in mind that the President of the Republic, after the. fall of
the Mollet government in the spring of 1957, entrusted a
"mission of information" to a leader (Rent Pleven) who, at its
end, affirmed that "the efforts of the last days have produced
a certain number of positive elements for the determination
of a program whiCh might serve as a base for an agreement
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TABLE
?
ii I
Ministerial ciiseS,,sumMe,r
length of
number of candidates
number of
of.1951 -- spring of 1958
crisis
who seriously con-
candidates
(days)
sidered an attempt
refused by
R - resigned
I "inVeSted"
to form a government,
but gave up
the Assem-
bly
Henri Queuille
R 10 July .
1951
Rene Pleven
I 8 August
1951
28
1
2
Rene Pleven
R 7 January
1952
Edgar Faure .
I 17 January
1952
9
0
0
Edgar Faure
R 29 February
1952
Antoine Pinay
I 7 March
1952
6
1
0
Antoine Plnay
R 23 December
1952
Rene Mayer
I 6 January
1953
13
2
0
Ren?ayer
R 21 May
1953
Joseph Laniel
I 26 June
1953
35
1
4
Joseph Laniel
R 12 June
1954
Pierre Mendes-
France
I 17 June
1954
4
0
0
Pierre Mendes-
France
R '6 February
1955
'Edgar Faure
I 23 February
1955
16
2
1
-Edgar Faure
R 24 January
1956
Guy Mollet
I 1 February
1956
7
0
Guy Mbllet
R 21 May
1957
Maurice Bourges-
Maunoury
I 12 June
1957
21
1
0
00 ON
(,l
Maurice Bourges-
.
? ON I
R .30 SepteMber
1957
UiI 1N)
/-1
,Maunoury
Felix Gaillard
I 5 November
1957
35
1
2
00 CO
Felix Gaillard R 16 April
1958
Pierre Pflimlin I 14 May
1958
27
2
0
0
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84.
between the parties"13 -- an agreement which, in this revo-
lutionary conception, would precede the choice of a candi-
date for the premiership; a candidate who was designated
after the agreement had been reached would be sure to be
"invested." However, nothing came of this design because
two groups (the Socialists and the Moderates) declared,
faithful to traditions, that in order to be able to commit
themselves they needed the appearance of an individual who
had been "sounded out" as to whether he would want to be a
candidate for the premiership, or even been "designated" as
such. It thus became necessary to "sound out" a politician
(Pierre Pflimlin), who was promptly prevented by one of the
two groups who had insisted on such a person being chosen
(the Socialists) from pursuing any farther his attempts to
become Premier. At this point the crisis returned to its
usual pattern.
A similar sequence of events had already occurred three
years earlier, on the occasion of the first ministerial
crisis during the tenure of President Coty. At the beginning
of this crisis, a journalist observed:
M. Coty would like to try another
procedure than that utilized by M.
Vincent Auriol. The strategy of
M. Auriol was to have all the various
possible mortgages lifted in turn by
the Assembly itself. M. Coty would
like to discuss the situation with
the various groups, perhaps for as
long as several days, before desig-
nating a candidate, hoping that the
chosen one would then be sure to be
invested. Concretely, each group
would be asked to indicate how many
votes it was ready to deliver in
favor of the various possible candi-
dates and to undertake definite
obligations in this regard. Thus,
M. Coty hopes to ascertain the
individual who could be invested.14
However, several groups answered
"that they could indicate their
reactions only to a candidate who had
_accepted the request to ascertain
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85.
whether he would be willing to be
designated to form the new govern-
ment."15
One of the reasons for this behavior lies in the diffi-
culties a leader is likely to encounter when he ventures to
predict the reactions of the members of his group to a
certain candidate. If this prediction should become known
to them -- and it seems peculiarly difficult to keep secrets
in parliament -- this fact itself would be likely to make it
erroneous, as the rank-and-file of a group woulitend to
react strongly against being made objects of estimates issued
about them by their leaders. Instances of wrong predictions
made by leaders about the behavior of their "troops" are not
lacking. After the Assembly, in the fall of 1957, had
refused to invest Antoine Pinay, he seems to have predicted
and promised to Guy Mollet, in case he were to become a
candidate for the premiership, a number of Moderate absten-
tions sufficient to get Mollet invested. Mollet presented
himself, in consequence of this, and was severely rebuffed by
the Assembly, as the Moderates voted against him almost
unanimously, Pinay included. Those who refused to believe
that Pinay had wanted to lead Mollet into a trap saw in this
sequence of events a good illustration of how unforeseeable
parliamentary actions are, and how necessary therefore those
detours which only outsiders call useless. Those acquainted
with parliament know that what is "impossible on paper" may
"succeed in an actual meeting"; that what appears assured by
calculations may fail at the moment of decision.
. The technique which we have been considering consists in
beginning an action not in order to complete it, but rather
to reveal the hidden substance of the existing situation. A
related maneuver is that in which one wants to show up the
defects of a certain "solution" which appears tempting as long
as it remains just an idea, but which, it is expected, will
evoke negative reactions when it materializes to a certain
degree. Then, in a great phrase, one will have "lifted the
mortgage" of the policy in question; the road will have been
"cleared" for pursuing another policy on behalf of which the
operation was undertaken.
!II In a first variant of this maneuver one wants to show
that there is no parliamentary majority for a certain policy,
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86. -
or a certain alliance, to which some aspire. Thus, in a
fully !developed ministerial crisis, SUCh as that of the
spring of 1953 or that of the autumn of 1957, the President
of the Republic, it is widely believed within the political
class, "consults" certain personages in order to show that
they refuse the status of "considering 'whether to accept the
designation of candidate to the premiership"; he induces
others to accept that status so as to demonstrate that?they
will finally refuse the designation of candidates to the
premidtship; he bestows that designation so that the
Assembly's refusal to invest the candidate may prove his
personality or political formula to be, at that moment,
unacceptable.
Those who work in favor of such an operation may openly
admit that they count on the failure which constitutes the
essence of the maneuver. When in 1957 two governments with
socialist participation had been overthrown by the Moderates,
the Socialists insisted that a Moderate candidate for the
premiership present himself before the Assembly so that he
might be shown to be unwelcome. While, as we shall see later,
the. Moderates in that situation wanted the failure of the
Socialists in economic policy to be vividly shown, the
Socialists wanted to impose upon the Moderates a conduct
which would lead to the tangible proof of their political
failure.
"Both groups," a journalist noted,
"want a public demonstration, not
simply a tacit recognition, of the
difficulties encountered by the
other and of the other's impotence
to arrive at a. solution."16
But the promoters of an act of "lifting the mortgage"
may also associate themselves publicly with the enterprise
which they expect and desire to be condemned to failure.
Thus, the Premier, Edgar Faure, undertook in the summer of
1955 a series of actions destined, he said, to avoid the
return to the Moroccan throne of the Sultan Ben Yousief whom
the Frerich authorities had deposed two years before. -However,
both on-the Right and on the Left one frequently attributed
to him the design of wanting to demonstrate, by the very
failure of his actions, that this return was inevitable.
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87.
"M. Edgar Faure," a journalist
explained, "practices a curious
method of government: he publicly
affirms positions which he knows
to be untenable, and he abandons
them a few weeks later, when he
has proved their absurdity to his
satisfaction. "17
Those who attempt a "lifting of the mortgage" may also
take up both attitudes at the same time: they may affirm to
some that they want to aid in a birth, and explain to others
that they wish to rovoke an abortion. Doin: both of these
things may be indispensable for creating a majority. T e
classical case occurred on June 16, 1940, when Camille
Chautemps united a large majority of the Council of Ministers
on his proposal to ask the German government for the con-
ditions of an armistice. This majority comprised, on the one
hand, those who desired a cessation of hostilities, whether
they expected that the German armistice conditions would be
acceptable, or whether they saw in contact with the Germans
the beginning of an irreversible process which would lead to
the end of the war. This group, however, was but a minority
in the Council of Ministers. It was joined by those who
considered the move suggested by Chautemps as the only means
to assure the continuation of the war.
?
For this second group the "lifting of the mortgage"
served, as it often happens, the purpose of continuing a
policy alreadybeing pursued: to go in the direction of a
change (to examine the German armistice conditions) would
show how undesirable the change would be (how inadmissible
these conditions were), and this in turn, would reinforce the
will to maintain the existing policy. It was in this vein
that Camille Chautemps addressed himself to the Premier,
Paul Reynaud, in a Council of Ministers meeting:
You ask us to leave France. We do not
refuse. But if the government is ready
to follow you to North Africa, it is
also necessary that it be covered with
regard to public opinion. I am convinced
that the German armistice conditions will
be unacceptable, but it is necessary to
demonstrate that. In order to do this,
one must ask for them. When this
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88.
demonstration has been made, the
French people will understand that
there was no choice for the govern-
ment but to leave France, and all
ydur ministers will follow you to
North Africa. Let us, therefore,
ask the Germans about their
c6bditions.18
When the Premier, adopting this calculation, explained
it at length to an American diplomat (Anthony Drexel-Biddle),
the American was at first "disconcerted by so much subtlety."
Subsequently, "more and more surprised," he asked Paul
Reynaud how he had found it possible to consent to an
"initiative as dangerous as this one." The Premier repeated
the reasoning of Chautemps, adding: "I only hope...that the
German conditions will not be too moderate."19 If this hope
were fulfilled, Reynaud would have "demonstrated" by a
"parliamentary fact'," or its equivalent in an emergency, a
vote in the Council of Ministers, that there was no majority
for a cessation of hostilities on the only conditions offered.
As according to the parliamentary custom, in the words of a
journalist, "the continuation of the existing majority ...is
not possible unless the proof is furnished that there is no
other, "20 this maneuver should have ensured the continuation
of the war, -a policy to which one would have resigned oneself
because it would have been shown that there was no other.
In the autumn of 1955 the Premier, Edgar Faure, wished
to maintain the electoral law of 1951 for the general elections
which he wanted held in the near future. In order to attain
this aim, he fostered moves in favor of various other electoral
laws, each of which was rejected by the Assembly as the debate
proceeded.
The technique of "lifting the mortgage" may, however,
also be applied to a situation in which one wants to demon-
strate that the continuation of the existing state of affairs
is impossible, rather than inevitable. It was with this aim
in mind that the government, in the summer of 1955, imposed
on the Sultan Ben Arafa, who had been put on the throne of
Morocco two years before by the French authorities, the task
of forming an administration in Rabat which would be suffi-
ciently "representative"; a task in which he was expected to
fail. But, it was then often said in the political class,
the Premier felt that this "experiment" was indispensable for
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89.
convincing certain ministers and parliamentarians that a new
approach to the "dynastic" problem of Morocco could no longer
be avoided.
- If the maneuver of "lifting the mortgage" may be applied
to favor "immobilism" at the expense of change; or change
against perseverance, it may also be used by theiroponents
of one kind of change in their struggle against thoie of
another. After the fall of Pierre Mendes-France in the
winter of 1955, the Christian Democrats appeared, in a
customary fashion, somewhat divided between "Right" and "Left"
tendencies. At that point Antoine Pinay, widely viewed as
the incarnation of the Right, tried to form a government.
According to a journalist,
The Christian Democrats are not opposed
to M. Pinay....But the idea of passing
without transition from Mendes to Pinay
makes them uncomfortable; they would
like an effort to be made first to form
a government with the Socialists. If it
could be proved that it is impossible to
obtain the Socialists' participation or
support...then the Christian Democrats
would feel freer in relation to Pinay .21
It follows from the many uses of the technique here
described that several and incompatible attempts to apply it
will frequently be going on at the same time. Thus, in the
fall of 1957, the Moderates and the Socialists insisted,
respectively, on the "lifting of the mortgage" of a second
Mollet government and that of a return to power of Pinay. As
both leaders were, in turn, refused by the Assembly, the
wishes of both groups were satisfied.
That it should seem so easy to prove the impossibility
of this or that policy or personage -- the absence of a
parliamentary majority in its or his favor -- is in part due
to a belief already mentioned: the relationship of the forces
for and against a certain decision is often supposed to shift
in a negative direction as the moment of decision approaches.
Then one passes from the "abstract" to the "concrete" -- for
instance, from a vague idea, in 1950, of putting the military
resources of Western Europe together to de numerous paragraphs
of the Paris treaty of 1952. But as details multiply, so do
reasons for discontent. A "principle" becomes more difficult
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90..
to "swallow" when its diverse "consequences" are formulated
in the language of laws and treaties. To return to the case
of 1940 which has already been analyzed,
"M. Paul Reynaud," explains General de
Gaulle,. "attempted to attain his aim
[of keeping France in the war -- N.L.]
by maneuvering. More particularly, he
wanted the enemy's armistice conditions
to be considered....No doubt he believed
that even those who were in favor of an
armistice would recoil when these
conditions were brought to their
attention."22
How attractive elections by one-member districts have
become since proportional representation was put into effect!
The best way of foiling attempts to return to the one-member
district system is to allow, even to foster, its detailed
consideration by the Assembly. At that point there arises,
for instance, a problem which it is easy to avoid as long as
the system of electing the Assembly via one-member districts
has not yet descended from the heaven of general ideas to the
earth of actual parliamentary work: the problem of "cutting
up" the country into electoral districts. As an enemy of
this system pointed out,
...the problem of "cutting up" is
capital. A certain number of deputies
will accept or reject the system
according to the details of the division
of the country into electoral districts
which will be proposed.23
Thus, the-Premier (Edgar Faure) could be credited in the fall
of 1955 with the design of having the one-member district
system rejected by pushing it along its parliamentary way,
though that way appeared, to the uninitiated, as one leading
to success, given the large number of parliamentarians who in
public expressed themselves as favorable to the system. The
consideration of details would cool the ardor of some who had
been sincerely in its favor, and would give others, who had
merely paid lip service to it, a pretext for changing their
public attitude..
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91.
When the moment of decision draws near and a measure
encounters the difficulties created by the passage from the
"abstract" to the "concrete," the parliamentarians come to
examine their attitudes to the measure more closely, as these
attitudes now appear fraught with more important consequences.
It will often seem inexpedient -- "inelegant" -- not to appear
favorable toward a proposal which is very far from realization.
Those who want it to fail may then push it nearer to reali-
zation so that false supporters may be forced to declare their
enmity.
In more extreme fashion one may want to damage a policy
by truly aiding its realization or a person by aiding his
coming to power. In the variant of the maneuver described
up to now, one leads a person closer to power, or a measure
nearer to its realization, in order to "kill" them the more
effectively before the jump to office or enactment has been
made. In the variant now to be considered, one wishes that
an "experiment" may be pushed to its very end so that this
end may be irrefutably shown to be quite bitter. For the
largest number of partisans of a policy or of a person to
turn away from it or from him in the most thorough and stable
fashion, it is necessary to have seen the policy or the person
at work; there should be no premature interference which
would only furnish the culprit with an alibi. (This maneuver
presupposes -- a point of which one is usually not quite
aware -- that the damages which will flow from the execution
of a certain policy, or the presence in power of a certain
person, will not be irreversible.)
_Having lost the premiership in the winter of 1955,
Pierre Mendes-France appeared, in the following spring, to
gain control over the Radical Party. At its Congress, Edouard
Herriot, perpetual president, aided the victory of Mendes by
submitting a "definitive" resignation and by favoring the new
"directorate" dominated by Mendes. However, this conduct of
Herriot's was often interpreted as expressing a profound
hostility to the new leader: by "putting all responsibilities
into-the hands of Mendes" he supposedly wanted "to drive the
situation to an extreme which would render it untenable."24
__In the words of a deputy (Andre Bettencourt) addressing
himself to a Premier (Guy Mollet), there are in parliament
always those "who support you with the calculation that if
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92.
there is going to be a bankruptcy it better be a crushing one
so that there can be no doubt about who is responsible for
it."25 This is a formula which a politician may even apply
to himself with some shift in nuances. For example, he may
want to continue a policy which he knows to be inexpedient
up to a moment when this fact will become visible to his
followers. Thus, Lon Blum is supposed to have argued in a
Council of Ministers at a time of inflation that
...the workers have not yet understood
that a rise in nominal salaries is
illusory; it is therefore necessary
to continue with the inflation until
they do.26
Such calculations are so often adopted -- or at least
so often suspected -- that one is tempted to apply them to
events in other countries and political systems. At the
moment of the armed intervention of the Soviet Union in
Hungary "one talks a great deal" in the corridors of the
Assembly about the explanation offered by an intelligence
service:
The violent repression of the Hungarian
Revolution is supposed to be the work
of the moderate tendency in the Politburo
which thereby wants to show up the
excesses entailed by the policy of those
who advocate a tough line.27
*
The victims of a maneuver of lifting the mortgage try
to defend themselves in various fashions. They may refuse
to comply -- for instance, by refusing to try to form a
government in a ministerial crisis, explaining that if the
moment, iswell chosen for their adversaries it is, by that
same token, badly chosen for them; and adding that they
would be perfectly willing to make an attempt if certain
other mortgages were lifted first.
But the person or the group on whom one tries to impose
an action which is supposed to turn out as a lifting of a
mortgage may also seize the occasion, either because this
seems to serve his own interest, though the operation, in
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93.
question is viewed as condemned to failure; or because it
appears possible that it is not.
As to the first variant, in the crisis following the
fall of Pierre Mendes-France, the attempt of a Socialist
leader (Christian Pineau) to form a government appeared to
numefOus members of other groups as a useful lifting of a
particular mortgage, that of "reversing the majority" by
bringing the Socialists back into the government. But the
Socialists were impressed by the impact which the speech of
Mendes, when he had unsuccessfully tried to become Premier
in the spring of 1953, had made in the country; and they saw
in the operation a valuable occasion for propaganda while
sharing the general belief that their candidate had no chance
of becoming Premier.
In the second variant named above, a politician, whom
others destined to try and to fail in a crisis, may conceive,
and even execute, the design to succeed, or may succeed
because of the operation of forces outside of his control.
In the crisis produced during the winter of 1952 by the fall
of Rene Pleven, Edgar Faure was asked to try to form a
government merely, it was said, to prepare the way for Henri
Queuille. But he resolved to succeed, and did. A month
later one generally attributed to the President of the
Republic the belief that only Pleven or Queuille could solve
the crisis caused by the fall of Faure. But when Antoine
Pinay_ was called, he, too, refused to heed this indication
went before the Assembly, and was invested in a fashion which
has already been discussed (cf. Chapter 2, p. 61). The
President of the Republic had wanted him to show that a
majority excluding the Socialists but including certain
Gaulligts was impossible. In fact, he proved, the existence
of -such a majority by the very fact of his investiture.
Having been charged with the task of demonstrating that the
Socialists were indispensable, he inaugurated a period of
almost-four years when it came to be taken for granted that
one did not need them to form a majority.
In the fall of 1955, General Boyer de la Tour, Resident
General in Rabat,.refused, for some time, to execute the
government's order that he obtain the departure of the Sultan
Ben Ar-afa, though he was urged to obey by M. de Panafieu, a
high civil-servant attached to the Residence. According to a
journalist, the solution 'came about in the following .fashion
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94.
(and once more the myth would be revealing even if the facts
had been grossly distorted):
One day, at the Rabat racetrack, Panafieu
insisted again. As you are so smart,
answered the Resident [who pretended that
it would be impossible to dislodge the
Sultan -- N.L.], do it yourself. I give
you a free hand. The Resident had not
changed his mind, this was but a maneuver.
He did not believe that Panafieu would
succeed. But he knew that it was necessary
to produce an attempt.28
However, Panafieu succeeded.
If, to take an instance, a Socialist leader ascends the
rostrum of the Assembly in the winter of 1955 as a candidate
for the premiership and is refused, the relationship of
forces in parliament or in the country is not substantially
modified thereby; the slight changes which may occur are
not necessarily to the disadvantage of the unsuccessful
candidate and his party. As is the case with so many other
recurring events in "the house without windows," which seem
vastly important to parliamentarians at the moment at which
they happen, a lifting of the mortgage within the Assembly
has no great impact: it does not greatly affect the
relationship of forces within parliament, nor does it much
influence what goes on in the country or in the world. The
players of the parliamentary game are excited by such events1
which often absorb them, leaving little energy for the
consideration of more "real" problems. But they, too, must
feel that such great occasions in parliament are lacking in
import in a way which only increases the attractiveness of
the gam-E.'
It is this belief which members of the political class,
so centered on what goes on within the Palais Bourbon,
seem to extend to the rest of the world when they use the
maneuver of lifting the mortgage outsidecf their "house."
Often, as we have seen, lifting the mortgage is, within
parliament, a means for assuring the continuation of the
status quo. In the Bathe vein, when Paul Reynaud accepted,
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95.
on June 15, 1940, the proposal made by Camille Chautemps to
ask the Germans for their armistice conditions, he aimed, as
we have seen, at keeping France in the war; and when, after
his resignation the next day, he advised the President of the
Republic to choose Marshal P4tain as his successor, he aimed
at returning to power in the near future:
I recommended Marshal P4tain because, in
a Council of Ministers, I had made him
acknowledge that surrendering our fleet
to Germany...would be an act of cowardice
and a crime....I argued in this way:
...Germany is going to ask for the French
fleet in the armistice. As Marshal P4tain
cannot give it to her after the statement
I made him make in the Council of Ministers,
I am going to return to power....29
In words which recall even more strongly the parliamentary
prototype of this calculation:
...I knew that Marshal Petain was going to
ask the Germans for their conditions. But
asking the Germans what their conditions
were and concluding the armistice were two
quite different things. I hoped that the
German conditions would be unacceptable.
Then, President Lebrun would have called me'
back to power. The Petain government would
have been but an interlude. And we would
have continued the war with redoubled ardor.30
When the Premier resigned, hellas not the only one to
entertain this forecast. He assured Sir Edward Spears that
...the President of the Republic had
asked him to remain at hand...."The
President thought he might resort to me
once more." 31
This is confirmed by an important witness (Yves Bouthillier):
- M. Lebrun wished that Reynaud remain in
France. He had resolved to ask him back
'in case the German conditions were
,c
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96.
unacceptable so that one would have to
break off negotiations with the Germans
and leave continental France.32
Such calculations implied that the distinction between
"asking. for the conditions of an armistice" and "concluding
an armistice," so evident for parliamentarians, would be
equally impressive to the country; that the first act of the
"scenario" proposed by Chautemps would not, by its own
impact, greatly reduce whatever possibilities still were
available to resist the Germans.
In thesummer of 1955 lifting the mortgage of Ben Arafa
was destined, according to a widespread interpretation
accepted by a prominent journalist, to "make M. Triboulet
[an "Arafist" minister -- N.L.] understand that you cannot
base a _policy on fictions [the fiction of the authority of
Ben Arafa N.L.]."33 It was implied that this impact on
a certain sector of parliament could be achieved without
greatly enhancing the strength of the movement in favor of
the deposed Sultan and without leading to a breakdown of the
already insufficient support enjoyed by the new one. Both
these consequences occurred. But this was difficult to
foresee for inhabitants of the Palais Bourbon; for a failure.
of an attempt, say, of Guy Mollet to form a government,
because of the enmity of the Moderates, does not always
improve the chances of Antoine Pinay, nor does it usually
reduce the strength of Guy Mollet himself. True enough, the
French Resident General (Gilbert Grandval) had warned the
government that the mechanisms operative in Moroccan affairs
were rather different. In a letter to the President of the
Republic of August 27, 1955, this high civil servant recalled'
a wire which he had sent the government on the 14th of that
month: -
I stressed that if we made it appear
that we viewed the effort which we
- imposed on Ben Arafa [that of constituting
a "representative government" -- N.L.] as
doomed to fail..., a massive movement
favoring the return of Ben Youssef was
likely to occur...and that any intermediate
- formula was then apt to become inapplicable.34
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97.
Two days later the Resident General asked the government
whether it would not be possible to abandon a procedure which
could only succeed in worsening an already very difficult
situation and in rendering the return of the former Sultan
inevitable. The Premier, Edgar Faure, did not accept this
suggestion. Probably not only because, in his own difficult
relations with parliament, he needed a "demonstration" of the
classical type that Ben Arafa could not be maintained, but
also because for men whose view of politics was determined by
the practices of the Assembly it was, difficult to realize
that one of the "detours" employed widin its precincts in
routine fashion could, outside of them, unleash such major
changes.
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99.
Chapter 4
THE RESOURCES OF TIME
To the members of the French political class it appears
almost always plausible, or even perspicacious, to judge
that "the moment has not yet come" for doing a certain thing
(pp. 99-105). In a ministerial crisis, for instance, the
passage of time usually appears as the decisive factor which
leads to its solution (pp. 105-108). Often each of several
opposing blocs manages to convince itself that time works for
it, which permits everybody to agree on delaying the contentious
decision (p. 110). The French parliamentarian stresses that
an important operation comprises several phases, none of which
can be omitted or hurried (pp. 110-111) and some of which will
stand in apparent contrast to the outcome sought (pp. 111-113).
Those who urge one to proceed rapidly are often suspected of
being covert enemies (pp. 113-114). If a "solution" were made
public too early, it would be apt to fail (pp. 114-115). One
even tends to avoid formulating in one's own mind one's own
objectives too much in advance of the moment at which their
realization begins to seem close (p. 116). The belief that
time will furnish a solution to a difficult problem not in-
frequently seems to mask the desire to delay action until a
situation of force majeure has been brought about (pp. 117-118).
A determination to abstain from action on a certain issue is
frequently necessary to render possible the birth and the
survival of a government (pp. 118-119).
In the course of the debate on WEU in the Assembly the
Premier (Pierre Mendes-France) answered Edouard Herriot, the
"demi-god" who was objecting to the rearmament of Western
Germany:
President Herriot said this afternoon that
before taking such a decision we should grant
ourselves a supplementary period of reflection....
It is, of course, tempting to retard the decision,
to gain a few months....1
When another Premier (Edgar Faure) was defending an
intermediate solution to Mbrocco's "dynastic problems,." he
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100.
justified himself with these words:
The man who talks to you has devoted to the
problem which occupies us many hours of
work, of discussion, of reflection, of doubt,
of angui*h. Ah! how great was the temptation
to wait!'
When objections against the entrance of France into the
common market were raised from various sides of the Assembly,
a former Premier (Paul Reynaud) could attribute to the va;ious
opponents this "common thought": "To govern is to wait."'
According to a satirical weekly, the politician's anguish-
ing dilemma is this:
Do you believe that it is indispensable
to wait, or merely desirable?4
In the myth of the political class, and probably also in
its practice, acts by which a decision is deferred play a
peculiarly important role in political operations. It appears
almost always plausible, or even perspicacious, to judge that
"the moment has not yet come" for doing a certain thing. Thus
a headline of a newspaper announced, during a ministerial crisis:
"The moment has not yet come for me,"
declares M. Pinay.5
It is precisely a thorough knowledge of a situation which,
it is felt, tends to show that it is advisable to wait for the
"opportune" moment -- a rule on which an important group of
politicians in the eighties insisted so much that they came to
be called "Opportunists."
When-it.dOes not seem possible to delay a painful or
risky decision any further, the skill of a master politician
may show .itself in the discovery of a device which will allow
yet one more delay.
The tendency to wait is so strong that it infiltrates into
the very expression of the attitudes which,oppose it. The
Congress of the Radicals in the spring of 1957 addressed to
the government a set of demands and asked that the Premier
answer "without delay" in satisfactory fashion; otherwise the
Radical ministerswere to withdraw from the government.' A few
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101.
weeks-later -- the government having given no answer to the
Radicals and having been in the meantime overthrown by the
Moderates -- a discussion took place between a Radical defending
the preceding government to which he had belonged (Jean Filippi)
and Pierre Mendes-France who attacked it. The Radical Congress,
Filippi argued, "had desired to obtain an answer to its demands
'without delay'; this proves that the Congress had consented
to wait." Mendes had to object: "Not at all; 'without delay'
meant: immediately."
One is determined to "put the factor of time on one's side";
one "believes in the benefits produced by time flowing along
while we are immobile," in the words of a critic of the regime.7
"He who gains time gains everything."
This attitude frequently coexists with a belief in a unique
propitious moment in which decisive action should be taken. If
this moment is not fully utilized, the enterprise one is pursuing
is likely to fail. On the occasion of their recurring riots
French students chant, "The hour is the hour, before the hour
it isn't the hour, after the hour it isn't the hour, the hour
is the hour." All the more is it necessary to examine whether
"the hour" has arrived, but many reasons contribute to one
answer: no, not yet.
"The hour" will not come prior to a certain event which has
not yet occurred! In the fall of 1951,a senator said, "If I had
to describe the attitude almost invariably adopted by our rulers
ever since I have become a parliamentarian, I would say this:
One has waited, one has, not ceased waiting,
one still waits! One waits for the discussion
of the budget; one waits for the vacations,
then for the end of the vacations; recently
one waited for the electoral law, then for the
departmental elections. What is one waiting
for today? Again, for the return of parlia-
ment. Once it has begun its session, one will
wait for the recess. Then one will wait for
the renewal of the officers of the Assembly and
of its committees, after which one will wait
for the elections to the Senate....In the mean-
time one will have waited for the discussion of
the budget, first for its beginning, 'then for '
its end?
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102. -
In the course of the crisis following the resignation of
Antoine.Pinay, a journalist surmised that "there is no chance
of the Socialists entering at present into the government, or
even into its majority." As "an evolution is nevertheless
beginning among them," that party might return to power "in
the course of the legislature"; though in any case,"not be-
fore the municipal elections" of the spring, declared this ob-
server in the middle of the winter.9 Early in 1957, a journal-
ist recalled, on the occasion of the end of the annual debate
on Algeria in the U.N., the successive reasons which had been
given for delaying the adoption of a "political solution" to
the war in Algeria:
After many other events -- the general elections
of January 1956, the formation of a new govern-
ment, the Socialist Congress in Lille, the Radical
Congress, etc. -- the session of the U.N. served
as a pretext....10
According to another variant of this same rule, one ought
not to act before preliminary "studies" have been completed.
But they never seem to come to an end. "One should stop
serving that time-worn pretext: studies are going on, we will
see later," exclaimed a former Governor General of Algeria
(Maurice Viollette) talking about the "reforms" promised
for this territory. ?
Studies have been undertaken for months,
for years, for decades. What a terrib4
pretext for laziness, for cowardice...."
But words similar to those which a candidate for the premier-
ship-(Maurice Bourges-Maunoury) applied to the reform of the
budget -- "thorough studies will aim at working out a long-
range_plan"12 -- continue to be used with reference to most
important "problems."
How could one act decisively at the present moment when
so many "elements of evaluation" are still lacking? How can
one make a decision without knowing "the further development
of events," without being able to say "how things will look?"
The man who had been Minister of Foreign Affairs during the
disastrous period of 1938-1940, Georges Bonnet, finally back
in parliament, recommended the financing of the war in Algeria
by a loan with the following words:
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103.
It has been said that this is an irresponsible
policy. No, it is a policy of waiting...which
is necessary at this time of the year when too
many elements remain unkn9wn for a definitive
decision to be justified.?
Hence, the French parliamentarians weit to_act_in_ order to
utilize the services of time, that great intelligence agent.
. _
Time may produce, for instance, "parliamentary facts" which they
will add to my "files," as it were, on the decision in question.
"You may have noticed," a journalist addressed himself to his
readers in the fall of 1951, "that since the end of the parlia-
mentary vacations the enemies of the government are withholding
attacks against it." He added, "they wait, in order to find
out which majority will finally be secreted by the chanber":
will the majority of the so-called third and fourth force be
reconstituted after its breakup over the law granting subsidies
to Catholic schools?
Two tests...will permit the opponents of the
government to judge this matter and then to
make a decision, first the debate on the
gliding wage scale...and then the discussion
of the budget.14
Similarly, deputies wishing to shorten the life of a
government which had just been formed (by Rend Mayer) supposedly
decided in the winter of 1953 to defer their attack until the
spring for the following reason:
One will then dispose of elements of evaluation
which are lacking today. One will know, more
especially, the fate of EDC. At that moment it
will be easier to pose anew the problem of the
majority.15
During the crisis caused by the fall of the Mollet govern-
ment, the chief of the Radicals of the southwest (Jean Baylet)
proposed to the appropriate Radical committee (the Comitd
Cadillac) the following classic motion:
The Comitd Cadillac decides to adjourn
until it will have received further details
about the development of the crisis.16
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104.
Seventeen years earlier, in the fall of 1940, a politician of
the Third Republic (Anatole DeMonzie) had noted in his diary:
Pechuzal tells me this about the farmers of
the Lot: "They can everything. One ought
to can France and conserve her as long as one
doesn't know how all this is going to end.'17
The member of the French political class seems to say to him-
self: Acting as late as possiblej I shall be the last to make
a decision, which I can then determine on the basis of my know-
ledge of how everybody else has acted.
I feel I have the right to know what the
others are doing before laying down my
own hand. 18
This explanation of his conduct is supposed to have been given
by a politician whose knowledge of the game must have been good
since he obtained the presidency of the Republic (Vincent
Auriol). The desire to be "the last to play" manifests itself
frequently. When the Laniel government was in its agony,
...the debate on Indochina, which many had
so often demanded, had to be deferred from
yesterday afternoon until today because
speakers were lacking. Everybody desired
to speak last, and almost everyone insisted
on speaking after the Foreign Minister.19
Similarly, at a meeting of the Cadillac Committee of the
Radicals after the fall of the Mallet government, an important
personage (Jean Baylet) opposed the Radicals who wanted to dis-
close:their attitude toward the candidate who was then seeking
the premiership:
In any case, let us avoid precipitation and In
wait for the Socialists to take a stand first!'"
It is by acting in this way that the capacity to utilize others
for one's own interests can be maximized.
No, my dear friend, this is not the moment to undertake
the action you suggest: the situation has not yet sufficiently
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105.
matured; zive it some time to come to a head -- this is a
typical reaction of experienced politicians to the eager layman.
And this was the doctrine, both simple and mysterious, which.
was attributed, during the first decade of the Fourth Republic,
to Henri Queuille and, during the period of Vichy, to Marshal
Pdtain. Toward the end of October 1942, Pierre Pucheu, still
a young man, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supdrieure, who,
after having been an executive in heavy industry, had become
Minister of the Interior, submitted to the Marshal a plan for
the re-entry of France into the war on the side of the Allies:
He gave me to understand that I had been carried
away by my youth and by the vivacity of my tempera-
ment: my proposals were essentially just, but
they presupposed certain developments of the war
which would materialize only during the next few
years. It was necessary to let events mature.21
In a ministerial crisis the passage of time usually appears
as the decisive factor which leads to its .solution. If the
public does not understand why crises take so long, the special-
ist knows that they would be insoluble if they did not. The
crisis continues as long as groups, cliques, individuals
confront each other with incompatible demands. How can they
be made to give way? By time, and time operates in several
ways. First, the game of crisis, which begins as an exciting
holiday, gets to be fatiguing. Second, as attempts to resolve
the crisis by various parliamentary combinations multiply with
the prolongation of the crisis, the limits of what every party
(or clique or individual) may be capable of attaining become
more clearly visible and the interest in further experimentation
is reduced. Third, the lengthening of the "vacations of power"
evokes apprehensions of a "crisis of the regime." One begins
to fear that the machinery of government might be out of order
for good; and one imagines that the public may replace its
vaguely contemptuous indifference toward the "circus" of
parliament by active hostility against the "system." Also
other difficulties, say, in the sphere of foreign or economic
affairs come to be expected. Whether these are real fears or
not, it is always acceptable to justify an abatement of one's
demands by such considerations. In all these ways, in each of
which time is of the essence, the positions taken up by the
various contestants are finally moderated, and the crisis is
resolved.
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Those who are experienced in crises foresee the operation
of this mechanism when one is still in the darkest part of the
"tunnel." After one week of crisis a journalist held that
"it has not lasted long enough for imperious necessity to make
the parliamentary groups disregard their positions of principle
[sic] ."22 At the moment at which this estimate was made a
politician reiterated a demand of his group which presented a
major difficulty in solving the crisis:
The Christian Democrats, affirms Paul Coste-
Floret in the corridors of the Assembly, will
participate only if the Socialists participate.
But he added:
We will certainly not give in on this demand
before the fourth candidature for the premier-
ship! 23
As, in a popular type of French joke, the man from
Marseilles, about to start a fight in a raging fury, expects
that others will restrain him, the parliamentarian, in his phase
of intransigence, reassures those around him that this phase
will not last forever. At such a point of a crisis, a minister
of a fallen government who was rather sure to be taken into the
next one (Maurice Faure) explained:
The crisis will end on the day my station-
master in Cahors asks me: 'So there is really
no way of resolving things?' That day the
-votes in favor of a candidate for the premier-
ship will fall into the urns by themselves.24
At thebeginning .of the next crisis the refusal of the
leader of a- group (Guy Mollet) to attempt to form the new
government made a journalist say:
To say 'no' now does not exclude a later
:'yes' under the pressure of grave events.25
But, as we have mentioned, the very prolongation of the
crisis will provide a "grave event" if the world outside of
the Palais Bourbon does not produce one of its own.
Before time has done its work one is fussy about candidates
for the premiership, and the measures they propose. Suddenly,
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the feeling that the crisis must be brought to an end, never
mind how, becomes dominant. In the words of a journalist,
One enters into the fourth week of the crisis
when...any outsider become a likely victor.26
After five weeks of crisis a parliamentarian, maintaining that
"public opinion demands a government," affirmed:
At the point which we have reached the
Assembly is resigned to investing anybody
(laughter and agitation).27
Such an "anybody" (Maurice Bourges-Maunoury) may look for
the justification of his bid for power not only, or not even
mainly, in the merits of the policies which he proposes, but
also, and above all, in the necessity of bringing the crisis
to an end:
Monsieur le President, Mesdames, Messieurs, I
am presenting myself before you in a political
situation which I know to be exceedingly diffi-
cult. But I am conscious of the dangers which
a prolongation of the vacancy of government would
entail. 28
Ah opponent of the policies proposed by a candidate for
the premiership may justify his decision to vote for him in
a similar fashion. Thus a parliamentarian (Aim e Paquet)
declared, in the name of his group (the Moderates):
We do not want to prolong the vacancy of
government any further. Though we have a
thousand reasons to vote against this govern-
ment or to abstain, we shall, for this reason
alone, vote in its favorA so that France may
have a government again.49
This is all the more so since to the various apprehensions
already mentioned which the lengthening of a crisis arouses
there is added, for each group, the fear that the other groups
may succeed in making it appear responsible for the prolonged
impossibility of forming a government. A parliamentarian
(Robert Prigent) explained the agreement of his group (the
Christian Democrats) to the formation of a government (that
of Joseph Laniel) which did not quite correspond to its wishes:
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108.
'It had become impossible for the Christian
Democrats to continue what one would have
called "a massacre."30
Four years later a government (that of Maurice Bourges-
Maunoury) could be formed after three weeks of crisis, because,
in the words of a journalist, a group (the Moderate 0 was seized
by "the fear of being held responsible for the prolongation of
the crisis after having been responsible for its outbreak."31
Who is_going to be the first to succumb to the pressure of
time? At the beginning of a crisis one tends to believe that
it will be the other. When the Mollet government fell, "numerous"
Socialists counted on an "endless crisis" with "multiple candi-
datures" so_as to reach "a satisfactory solution," and "we have
heard leaders of the Christian Democrats reason in the same
way."32 "There are," remarked a parliamentarian, "races where
the point is to be slow and which one must have the skill to
win. "33
Thus, the chances of the first personages whom the Presi-
dent of the Republic asks to form a government, once the crisis
has broken out, are slight -- though they may take comfort in
recalling spectacular exceptions such as Antoine Pinay and
Pierre Mendes-France, who made their attempts right at the
beginning of a crisis and succeeded.
In the precarious position of having been asked to form a
zovernment-early in a crisis)the French parliamentarian can
always try to put some time on his side by proceeding slowly.
Thus, when Rend Pleven fell in the winter of 1952, Edgar Faure,
"called too soon," to "resolve a crisis which WAS quite unripe,"
adopted, according to a journalist, a tactic which "consisted
in not gapg. before the Assembly too soon." Hence, "he does
not intend to hasten the conclusion of his conversations."34
A day later, "most of the groups reproach M. Edgar Faure with
drawing things out.. .and with attempting to get the better of
his adversaries by tiring them out."35
Or, the French parliamentarian may, if he is in a position
to do so, suggest to the President of the Republic to call him
a bit 1ater. A journalist described the preliminaries to the
President's calling on Georges Bidault in the long crisis of the
spring of 1453 after Paul Reynaud and Pierre Mendes-France had
failed:
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109.
The leader of the Christian Democrats...had
already been approached by the President of
the Republic last week, after the failure of
M. Paul Reynaud. He had then asked that another
phase be interposed before making his attempt
to form the government.36
This was confirmed by another journalist, according to
whom Georges Bidault, approached at the moment just mentioned,
"felt that the situation was then not sufficiently ripe for
him to try his luck seriously, and indicated that he would
prefer a Radical to precede him."37
Such a refusal may apply not only to the initial phase
of the crisis, but to the entire beginning period of a legis-
lature. A leader (Henri Queuille) supposedly declined the
offer to form the first government after the elections of
June 1951, explaining to the President of the Republic:
I am a physician, and above all a veterinarian.
Hence, I leave it to others to take care of the
infantile disease with which this Assembly of
young dogs is presently going to be afflicted....
I am reserving myself for the fal1.38
The belief that the pressure of time will make the enemy
succumb before it gets the better of me is operative not only
in parliament: An observer, recalling the "phony war," noted,
.After a few months all of France was
persuaded that we would wear the enemy
out, that they would be fed up ,with .
waiting well before ourselves.'/
This belief in a superior national capacity to wait may be
combined with the imputation to the opponent of a slowness
that contrasts with the French rapidity of movement. Thus,
a Premier (Edgar Faure), justifying his decision to do some-
thing-about the "dynastic problem" in Morocco, noted that
...the only position which one can oppose to
ours consists in saying: let us wait! In
Morocco we Are in the Orient, we will see later!
Perhaps things will settle down, persons who
now demand a great deal may become less exacting
after some time.40
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110.,
For time is powerful. A politician, Paul Reynaud, aspired,
at the age of 78, to enter the Academie Francaise, but knew
that his election was being opposed by a member with whom he
had been in conflict in .the past, General Weygand, who was 90
years old. "I shall wait," proclaimed Reynaud.
Often each of several opposing blocs manages to convince
itself that time works for it alone -- which permits everybody
to agree on delaying the contested decision. This was for a
long time the case in the matter of determining the date on
which the Assembly would decide on the treaty instituting a
European Defense Community. Between the spring of 1952, when
the treaty was signed, and the summer of 1954, when its ratifi-
cation was rejected, the choice of the date at which parliament
would be called upon to decide the issue constituted one of
the major problems of French politics. But it was also one on
which disagreements were not nearly as profound as they were
on the treaty itself. For, as a journalist pointed out in the
spring_of 1953 when a "European" (Rene Mayer) was Premier,
among the opponents of the treaty "one counts on the passage
of time, expecting that it will harden resistance to it. Rene
Mayer adopts the same tactic, but in his case with the conviction
that the weeks and the months will weaken hostility to the
treaty and that ratification will have become ripe next fall."
Thus, "one is led to ask" that capital question: "For whom is
time working?" 41- To one's own advantage, seems to be the most
convincing answer; facts to the contrary must be rather in-
controvertible for that faith to be shattered. After almost
three years of operations in Algeria an eminent parliamentarian
(Maurice Schumann)affirmed:
It seems that an Algerian consciousness [common
to Europeans and Moslems N.L.] begins to
form itself...All that it needs is time to
develop and to express itself. In the last
analysis, the struggle in Algeria is for time.
This is so true that the aim of our enemies
- is to stir up the. world against us so that we
should be refused time...i2 last, to hold out,
is our only trump card
Members of the political class seem to be convinced that an
'important operation, whether in politics or elsewhere, consists
of several phases, that each of them requires a certain amount
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111.
of time for its correct execution, and that none can be omitted,
or hurried, without endangering the success of the enterprise.
First of all, "the terrain" must be "cleared." This requires
many complicated operations at the end of which one can say,
in the words of the Premier (Edgar Faure) at the beginning of
the second part of the Franco-Moroccan conference at Aix-les-
Bains:
The terrain is now cleared, and I begin to
see the outlines of a solution.43
For a ministerial crisis to be resolved it is often neces-
sary that several candidates for the premiership form a "relay";
and the effort of each of them may, in his mind, be divided in-
to several phases. "Today," declared such a candidate (Pierre
Pflimlin), "we are in the phase of political exploration; to-
morrow the phase of information will begin."44 He was going
to fail; but one would, it is generally felt, be showing one's
incomprehension of politics if he were to infer from that
failure that his effort had been useless. Until a proof to
the contrary is furnished -- and it is difficult to do that --
it must rather be assumed that he has "made the crisis advance";
for the moment, for the benefit of others. But in a not too
remote future they will, he may hope, "send the elevator back
to him." (Many French elevators cannot be summoned to an upper
floor by somebody who wants to use them for going down, but
may be sent up from below.) A week later the candidate who
was to succeed (Maurice Bourges-Maunoury) did not fail to
allude to this typical situation, announcing with justified
assurance:
I shall proceed as quickly as possible in the
accomplishment of my mission, my work having
been facilitated by the efforts of those who
preceded me.45
A variety of processes -- e.g., the one in which a
majority "emerges" in a new Assembly, or the delicate operation
known as "reversal of the majority" -- are expected to include
phases which stand in contrast to the outcome sought. When a
Moderate (Paul Reynaud) tried to become Premier at the beginning
of the long crisis in the spring of 1953, one of his "principal
trump cards," according to a journalist, was "the fact that the
Left desires for the present a Premier of the Right...Con-
versations are now going on with a view to the formation of
an alternative majority of the Left Center, a majority which
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112.
might take power a year from now."46 One month later, and
still. in the same crisis, another journalist, explaining the
refusal of the Christian Democrats to accept Antoine Pinay,
another man of the Right, as Premier, advanced a related
hypothesis:
The Christian Democrats still hope to achieve
one day the regrouping of the Left Center
which they desire. Though this is a remote
goal, nothing should be done, they feel, to
render its realization impossible. A govern-
ment too much oriented on the Right would
involve that risk. If a transition be neces-
sary before the regrouping of the Left Center
is accomplished, it must be provided by a man
of the Center.47
A few months later, the Laniel government having been consti-
tuted in the meantime, a newspaper predicted the return of
the Socialists to the government according to the following
schema:
In a first phase they will replace the Gaullist
ministers in the government and the Gaullist
deputies in the majority. Then, next spring,
they will impose M. Vincent Auriol, whose
mandate as President of the Republic will have
expired, as head of a large ministry of the
union between the Left groups.48
Whatever the content 'Of the calculation, the insistence on a
plurality of phases remains:
If it is inconceivable that the Socialists
become at one stroke the leaders of the
majority and take the direction of the govern-
ment, it is possible for such an operation to
be attempted in two phases.49
As so many formalities are involved in a major political
operation, a great deal of time is required. Thus, a journal-
ist made the following observation, still about the planned
reversal of majority" in the second legislature:
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113.
The declarations made by Messrs. Vincent Auriol
and Guy Mollet as well as the speeches at the
National Council of the Christian Democrats
stressed the return of the Socialists to the
majority in the near -- or rather the remote
future. That both the Socialists and the
Christian Democrats keep silent about the matter
of subsidies to Catholic schools indicates...
that such a regrouping is no longer impossible
within the present legislature.5u
When a major innovation is proposed -- whether it be the
EDC, the common market, or the "framework law" for Algeria --
opponents appear who disclaim radical enmity to the measure
-envisaged and merely ask for limited concessions. It is then
likely that it will be strongly demanded that the innovation
in question be "spread out" through time: that the status
alo. be maintained for a certain limited period; that several
phases must be completed before the new state of affairs be
fully introduced; and that clauses be added which might permit
one to stop for a longer time on the way, or even to return to:
an earlier phase. In a debate of this kind a parliamentarianl
said,
There is a notion which might permit the
attenuation of certain difficulties and
might make it easier to pass certain
critical points: the notion of stages.
The arrangement which I suggest would...
.provide certain stages, certain phases, ,
certain delays.51
If wise and considered slowness is likely to succeed, rude
and" madprecipitation is likely to provoke a catastrophe. One
is frequently obsessed by the questions: Is it not too early
to-act? Am I not proceeding too quickly? Let us not press
the movement too brusquely! Those who urge rapid proceedings
are likely to be suspected of acting with the aim of sabotagei
In the course of the long ministerial crisis in the spring of
1953 with its unprecedented succession of four candidates
_for the premiership who were rejected by the Assembly one
after the other, this intention was frequently attributed to
.the-President of the Republic in the corridors of the Assembly.
He was said to,be anxious for the political situation to
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114.
deteriorate even further so as to increase the chance of having
his tenure as President of the Republic being followed by a
premiership in the name of "the public weal," following the
precedents of Raymond Poincard and of Gaston Doumergue. As to
the person upon whom he called first, Paul Reynaud, and who ?
tied his candidature to a proposal for a reform of the consti-
tution, a journalist declared after one month of crisis:
If he were to present himself today with the
plan which he suggested three weeks ago and
which suffered from being issued too early,
Paul Reynaud would be understood and perhaps
followed. 52
Another journalist remarked about the next candidate before
his failure, "that the Machiavellis who are behind political
events have only called upon M. Mendes-France in order to
drown his chances prematurely...."53
When in the autumn of 1952 an "atmosphere of pre-crisis"
arose in the Assembly, Georges Bidault and Rend Mayer began to
be cited as possible successors of Antoine Pinay, then in power.
A journalist noted that
...this game might well be a counter-maneuver
of the "true friends" of M. Pinay, hoping thus
to spoil the chances of certain potential
candidates.54
For-"it is not certain that one serves a cause" -- or,
we might add, a man -- "by announcing it prematurely," as a
Christian Democrat noted in the spring of 1951. This parlia-
mentarian predicted that the Gaullists would utilize the
"school question" to disintegrate the so-called third force;
he demanded in consequence that the component members of this
force find their own solution to the "school question"; but
he also added that, for the reason just cited, "we do not
desire to propose a particular solution at this point."55
Were one to indicate a "solution" too early, it would be
apt to fail. If those-concerned are given enough time to look
and consider, they are likely to discover disadvantages in what
seemed at first sight wholly attractive. Those who oppose the
. proposed solution will add their "enterprises of demolition"
to the wear and tear of time. Thus a parliamentarian observed
in a debate on the "political solution" of the war in Algeria:
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115.
Perhaps it was not opportune to open, in the
course of this debate, a discussion on the future
statute of Algeria. Clearly, any statute proposed
now, even though only its vague contours may be
indicated, will immediately be torn to pieces in
passionate discussions. 56
Above all, when one approaches a negotiation, it is fatal
to announce beforehand the concessions which he is ready to make,
even if he couples them with those he expects to receive in
return. "To reveal one's hand," to "show it too openly" before
a negotiation begins, is "to render it useless."57
To the extent to which there is a possibility
of negotiating, the first condition is not to
talk about it in advance.58
- It was thus with great reluctance that even "liberal"
elements moved towards indicating the details of a "political
solution" to the Algerian war. A leader of the Christian
Democrats insisted on
...the peril in which the government would
find itself were it to commit the imprudence...
of defining publicly not only the basic prin-
ciples, but also the details of thefuture
statute of Algeria....What would happen if
the government were to show its hand, as one
irresponsibly asks it to do?59
Before the executive committee of the Radicals Pierre
Mendes-France recalled:
There are things which one should not announce
in advance, concessions which one may envisage
but which one must not formulate explicitly .??
"It doesn't seem possible to me," confirmed the leader of
the Socialists, "to give today more details on what the future
organization of Algeria might be. I even think that this would
be dangerous: any proposal formulated today, however far-
- reaching, would soon come to be considered as a simple point
of departure in future discussions," instead of remaining "a
point of arrival."61
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116.
In such circumstances one also tends to avoid formulating
in one's own mind, or secretly, one's objectives too much in
advance of the moment at which their realization begins to seem
close. In the spring of 1956, when much of the French army had
already been transferred to Algeria, a deputy of the Socialist
minority noted this phenomenon:
While the problem of Algeria has taken first
place in the preoccupations of the nation, it
seems that a peculiarly thick fog envelops it.
I am assured that the measures of intimidation .
which the Minister of National Defense has taken
toward journalists or intellectuals guilty of
having expressed their ideas are not really
responsible for this fog.... 62
According to a widespread conviction, a "valid solution"
of a "problem" must be worked out "in the heat of the situation,"
at a moment very close to that in which the communication of the
solution to the public, or at least to the opponent, will estab-
lish it on the political scene. In similar fashion a new
Premier is "born" in the torments of the crisis and not in its
preceding phases when one whiles away pre-crisis leisure time
by noting the composition of the future government on the back
of an envelope.
Various projects for the revision of the constitution which
were discussed early in 1958 attempted to change precisely these
practices of the Assembly in creating and resolving ministerial
crises. It was proposed that a government could be overthrown
only by a majority which would suggest for designation by the '
President of the Republic the name of a new Premier.
Inversely, if external exigencies lead to a detailed public
announcement of how a problem that is not yet "ripe" can be
solved (as happened in 1957 in the case of the "framework law"
for Algeria), the very fact of such an announcement will convince
many parliamentarians that the proposed solution, with all its
details, or rather because of all its details, will never be
executed.
What a contrast between the damage wrought by precipitation
and the benefits to be derived from delay!
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117.
Sometimes it happens that "time itself furnishes the
solution," that "the situation settles down all by itself."
Though such hopes have often been deceived, they always seem
to arise again. At a time when France was renouncing almost
all the demands she had raised in relation to Germany at the
end of the Second War, a Minister of Foreign Affairs (Robert
Schuman) confided to a high functionary of his ministry:
One experience; in office, the happy surprise
of seeing that many difficulties resolve them-
selves spontaneously. 63
They do indeed frequently "resolve themselves" in another
way than that envisaged by Robert Schuman, a way which is less
agreeable but also permits the avoidance, if not of action, then
at least of the torment of choice. The practice of deferring
a decision may lead to nothing but a deterioration of the
situation in various ways. For example, the costs of the
prevailing policies may increase steadily and more and more
options on acceptable alternative policies disappear, so that
nothing remains but a choice between distasteful possibilities.
Finally -- and here the maleficence of time creates a situation
which resembles the benign effect that one falsely expected of
the passage of time: the feeling that a choice is to be made
is abolished by the evident presence of a force majeure which
dictates the conduct to be adopted. Foreseeing the imminent
"abandonment" of the French enclaves in India, a parliamentarian
perceived this connection:
For months, for years perhaps, one has,
patiently waited for the miracle which would
bring things back into good shape; or rather,
I fear, one has waited for a situation in which
we could no more react in any way. 64
'!You have said," a parliamentarian (Edouard Depreux) addressed
the Premier (Edgar Faure) in a debate on Morocco, "that the
solution is still possible today and will no longer be possible
tomorrow. Permit me to tell you that the solution was easy
yesterday but has already become much more difficulttoday
because of your delay."6 A few weeks later an event occurred
(the submission of the Glaoui to the former Sultan) which
subdued the feeling that a choice still had to be made. "It is
too early, we are being told today," noted a former parlia-
mentarian at another occasion; "will it not be suggested at
some time in the future that it is already too late?"66
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118:
That one may really be looking for a situation of force
pajeure is usually effectively masked for those who "wait" by
the excellent reasons they believe they have for waiting.
Several of these reasons have been described above; others
will be indicated now.
In the debate on Morocco which has just been mentioned,
the Premier (Edgar Faure), analyzing the position of his
opponents of the Right, whose "only idea" was to "gain time,"
described their calculation as follows:
Perhaps one could, maneuvering skillfully and
gaining time, obtain the aid of certain nat-
ionalists, not of all, but of some among them,
and find other combinations.?
Thus the time one wants to "gain" is not always felt as a
period of useful inaction on his part. On the contrary, he
may wish to gain time for further maneuvers, always hoping
thereby to hit upon the device which fits the situation exactly.
He may feel most strongly that such a device exists, but not
know of any other means for discovering it than continued
experimentation. Thus, according to a journalist, a "European"
Premier (Rend Mayer), deferring the moment of decision about
EDC, as he believed its passage difficult to assure at the
time, put his trust in "time which sometimes enables one t90
discover a way out of what one believed to be an impasse."'
At the same time the parliamentarian may hope that a
miracle, as it were, may happen during the time which he puts
at its disposal. When Ren?ayer was deferring the decision
on EDC, envisaging time as a resource for maneuvering, there
were, on the other side of the iesue, in the words of a
journalist,
...the eternal gainers of time who simply
want to retard the moment of ratification,
hoping for "something unforeseen."69
- In any case, the period during which a "delicate" decision
is deferred is often time gained for my "presence in power" if
I happen to be a member of the government. Since every measure
of any consequence is apt to create disagreements within the
government or within its "majority;" and since the transition
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119.
from disagreement to the "disintegration" of the government or
to its "assassination" seems easy, a government is tempted to
preserve its existence by inaction. Knowing that "to act is
to die a little," and that "the best means for living a long
time is to play dead," governments tend, in the words of a
leader emerging from some years of opposition, to "sacrifice
all action to the desire for maiAtaining...the coherence of a
majority which nothing unites."' "The experience of the last
few years proves," a Premier (Edgar Faure) proclaimed, "that
one easily agrees on ends, and that it is difficult to agree
on means, except on that of delaying decision."71
An agreement to delay may be a necessary condition for the
formation of a government. After four weeks of crisis (in the
fall of 1957), a leader (Guy Mollet) tried to create a govern-
ment which would promise to concern itself only with three
major problems (Algeria, finances, and the Constitution) in a
first protracted phase of its existence, leaving for an unreal
future three others (the reform of education, that of public
health insurance, and that of the electoral law), on which not
even the semblance of an agreement could be reached.
Behaving in this way, one may leave to one's successor a
problem which one's inaction has rendered even more difficult
,than it was to start with -- except in certain cases in which,
as an observer points out, the disappearance of a minister
also liquidates his worries:
The minister to whom an interpellation has been
.addressed asks that the moment of its discussion
be deferred for a period which is likely to amount
to a few months. At that moment, in all probabi-
lity, the ministry will have fallen. The inter-
pellation will be withdrawn and that will be all.72
The counterpoint to the lucid awareness of how little time
remains is the feeling behind many of the maneuvers discussed
in this chapter: We have lots of time!
This belief is often facilitated by attributing one's
own slow pace to the opponent. In July and in the first half
of August of 1955 the Resident General in Morocco (Gilbert
Grandval) constantly' warned the government that the Moroccan
nationalists were going to act decisively in the near future;
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120.
that the 20th of August, anniversary of the deposition of the
former Sultan, would be capital. But the Premier (Edgar Faure)
answered:
It must not be forgotten that Morocco belongs
to the Orient, where conversations or negotiations
are always very long drawn out.73
Two weeks before the Franco-British expedition to Suez a former
Premier (Paul Reynaud) explained the weakness of the French
reaction during the months since the nationalization of the
Suez Company in this fashion:
Is it not true that while the government knew
in advance about Nasser's strike, it had pre-
pared no counter-measures, neither by itself
nor in accord with our Allies?....And why had
it not prepared any such measures? It seems
because it believed, if we take its own declara-
tions, that Nasser's action would come considerably
later.74
The conviction that an abundance of time is at one's dis-
posal is so strong and widespread that even opponents of the
regime, who wish to repudiate all its ways, may perceive that
they have become assimilated to it. Thus a militant of the
Action Francaise recalled an extreme opposition group within
that extreme organization to which he had belonged in 1937:
.We thought more or less overtly that we still
hada great deal of time before us. Democracy
had accustomed us to its ponderous and intermi-
nable game.75
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121.
Chapter 5
PRECAUTIONS AND ARRANGEMENTS
Members of the political class, weighing the usefulness
of hard and soft procedures (pp. 121-123), mostly decide
against "brutality" in parliamentary conduct (pp.. 123-125).
This involves a heavy use of the following well-known devices
of the art of politics: expressing contradictory attitudes
side by side (p. 127); denying all hostile intent towards
those who may be affected disagreeably (pp. 128-130); not
naming the groups or individuals attacked (pp. 130-131);
accompanying attacks with gestures of appeasement (p. 131);
not taking a stand on "delicate" problems, however important
they may be (pp. 133-138); having recourse to imprecision
(pp. 138-140) and equivocation (pp. 140-144). Thus every-
thing can be "arranged" (pp. 144-145). The supreme activity
in politics is "arbitration" (pp. 145-146). To adopt inter-
mediate lines of action is felt to be necessary in view of
the distribution of voting strength in parliament, but also
to reduce the chances of success outside of that body (pp. 146-
149).
Must one be agreeable or can one with impunity, or even
profit, be brutal? This universal problem appears to assume
particular importance in the souls of the members of the
political class in contemporary France.
In the political class the Radicals play an important
role; among them those from the southwest constitute a major
bloc; and in that bloc the dominant personality has lately
been Jean Baylet, successor to Maurice Sarraut as editor and
publisher of what was the Depgche de Toulouse and has after
the-war become the Depeche du Midi. Here is a journalist's
brief portrait of this politician which corresponds to an
image which many entertain about him:
Just as much as Maurice Sarraut was
supple, M. Jean Baylet is brutal....The
Radical parliamentarians of the southwest
tremble before his outbursts of rage.'
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122.
_Another journalist described a supper in a Paris
restaurant on the night of the fall of the Mollet government
in the spring of 1957. Those present were Robert Lacoste,
the Socialist minister in charge of Algeria -- who had
resigned with the government but was rather sure of returning
with the next one -- an important Moderate parliamentarian
(Louis Jacquinot), and the "non-political" editor of a
newspaper with a large circulation (Pierre Lazareff):
If your correspondent in Algiers
continues to bother me, said the
minister to the journalist, I am
going to have him expelled.2
Informed readers will surmise that Lacoste did not use
the by now rather mild verb embeter, but another one,
emmerder, which is still felt as indecent but begins to be
printed in respectable contexts and is constantly used
between men at work, in politics, and elsewhere. The
informed reader will alsoknow that the rudeness here
attributed to Lacoste is supposed to be customary with him,
and that he is apparently proud of this trait.
In contrast to the portraits of Baylet and Lacoste here
is a journalist's portrait of another leader (Maurice
Schumann), which also corresponds to a widespread image of
that individual:
He is always in agreement with his
interlocutor. When he wants to vote
against a premier or somebody who
wants to become one, he goes to see
him the next day, apologizes for the
"misunderstanding," and explains that
his vote had been cast for him by his
group contrary to his instructions.
Or, again, while in favor of continuing
the war in Indochina to the very end,
when he encounters somebody in favor of
negotiation, he tells him that "we are
really in agreement, for we are going
to find a common position at the expense
of the military!"3
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123.
The opposition of agreeableness and brutality is of
course not a simple one. There are so many ways of being
tough and of being tender in politics (if we agree for a
moment to bisect the rich field of relevant phenomena in
this way), and so many ways of combining both approaches.
But in a first approximation one might say this: In the
Fourth Republic -- and this corresponds no doubt to a
general trend in the West -- a politician must above all be
smooth if he wants to maximize his chances of stable success.
Those who are viewed as "cutting" may gain glory (General de
Gaulle) or celebrity (Pierre Mendes-France) or an unusual
reputation (Rene Mayer, Jules Moch). But in the Fourth
Republic they are likely to be kept away from power, whether
they go into retirement (de Gaulle), into isolation within
the Assembly (Mendes-France), back into big business (Ren4
Mayer), or into the U.N. (Jules Moch).
Most politicians at all levels of the hierarchy are
obsessed by the fear of antagonizing those with whom they
know they are "condemned to live together," that is,
practically everybody. "The circumstances which created
conflicts between you will pass," an observer reminded
politicians mindful of their careers, "and you know very well
that tomorrow you will still need each other."4 Hence I must
at all costs avoid imprudent acts which could lead to a
definitive break between myself and others with .whom I must
maintain relations, even though they be tenuous for a time.
Though experience shows that political quarrels are unlikely
to be irremediable, any aggravation of hostilities is likely
to provoke an anxious feeling: this time it won't be
=possible to repair the damage. The functioning of the system
depends on the collaboration of so many individuals, so many
cliques, so many groups, between which a state of "fraternal
hate" prevails, that one always fears a breakdown of this
delicate machinery. If members of the political class are
really going to be "intransigent," the dreaded "crisis of
the regime" will be their punishment.
This catastrophe may seem foreshadowed by the violent
altercations which suddenly and for a brief moment flare up
in the Assembly, not only between deputies accepting the
-regime and the two extremes, but also between those attached
- to the status quo. "I do not want to introduce passion into
this debate," "I do.not want to render it venomous," one says
.frequently when one wants to avert such a danger or when one
disclaims responsibility for increasing it. Frequently one
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124. -
observes and proclaims with relief that a certain debate
has, up to its very end, "on the whole kept its dignity."
Then one can be content with having, against many
temptations and pitfalls, obeyed the great rule of sparing
everybody's susceptibilities. In 1937 an officer attached
to Marshal P4tain, a future parliamentarian, dared to ask
his chief insistently that he raise the question of the
"hole" in the Maginot Line between the Ardennes and the sea.
P4tain refused: "I do not want to torpedo Gamelin!" And his
aide thought:
This is the reason for the general
silence. P4tain spares Gamelin,
Gamelin spares Daladier, who in
turn spares P4tain.5
When a politician, talking with de Gaulle in 1956,
conjectured that the Prime Minister of the time, Edgar Faure,
"would not be against your return," the General is supposed
to have answered:
Do you imagine that Edgar Faure is
capable of being against anything?6
That important politician who likes to say "I do not
want to be disagreeable to anybody" would presumably agree
with the words of a great journalist of the Third Republic,
editor of a daily paper called The Intransigent:
Politics is an eternal deal....The
politician makes deals. The
Intransigent can only regret it.7
The conviction that intransigence leads to catastrophe
is so strong that General de Gaulle had to combat it in so
many words at a difficult moment of the war:
I maintain that we are reasonable.
While we have chosen the hardest way,
it is also the most adroit one: the
straight way Events have proved that
this rectitude...remains the best policy
possible. Without any doubt, if we
failed to some extent to act according
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. 125.
to our duties, if we consented to certain
arrangements we would appear easier to
get along with....But in the extremity in
which France finds herself, no deals are
conceivable. What would have become of
the Fatherland if Jeanne d'Arc, Danton,
Clemenceau had agreed to deals0
Perhaps this is so for 1942, the Edgar Faures would
answer; and even that is far from certain as in that very
year General Weygand, General Juin, and Admiral Darlan
entered into "deals" of which one is no more sure that they
were entirely harmful. In any case the words of General de
Gaulle seem to imply that accommodation is of the essence of
politics in "normal" periods: a precious concession by the
greatest proponent of the "hard" orientation.
It is first of all necessary to avoid all "brutality" in
words.
That is not easy. The temptation to be impolite is
strong. In the Assembly the usual "courtesy" may at any
moment be interrupted by rude exchanges not all of which are
preserved in the record of the proceedings. Actually, this
does not happen too frequently, but one is aware of a
-temptation which one has constantly to control. One knows
of course that it is possible to "slam doors without destroy-
ing bridges," but, still, one fears that the one may lead to
-_-the other; and that would be grave.
It is often felt that the clear expression of a decided
opinion, even though it be of a strictly political nature,
-may be "shocking" to those against whom it is directed or who
-merely hold other opinions which are definitely rejected by
one's categoric statement. Hence it is wise to avoid all too
-2"firm" statements which may appear "hard" And hence "brutal."
A politician whose spontaneous inclination is rather in the
__direction of "brutality" (Pierre Mendes-France) explained
on the occasion of the Radical Congress of the spring of
11957) why he imposed on himself the discipline of "not
expressing his thoughts freely":
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126,
I do not have the right to take an
unnecessarily aggressive and brutal
position inside the party and thus
alienate certain elements which are
essentially sane and share our
convictions, but which could be
shocked by an attitude or a word.9
"You should fear to arouse fear," a politician of the
Third Republic (Alexandre Millerand) advised his colleagues.
"MI should fear to shock," would be the formula of his
successor today. "I shall go very far and risk shocking
certain of our colleagues," one is likely to say when one is
simply about to express an opinion that does not entirely
correspond to current conventions. Or one maintains that
the view one is going to advance "could not possibly
frighten anybody"; and this is not a self-criticism. To be
sure, these are often turns of phrase applied in automatic
fashion. Still, they are likely to reflect genuine feelings
which may be more or less conscious.
One can never be sure that one has not "shocked"
someone; in any case, an excuse can't do any harm. Thus a
new speaker of the Assembly (Pierre Schneiter), having
thanked it with a few ceremonial words for electing him,
added:
I am not going to say more for the
moment. I have let my heart speak
without having prepared anything.
If I have pronounced any words which
may have shocked anybody or may have
appeared exaggerated to any among you,
please forgive me.10
The-new speaker knew, in fact, that therems one person among
hia- listeners whom he had profoundly "shocked," the former
speaker, 'who, though a candidate, had not been re-elected
(Andre Le Troquer); it was for the first time in many years
that such a thing had happened. Subsequently, Le .Troquer was
re-elected and Schneiter became in his turn an unsuccessful
candidate for the speaker's chair. Still, Le Troquer could
noeforget, and, on one occasion, denied the former usurper
the right even to be a candidate (arguing that a speaker
should be elected by a "massive vote"). This happened in a
probably unpremeditated outburst of M. Le Troquer on the
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127.
occasion of his re-election in the fall of 1957, arousing much
indignation among the friends of the defeated M. Schneiter,
and, one may imagine, apprehensions of M. Le Troquer about
their future vengeance. This is one of the numerous small
incidents which show how precarious is that self-control on
which one depends so much. The vicissitudes of political
life exacerbate one's feelings, but it is imperative that rage
be channeled into entirely appropriate expressions so as not
to endanger one's career.
If I am afraid of shocking others, I may try to diminish
the danger by reducing my acts to a minimum -- a technique
which will be analyzed further below. But that maneuver may
in itself become invaded by the tendencies which are warded
off: silence, abstention in a vote, absence on the occasion
of a decision, may all come to be taken as polite expressions
of profound enmity. (This was facilitated by the consti-
tutional provision, up to 1954, according to which a candidate
to the premiership needed the absolute majority of deputies
to be "invested"; abstention had then the same effect as a
negative vote.) An anonymous journalist believed to be
inspired by Edgar Faure wrote,
Cassandra does not express herself
anymore by prophetic disarray but
rather by sullen isolation, by
reticence, by silence. Abstention
becomes bravado and taking a leave of
absence from parliament an act of.
exemplary courage. Instead of the
usual clamor "but I said so at the
time! " one now hears the "but I
remained silent" of M. Mendes-France,
and the "but I thought it" of MM.
Reynaudi Schuman, Pineau, and Faure
[sic].
If I cannot avoid talking, I may use the time-honored,
ridiculed, and hardy method of expressing contradictory
attitudes side by side. One cites the speech of a new member
of the Academy (Andre Fransois-Poncet) in which one could
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128.
perceive a carefully arranged "equilibrium" between phrases
supposed to be favorable to Marshal Petain and words of
praise for General de Gaulle. In his address of acceptance,
a_speaker of the Assembly (Andre Le Troquer) elected in
January 1954 because the communists voted for him, deplored
that "on too many points of the earth...men are dying without
undeistanding for what reasons the supreme sacrifice is imposed
on them;" at the same time he exalted "those...who on the soil
of Indochina defend a sacred cause." These two passages led
to the intended bursts of applause in opposed sectors of the
parliament.12 It also happens that the same person or group
applauds views between which there are flagrant contradictions;
this is supposed to be the normal reaction of Radical congresses.
If I cannot diversify my words in such a fashion as to
please everybody, to some extent, I may at least deny all
hostile intent toward those who may be disagreeably affected.
Such denials may be a matter of pure form: nobody is in doubt
about the discrepancy between what I say and what I mean.
Thus one of the worst enemies of Pierre Mendes-France (Frederic
-
Dupont), trying to prove that Mendes had sabotaged the
activities of Georges Bidault and of himself during the first
weeks of the Geneva Conference of 1954, addressed himself to
his victim:
He added:
I do not understand why you do not answer with
a yes or with a no when I recall the historical
fact of a conversation between us; I am doing
this without any malevolent intent. (Laughter
and exclamations on the Left.)
You will at least do me the honor of acknowledg-
ing that I am speaking not in order to embarrass
you (Exclamations on the Left)....13
- A Premier (Edgar Faure) recalled that on one occasion,
when he was a Minister, he had addressed a letter to the
President of the Republic in which he had expressed his dis-
agreement with a decision (to depose the Sultan of Morocco)
taken by the government of which he intended to remain a
member. Turning toward the Premier under whom he had served
(Joseph Laniel), he added:
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129.
In the letter which I addressed to the President
of the Republic...I indicated that I di 0 not mean
to disavow you by taking this position. 14
A deputy (Roland de Moustier) discussed the activities
of the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Antoine Piney) at a moment
when France was in an awkward position at the U.N. He recalled
that the Minister's predecessor (Pierre Mendes-France) had
been able, the year before, to prevent the adoption of an
undesirable resolution in the U.N., and added:
I wish the situation were the same today,
without of course wanting to criticize in
any fashion the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
This provoked "murmurs," "laughter on numerous benches," and
the exclamation of a Communist: "It was a good thing that
you made it clear," which in turn led to "more laughter."15
It is "normal" to underline in this fashion that one is pre-
sented with a "fa?e which deceives nobody" and which does not
even pretend to deceive anybody. But it is equally normal to
use such a fa?e.
On other occasions there may be, instead of frank hypocrisy,
some degree of momentary sincerity. Thus a deputy to whom
firm convictions are usually attributed declared:
To begin with I should like to express the
desire not to offend anybody in this Assembly.
I do not want to hurt any Frenchman, while
expressing my own convictions in good faith.16
In an exchange with a deputy of the extreme Right (Jean-
Louis Tixier-Vignancour), a Socialist (Arthur Conte) maintained
about himself:
I am in the habit of expressing myself with
extreme courtesy toward all....I have never
offended anybody.
About the position taken by his group he said:
And when we express ourselves in this fashion,
M. Tixier-Vignancour, it is not our intention
to be disagreeable to anybody.17
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130. -
Knowing that he was about to be overthrown and wanting
to "fall leftward," a Socialist Premier (Guy Mollet) did
something unusual:
I wish, and I apologize for this, to
refer here to a little document: that
which is given to every new member of
the Socialist Party. It comprises not
only the statutes of the party but
also a declaration of principles.
When the speaker proceeded to read this declaration, the
Right protested against the emergence of the perpetual
Secretary General of the Socialist Party (the same Guy
Mollet) behind the Premier who was about to "die": "Let us
have no more propaganda:" Appearing surprised by the "loud
exclamations" which he had provoked, Guy Mollet turned
toward his opponents:
But there is nothing here that could
offend you-8
If, going even farther, I undeniably attack a group or
an individual that belonNto the Assembl it is wise not to
name them. As soon as I have pronounced a proper name, t e
person in question acquires the right to answer me immediately,
and-I appear as aggressor. If I limit myself to allusion --
making it as intelligible as I desire --.my victims cannot
counterattack on the spot without damaging themselves. If
they do respond right away, I can close the incident by
observing, for instance: "If you absolutely insist on
recognizing yourself in the portrait I have.drawn. ..." Thus
a partisan of a governmental proposal of educational reform
(Maurice Deixonne) attacked the dilatory maneuvers adopted by
the rapporteur of the Education Committee of the Assembly
(Hippolyte Ducos): he affirmed that "one" is deliberately
delaying the parliamentary progress of the proposed reform.
At thii point M. Ducos interrupted and justified his conduct
by the necessity of avoiding precipitate decisions. But
this 'permitted his adversary to conclude:
My dear colleagues, I notice that the
rapporteur has recognized himself in the
description I have given. I can only
thank him for this.
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Ducos, beaten, could only answer:
You should have named me instead of
proceeding by allusion.19
Had the aggressor named his target, the victim's counter-
attack would have appeared as a defense of the tacitly recog-
nized parliamentary privilege of not being attacked by name.
But counterattacking in response to a mere, though clearly
intelligible, allusion, the victim seemed to want to
deprive his colleague of what is not only a privilege of
parliamentarians but a right of man, that of using the
weapon of veiled speech.
When I cannot even deny that I am attacking such and
such a person or group, I may still try to reduce the conse-
quences by acts of appeasement that accompany my aggression.
I may take as my model that delegate at a dramatic party
congress (that of the Radicals in the spring of 1955) who
was applauding a speaker while at the same time expressing
his violent disapproval by blowing a whistle. Announcing a
vote which will lead to the downfall of the government (that
of Rene Pleven in the winter of 1952), a group in the
Assembly (the Socialists) may at the same time abound in
amiable words toward the Premier they are about to "kill";
the group may applaud his speech and later on his-exit to
proceed to the President of the Republic in order to submit
his resignation, without such applause being interpreted as
an expression cf joy about the success of the "execution."
After the "investiture" of Antoine Pinay, the first Premier
of the Fourth Republic belonging to the Right and having been
connected with Vichy rather than with the Resistance, the
spokesman of the Socialists, in the words of a journalist,
"courteously apologized to Antoine Pinay for having been
unable to vote for him."2? In the same vein a leader of the
Moderates mentioned a special reason of economic policy "which
to our great regret obliged us a year ago not to vote the
investiture of M. Christian Pineau," a Socialist leader.21
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132:
-On the occasion of an important debate in the Assembly
it is customary to demand that "nothing be left in the dark"
this time, that "everybody speak clearly," that all "abscesses"
be "opened up" and "emptied."
But one also knows that this will not happen, and that
it should not happen: an excess of light kills. Only an
enemy who seriously desires my political annihilation would
want to deprive me of the shade in which I can stay alive.
It is with an air of reprobation that one cites the saying
that "politics is not the art of settling problems but that
of making those who pose them shut their mouth." But it is
with a sense of fulfilling one's duty that one may declare
in the Assembly, referring to matters which are not at all
classified: "Here I shall not say all that I know."
(However, when the act of concealment is made so conspicuous,
it may also have an effect similar to that of an exposure.)
In a debate on painful matters, for instance on the use of
torture in North Africa, speakers frequently referred to things
"which I shall be careful not to mention here." A Premier
about to be overthrown (Pierre Mendes-France) declared:
M. Maurice Schumann will confirm that
I do not tell the worst, for there are
things which one does not dare to say
in public.22
A parliamentarian (Roland de Moustier) questioning another
Premier (Edgar Faure) on the same subject asked:
Are these horrible exactions of the
police going to cease?...You have asked
us to be restrained in our words, hence
I shall not say anything further on the
subject....I shall not add anything; for
if I did, I would have to blush with
shame. 23
Another deputy (Henri Caillavet) began a speech on Algeria
with this declaration:
This evening I shall be extremely
discreet.24
The only one to deny the duty to be silent was a deputy close
to the victims (the Algerian Moslem idIostefa ben Bahmed):
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As a Moslem, as a Frenchman, as a
Socialist, as a man, I cannot even
consider for a minute being silent
about any misdeed, whichever it
may be, from wherever it may come.25
But the predominant attitude was expressed by a Moderate
(Andre Bettencourt):
Must one be silent, or may one say
here what one thinks and what is
happening? We have the obligation
to be extremely prudent in our words.
I believe that the deputies, whether
they belong to the majority or to the
opposition, are obliged to act in a
spirit of national solidarity when
French policy outside of continental
France is involved.26
If it appears proper to avoid words which might become
detrimental to the reputation of the country, it may also
seem prudent not to speak of grave problems, unless electoral
considerations constrain one to do so. Thus the Assembly
almost never discusses the great problems of national defense
and quite rarely those of foreign policy. During the three
last calendar years of the Fourth Republic, 1955-1957, such
discussions occurred only -- if at all -- when a new
government had to be invested, a budget to be passed, a
treaty to be ratified, or an acute crisis (the Suez expedition)
to be explained -- with the mere exception of four days of
debate on foreign policy (December 18-19, 1956 and March 26-27,
1957). There is a widespread feeling that this reticence
about grave problems is distinctively French. Having indicated
hoW-rare the debates on foreign policy had been in the Assembly
for the past eighteen months, an eminent journalist (Jacques
Fauvet) concluded:
There is surely not a single other
democratic country in which this is
the case.27
-=--When a debate on one of the habitually avoided subjects
nevirtheless takes place, this fact is likely to be treated
as extraordinary, and those who have brought it about, appear
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especially meritorious; so do those who take the trouble of
participating in the debate. Thus de Minister of Foreign
Affairs declared on the occasion of a debate on the unification
of Europe:
At the moment at which a debate of such
gravity is to be concluded,...I want first
of all to express congratulations to
Parliament which saw its way clear to
studying a question of a veritably national
character 25
For it seems normal for Parliament to be absorbed in serving
a multitude of special interests. Three years later a
parliamentarian (Edouard Depreux) announced:
The Socialist group is happy that a debate
on the grave Moroccan problem could finally
be held in the National Assembly.29
And another parliamentarian (Diomede Catroux) thanked the
Premier (Edgar Faure):
Your government has had the merit of
opening the Moroccan file.30
When, on the insistence of the government (which wanted to
insure itself against the tendency of the Assembly to draw
back at the last moment), a debate on the common market was
held before the signing of the Treaty -- it was thus a debate
which could have been avoided -- a parliamentarian (Andre
Morice) declared:
We should all render homage to this
Assembly which has made the opinions of
.the various groups on a major problem
known... 31
Several motives are behind the parliamentary aversion
to discussions of numerous important problems. First, they
may leave the average voter cold without benefiting from the
existence of an adequate pressure group. Also, parliamentarians
may feel that a subject is somehow beyond them. This holds
true, in particular, of nuclear energy -- a matter which seems
to require special knowledge, access to secrets, and secret
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discussion. Until a short while ago nuclear energy appeared
to be something which only countries larger than France could
afford; and the great decisions in that sphere seemed to be
taken on a level above that of Parliament or even of the
country.
But there is often also the desire not to introduce
supplementary conflicts into a system already overloaded by
unavoidable matters of contention. Between 1952 and 1954,
any debate, and, yet more, a decision, on EDC seemed to raise
the probability of a cabinet crisis. Between 1954 and 1956,
to pose the question whether France should acquire nuclear
weapons appeared to-be fraught with similar consequences.
For a "majority" to be formed and to continue in being, it is
usually necessary that its components remain silent on
important problems on which there is disagreement. (Its
enemies may then attempt to disintegrate it by rendering such
an avoidance impossible. One instance is the classical
maneuver of the Gaullists in 1951 by virtue of which the
Third Force was disrupted by introducing the question of
subsidies to Catholic schools.) For a party or a parliamentary
group not to "blow up" the same condition must often be
fulfilled.
In these circumstances it often appears prudent to those
who want to rise to the upper levels of power not to take a
stand even on the limited number of important problems which
are being publicly posed and discussed. One derives-greater
advantage from being "reserved" than from proposing
"solutions." Any stand I take up publicly may "mark" me and
thus become the reason for a veto raised against me by some
indivi'dual or group at a crucial juncture. "One becomes
premier by the force of one's silence,"32 stated a satirical
journal which attributed the following complaint to
unsuccessful candidates for the presidency of the Republic:
But how could he have done less than
I did?33
And here is the conduct proper to an aged "demi-god" (Edouard
Heiriot) when human beings are tearing each other limb from
limb '(at the Radical Congress in the fall of 1956 at the
beginning of which Edgar Faure and certain others were
expelled, and at the end of which the group led by Andr4 Morice
left the party):
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The President of the Party is besieged
in turn by M. Mendes-France and his
friends and by...M. Andr4 Morice and
the anti-Mendes tendency. But Herriot
carefully refrains from clearly inter-
vening in one sense or the other....On
the occasion of the expulsion of M.
Edgar Faure, Herriot, asked to give his
opinion, remains silent.34
The disciples of Herriot in this respect are the two
young Radical premiers of 1957. Belonging to a party which
had been rent by violent conflicts for the two preceding
years, neither of them had taken much of a stand in these
conflicts. A satirical journal embroiders upon this:
There came an epoch when the tranquil
sea of radicalism was agitated by
incongruous waves....Intrigues of the
seraglio were followed by palace
revolutions, and the other way around.
What did M. Gaillard think of all these
peripeties so apt to excite the passions
of youth? He thought nothing whatsoever
of them. M. Gaillard had something quite
different to do than to entertain opinions
and preferences: he administered his
career, which was nd:so easy in the midst
of all these people, imprudently producing
waves .35
November 22, 1950, on one of the rare occasions when
the Assembly debated the-war in Indochina, Pierre Mendes-
France intervened, expressed unorthodox opinions, and
created a mild stir. June 3, 1953, he presented himself to
the Assembly as a candidate for the premiership, delivered a
sensational speech, and was refused. Though the war in
Indochina had not yet become a central problem for public
opinion and Parliament, it is probable that Mendes failed at
that moment because a decisive number of deputies had been
antagonized by what was believed to be his tendency to
terminate the war at whatever price would appear necessary.
In any case he had inisted on the necessity of a "choice"
between the pursuit of the war in Indochina and other national
purposes'. In the summer and early fall of 1953 the situation
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in Indochina became .more acute, and a debate on the war was
to take place, for the first time in three years, on October
23, 1953. It did, but Mendes-France did not speak. The
debate was continued October 27, and the concluding votes on
the resolutions proposed was to take place in the course of
the night. That day, Mendes-France took leave, left the
Pala is Bourbon at the end of the afternoon for London where he
was to speak on French policy. Here, then, we see the person
who presents himself as the great reformer of French politics
giving a signal example of a vice which he frequently casti-
gates, that of a discrepancy between word and act, he
illustrates himself the widespread belief according to which
persons of authority are likely to be the first to violate
their own laws. The same debate on Indochina was, by the
way, in the words of a journalist, "characterized by the
absence or the silence of most of the great leaders.u36:
Robert Schuman, Rene Mayer, Antoine Pinay, Jacques Soustelle.
When a difficult ministerial crisis was about to begin (in
the spring of 1957 after the fall of Guy Mollet),
"I prefer not to be around during the
crisis," declared Edgar Faure, taking
off for China.37
If one does not absent oneself one can always abstain.
This happens so frequently that the various proposals for a
revision of the constitution in early 1958 were in good
measure directed to making this attitude impossible on the
occasion of important votes. At present, a parliamentarian
recalled,
...it is just as easy to assemble a
simple majority against a proposal
of the government as it is difficult
to marshal against it...an absolute
majority.38
Similarly, a government may try to survive by taking up a
safe stand on the most explosive problems of the hour, namely
by the obligatory abstention of its members. This happened
in the case of the law granting subsidies to Catholic schools
in 1951, and in the case of the treaty establishing EDC in
1954. A parliamentary group which threatens to "blow up" may
attempt to preserve itself in the same fashion. On the
occasion of a vote on a candidate for the premiership. (Antoine
Pinay, in the fall of 1957) a journalist said about' the
Christian Democrats:
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It was easy to obtain the abstention
of the large majority among them.
That position had the advantage of
preserving the unity of the group.
And
-
And about the Radicals:
Trying to have the group take up a
common attitude, M. Daladier proposed
collective abstention .39
When it does not seem appropriate to abstain, it may at
least be possible not to speak; or the leaders of a group
may remain silent, leaving it to the rank-and-file to explain
their-position. Thus a government is often "strangled by
the dumb slaves of the seraglio," as Clemenceau called his
Radical enemies.
During the first decade of the Fourth Republic, Henri
Queuille appeared as the incarnation of the art of not taking
a stand. But he was also a man who knew how to violate that
rule when it was really worth it: when the electoral law was
at stake. A Radical parliamentarian recalled the end of
the first legislature during the agony of the second (in the
fall of 1955):
May I remind you that the government of
M. Pleven ran into difficulties because
it did not want to take a stand on the
question of the electoral law. At that
moment a man presented himself who was
imbued with the will to have an electoral
law voted by his majority, and who
succeeded in this by staking the existence
of his government on the matter.40
It I cannot help taking a stand, I may still have recourse
to imprecision.
One frequently invokes the postulates attributed to
Descartes in order to violate them the better. Sometimes one
merely imagines that one has invoked them. Thus a
parliamentarian affirmed that "in the difficult settlement
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of the problems of North Africa we have often appealed to
Cartesian reason,"41 an allegation which is not borne out by
an examination of the debates.
To the traditional cult of "precision" and "clarity" has
more recently been added the aspiration to be "concrete."
Thus a leader (Rena Pleven) who was about to lose the
presidency of his small party (UDSR) demanded the creation of
a new party "with a carefully worked out minimum program,
which means, I should like to repeat this, one which has been
made thoroughly concrete."42 Still, a journalist observed
that the speech in which this injunction was raised contains
no indications as to what such a program might contain, and
raises the question "whether this be the discretion...of a
statesman who views the problems from high up, or that of a
future Premier."43
For a Premier, of course, the "concrete" is that which is
likely to be unacceptable to one or more of the various groups,
clans, and individuals which "parliamentary arithmetic"
obliges him to assemble in order to arrive at a "majority"
which is in any case fragile enough. A journalist notes that
in speaking about a controversial problem (that of the
revision of the constitution) before a committee of the
Assembly, a Premier (Falix Gaillard) "has been above all
careful not to antagonize the diverse tendencies of his
majority. He has therefore refrained from expressing his
intentions with too much precision...."44 When a government
has been overthrown because it proposed certain "precise"
measures (for instance, the Mollet government in the spring
of 1957 which was, defeated on its financial program), its
successor will often want to avoid any kind of precision, at
least to start with. In the words of a journalist:
M. Rourges-Maunoury...has not wanted to
commit himself on the details of his
program or on the contours of his
majority. This is no doubt the only
means to prevent the unleashing of
mutually incompatible demands and vetoes
of the various groups.45
Similarly, when a group is torn by conflicts on a certain
-subject (for example, the Radicals on Algeria, 1956-1957), it
may try to forestall its "exploding" (as the Radicals did at
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the "conclave" at Chartres in the spring of 1957) by using
the same technique. The resolution on Algeria which was
voted_at that "conclave" was "sufficiently vague and
ambiguous not to be opposed by anybody."4b
There is, to be sure, a tendency to reduce the role of
the standard ambiguous formula in the resolutions and
programs of parties and groups, and even in the declarations
of governments. When a man who aims at a reform of politics
(Pierre Mendes-France) succeeded for a time in dominating
the most "classical" party (the Radicals), he proposed the
establishment of a comprehensive program which would be
entirely concrete, full of figures and dates. The failure
was complete: the program had not yet been produced at the
time when its promoter abandoned his efforts to reform the
party. Who, whether in the political class or in the country
at large, knows the "concrete" proposals which the programs
of the various parties may contain, except their authors or
groups whose special interests are visibly affected?
To unmask the opponent's lack of precision remains a
minor weapon which can be used against him. Above all, I can
use precision myself for the purpose of sabotage, for instance
if I want to prevent the conclusion of an agreement which I
do not desire to reject out of hand. Thus, as has already
been mentioned (see Chapter 2, pp. 64-65), in the course of
a crisis (that created by the fall of the Mollet government),
a group (the Socialists) wishing to "torpedo" a candidate for
the premiership (Pierre Pflimlin) sent him a thick file of
concrete demands, whose full acceptance was to be a necessary
condition for the group participating inAlis government.
This having been refused, as expected, and the candidate
having thereupon withdrawn his candidacy, the same group,
confronted with another candidate)who was deemed acceptable
(Maurice Bourges-Maunoury), posed no "concrete" conditions
whatsoever.
Imprecision
which "everybody
Here again;
"inadmissible":
situation should
permits equivocation, the use of expressions
can intirpret In ,his own fashion."
it is customary to insist on this being
all equivocations should be "cleared up," a
be created which is "neat and clear."
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"Words ought to signify the same thing for everybody,"47
according to a politician, many of whose colleagues might find
it difficult to imagine how his career would have looked had
this principle always been obeyed. "We do not have the right
to maintain such doubts, such uncertainties, such equivocations
in our debate today, "48 said a parliamentarian during the debate
about the Franco-Tunisian Conventions, when most of his col-
leagues knew, more or less clearly, that all these features
were needed if one wanted to reach a decision to accept the
Conventions, as a majority did. "This equivocation cannot
last long," one often says, conveying a more or less sincere
disapproval by a forecast. Sometimes this is confirmed; thus
the separation between Tunisia and France in 1956 ended the
equivocation of 1955. But usually another equivocation is
ready- to replace the one which is disappearing.
The birth of an equivocation may be easy to observe. At a
party congress (that of the Christian Democrats in the spring
of 1957) the partisans of a loose association between continental
France and the overseas territories connected with it, proposed
that the resolution of Algeria demand a "profound administrative
and political decentralization of Algeria"; their opponents
conceded only an "administrative decentralization in the frame-
work of the Republic." The impasse was broken by the proposal
of a leader to keep in the text only one word: "decentrali-
zation." Every tendency within the party was then free to add
the "precisions" which it desired, while of course knowing that
other groups were supplementing the now bare text with still
other "precisions.""
On some occasions one can only suspect that the author of
an ambiguous formula destines it to be filled in with inter-
pretations which are, to be sure, mutually incompatible but
whose effect is expected to be invariably favorable to the
individual or group issuing the formula. The testament of a
legendary anti-clerical (Edouard Herriot) insisted on the one
hand on -a purely secular funeral, but left on the other hand
enough latitude so that his widow was able to call upon the
services of Cardinal Gerlier.
Antoine Pinay Was among those leaders whose public
utterances and silences on Algeria in 1957 did not greatly
deviate from what was then normal; but he was often said to
be.resigned to very far-reaching concessions to the Algerian
Nationalists and to express this unorthodox position in
private conversations. However, in presiding over a session
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of his departmental Assembly, he expressed only "the wish
that the efforts made by the government and the country [in
Algeria -- N.L.] might rapidly lead to a solution in keeping
with the national interest." To this he added that he
deliberately said no more "in order to avoid the varying and
contradictory interpretations which might be given to my
words."50 But should we not replace "avoid" by "invite"?
Sometimes it does not seem safe to leave to the
recipients of an equivocal expression the entire work of
developing the "varied and contradictory interpretations"
which I desire. I may then add to such an expression the
procedure of "offering contradictory interpretations"
(Daniel Mayer on the utilization by Edgar Faure of the
formulae accepted at the Franco-Moroccan Conference of Aix-
les-Bains in the fall of 1955);51 or, in other words, the
"method" of "presenting things in a different light according
to the person to whom one speaks" (Jacques Chaban-Delmas
about the same event).52 In another great matter, EDC, on
which a Premier (Rene Mayer) knew his majority to be divided,
he is said to have used the same technique, applying it to
an already exceptionally ambiguous "declaration of investiture."
According to a journalist of the Left,
Rene Mayer supposedly stressed his devotion
to EDC to some, while he told thaGaullists
with a wink of his eye: Look at my real
intentions: I am replacing Robert Schuman
by Georges Bidault, who is hardly enthusiastic
about EDC.53
A journalist of the Right confirmed that the already
"sibylline" phrases of Rene Mayer's declaration of investiture
were in this case "explained differently, according to the
listener, by de person who had written them."54
The. targets of such procedures regularly complain that
they have been deceived. Still, they frequently know, in
some degree, what is happening, though they do not usually
permit themselves to become fully aware of it. When, for
instance, a majority is finally assembled at the end of a long
struggle around a resolution closing a debate of interpellation,
that is,-when a text has been patiently constructed by many
substitutions, subtractions, and additions, it is difficult
for those participating in this process not to know that the
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point-of the complicated object thus created is precisely
that "everybody will find in it some food and some drink
which he likes"; that the agreement finally established
cannot and must not go beyond a common movement of the lips.
The same device appears in declarations of investiture
destined to assemble a majority which is divided on several
problems which it would be inappropriate to ignore by a too
obvious silence. Pretending not to know and yet knowing,
each component of such a majority will add something to this
"contract," which will be remembered as long as the government
lasts; and which one calls "precise" only when one claims,
not too seriously, a monopoly for one's own particular
interpretation.
In the autumn of 1955 the Sultan of Morocco and the
Minister of Foreign Affairs (Antoine Pinay) published a
declaration envisaging negotiations between the two govern-
ments with the aim of making Morocco "an independent state,"
but one "united with France" by "permanent links" of an
"interdependence" which would be "freely agreed and defined."
A few days later a journalist noted:
The negotiators would be ill-advised to
define their vocabulary if they want to
avoid a rupture. Wisdom counsels
imprecision. The Moroccan Nationalists
no doubt emphasize in their declaration
the independence which has been promised
them; nothing obliges us to listen to
them. They abstain, no doubt, from
mentioning interdependence; nothing
forces us-to notice that. We can imagine,
on our side, that the Moroccan nationalists
will themselves limit the exploitation of
their victory to a few discreet municipal
reforms. We have the right not to hear the
words which displease us.55
As in the case of the "lifting of the mortgage," we have
here the application to the world outside of Parliament of a
technique which is "normal" inside it and does not greatly
change the, relations of forces there. Inside Parliament I do
not need to worry too much about interpretations differing
from _mine and incompatible with mine which other groups or ?
individuals put on texts which we have all signed together.
Thereigill always be time to deal with the others when they
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begin acting according to their distinctive conceptions.
For the moment, equivocation will permit deferring the
moment of conflict; that is already a valuable result.
But when the same technique is applied outside of Parliament,
for instance in the case of Morocco and Tunisia in 1955-1956,
it may become the instrument by which great changes come to
pass, and perhaps changes which I have not desired. The
device of equivocation makes it possible to maintain, throughout
a period when unfavorable changes are taking place outside of
parliament, an attitude of "I do not want to know it" which
parliamentary life has made customary to its practitioners.
Armed with the diverse techniques which have been
analyzed, the politician convinces himself that everything
can always be arranged, settled, smoothed out. It is a
matter of skill. If one is sufficiently ingenious, one will
be able to conciliate conflicting positions which seem at
first sight utterly incompatible. There are no insurmountable
obstacles; everything depends on finding the device which
will furnish the desired solution. "Life?" said with a shrug
of his shoulders a great politician of the Third Republic
whom his classmates in high school had called "the arranger"
(Aristide Briand). "Life? It's made of rubber!"58 Pierre
Laval, the liquidator of the Third Republic who saw in Briand
his model, also thought himself capable, in the words of
Pierre Pucheu, "of settling any problem anywhere if he could
only contact in good time the appropriate interlocutor."57
General.de Gaulle confirmed this estimate:
Laval believed that, whatever happens,...
a certain degree of shrewdness would
always master events, that there was
nothing that could not be turned around,
nobody who could not benanipulated.58
The Henri Queuilles and the Edgar Faures have continued this
tradition. The capacity to "arrange" everything often seems
essential not only in order to assure the functioning of the
regihe, but also in order to safeguard what remains of the
position of France in the world. As an eminent journalist
put it,
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145.
In the state of affairs which has
developed, our weakness can hardly
be compensated in any other fashion
than by our gifts of intelligence
and imagination, if these will
permit us to find the formulae of
conciliation for which others are
looking in vain.59
In "a state where everything gets arranged," the supreme
activity in politics is "arbitration." It is when one has
reached the summit of power that he enters fully into the
realm of arbitration. Most divergencies between ministers,
even if they concern mere details, require recourse to the
"arbitration" of the Premier; and almost any decision of
that personage tends to be called "arbitration."
As to the first aspect mentioned, it absorbs a major
fraction of the time and energy of the head of thegovernment.
On December 31, 1953, Le Monde announced that M. Andr4 Marie,
Minister of Education, had offered his resignation; the
newspaper had already informed its readers that this minister
viewed the budget accorded to him by the Finance Minister as
insufficient. Le Monde continued about M. Andr4 Marie's
action,
He has left the Council of Ministers
this morning, declaring that he was
withdrawing from the government.
However, before becoming definitive,
his decision mill be the subject of
further conversations. The minister
is going to talk with the Premier,
Joseph Laniel, toward the end of
the afternoon in order to examine the
disagreements which have arisen between
his colleague and him. These disagree-
ments will be arbitrated by the Premier
personally. '
Similarly, on March 8, 1957, Rena Billeles, one of the
successors of M. Andr4 Marie, speaking of a raise in the
salaries of the personnel of the National ,Scientific Research
Center, remarked that '
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146._
...the discussionsconcerning the details
of this raise have lasted several weeks
and have ended with an act of arbitration
at the highest level of the government.60
How many acts of "arbitration" by premiers may have occurred,
with regard to this one ministry, between these two dates!
To arbitrate, in this sense, is to decide. But it is to
decide between "choices" established by others and only in
the case in which conflicts have arisen between them. In the
course of a crisis (that of the spring of 1953) a leader
(Robert Lecourt, a Christian Democrat) told about a talk
between a delegation led by him and a candidate for the
premiership who regards himself as a master in the art of
arbitration (Andre Marie):
We were impressed by what seemed to us
the absence of an economic and social
plan. The President Andre Marie answered
us that he had not proposed one because
he thought that there was no basic
disagreement between the groups on this
matter.61
It is also usually understood that correct arbitration
renders a decision which establishes a middle osition
between the various conflicting demands. Andre Marie, fourth
candidate for the premiership in a long crisis (that of the
spring of 1953), composed his declaration to the Assembly
largely of pieces taken from those of his unfortunate
predecessors (whom he asked, in addition, to become members
of his government)._
To the arbitration performed by a higher authority
corresponds the "synthesis" worked out by equals who wish to
reconcile their differences. In this synthesis what is only
implied in the case of arbitration becomes manifest: the
solution must give substantial satisfactions to everybody,
it mustcreate a middle ground between the demands which have
been opposing each other.
-,When it is a matter of arriving at an act which is
sufficient unto itself -- for instance, 'a resolution of
-
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Parliament -- this procedure appears adequate. After all,
such an act is satisfactory precisely to the degree to which
it satisfies those who participate in its elaboration. But
in the case of a decision which is to apply to the world
outside of Parliament, one may ask whether the middle ground
between the conflicting demands of various groups within
Parliament will furnish a good solution for the real problem
at hand. If a "framework law" for Algeria takes good account
of the demands of the various groups in the Palais Bourbon,
by virtue of a "skillful mixture" of theirireferences, what
chances are there that this law will also be the one
most likely to minimize future reductions of the "French"
character of Algeria? At the time of the fight within
Parliament and within the government around the first draft
of the "framework law" for Algeria, in the late summer and
early fall of 1957, a journalist noted:
One seems to forget that the framework
law is also made for the Moslems.
Those who did not neglect the extra-parliamentary dimension
of the matter revealed by that very fact their rank as
statesmen:
M. Pflimlin has opportunely recalled
this fact, and so has M. Edgar Faure.62
What chances are there in such an atmosphere that one will
'find that policy which would bring the country nearer to the
goal sought?
The discrepancy just noted is being increasingly felt in
the political class; it seems impossible to resolve the
conflict between the nature of Parliament which so often
imposes half-measures, and the shape of the world outside of
-Parliament which usually condemns them to failure. The
country thus seems fated to cumulate the disadvantages of the
various clear-cut policies which are being avoided in a
parliamentary "bastard solution," without garnering any of
their profits. What one does is too much from one point of
view and too little from another; the policy adopted is apt
to be too hard with a view to its soft components, and too
soft with a view to its hard ones. After a bloody incident
on the Algero-Tunisian frontier early in 1958, the Premier
sent a general, together with a civilian, to deliver .a message
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148.
to the President of Tunisia, who refused to receive the
officer. This led a parliamentarian to ask:
What was the point in sending this
general to Tunis? Either one was
engaged in a diplomatic negotiation;
and for that the Ambassador would
have served; or one intended a
display of force, and in this case
one does not send a general all alone.63
(However, according to an interpretation which spread in the
corridors of the Assembly and even reached the press, the
Premier had been in need of a national humiliation in order
to increase his chances of survival on the occasion of an
imminent vote of confidence which was bearing on austerity
measures directed against veterans and former prisoners-of-
war.)
In one kind of inexpedient intermediate policy, elements
of a tough line co-exist with components of a tender one.
Thus, in 1952, according to a journalist,
...both in Tunisia and in Morocco
France seems unable to choose between
the attitude of the outstretched hand
and that of the closed fist. Reform
projects are followed by brutal police
operations, arrests by liberations;
France blows hot and cold.64
In another variant one maintains a certain conduct
which, however, falls between two more extreme, and more
efficient, positions. Thus one "fed" the warin Indochina
without "leaving" on the one hand and without "putting
everything into it" on the other. As to Algeria, according
to the words attributed to a parliamentarian talking to an
American journalist,
We can't really go to war, because this
would offend the Left, and we can't
conclude a peace, because this would
offend the Right. . Hence we continue to
lose blood and money without any
favorable perspectives .65
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149.
In a third variant one sets onealf intermediate aims
which are either difficult to realize or even contradictory.
An instance of an aim difficult to realize was te objective
set in the early phases of the war in Indochina: "neither
abandonment nor reconquest." An example of a contradictory
objective is the goal often mentioned toward the end of the
Indochinese war: "an independent Viet Nam in the framework
of the French Union;" for most of those who advocated this
objective did not really envisage the French Union on the
model of the Commonwealth.
In Parliament, however, one is strongly tempted to have
one!s cake and eat it. Thus a prominent parliamentarian,
developing his ideas on the future of Algeria, declared
himself first to be in favor of "one electoral college" IM OW a
formula usually taken to mean equal suffrage for all inhabi-
tants -- but hastened to add: "There must be no crushing of
any minority, under whatever formula." At this point he was
interrupted on the Left: "Then don't talk about a common
electoral college!" He retorted that "this is a dilemma,
which has, like all dilemmas, a third solution."66 If such
a "third solution" is indeed likely to be available when a
formula is to be devised for parliament, it is much less
likely that a "third solution" can be found when the issue
involves transforming or immobilizing the world outside of
parliament.
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151.
Chapter 6
THE SEARCH FOR A FORCE MAJEURE
According to a major belief of the political class itself,
the government, parliament and the administration only act when
they are with their backs to the wall (pp. 151-153); to anti-
cipate problems seems strange behavior (pp. 153-155). Arguments
.in favor of a major change point not so much to its merits as
to the catastrophic consequences of inaction beyond a certain
point (pp. 155-156). Politicians credit each other with much
readiness to accept immediate advantages even if they clearly
involve a high cost in the future (pp. 157-158) and to isolate
each problem from all the others with which it is interdependent
(p. 158). A variety of factors contribute to the "immobilise
analyzed in this chapter (pp. 159-162)
"In the domain of industry our country is holding a world
record," declared the Minister of Finance in the fall of 1957.
"It is in France that, from 1952 onward, the most rapid rate
of growth has taken place: ten per cent per year."1 As the
state plays a decisive role in the French economy, this perfor-
mance of "dynamic France" can hardly have occurred without its
active support. Nevertheless, in the beliefs of the political
class itself the state often appears as belonging essentially
to "static France."
According to a major theme, the government. Parliament,
and the administration onl act when they are with their backs
to the wall, when they can t do otherwise, when it becomes
impossible just to perpetuate the existing state of affairs,
unfeasible to delay a decision any longer. After a vote of
confidence accorded to his successor (Edgar Faure), a former
Premier (Pierre Mendes-France) noted that "the Premier, armed
with a vote of confidence, now possesses freedom of action"
and demanded:
He should use this freedom of action....
He should not wait for events to impose
a choice on him which should issue from
his own resolution.2
But as it seems unlikely that those in power will heed the
implied postulate, such an exhortation is apt to be felt as an
accusation. Half a century ago an observer discovered.that the
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152.
members of the government "are getting into the habit of acting
only under the pressure of events."3 The only aspect of this
sentence which sounds strange today is the affirmation that the
habit in question is just being formed.
The pressure on it which the government needs in order to
act may be that of a group which is coupling its demands with
threats serious enough to make it worthwhile for the government
to disarm it by appropriate concessions. Politics then becomes,
in the words of a journalist, a matter of "filling, day after
day, the hole from which the loudest voice is issuing."4
It may be a matter of preventing a "scandal." According
to an observer,
To govern...is to deal with immediate difficulties.
A minister is said to be facing an immediate
difficulty when grave or scandalous events which
have occurred in his department cannot be hidden
anymore .5
Or one may be confronted with an acute crisis in a certain
domain, a crisis which one then attempts to render latent again
by a symptomatic cure, so as to be able to forget about the
matter until the next eruption. In the words of an analyst,
The symptoms of a crisis are not sufficient to
make a government act: it is necessary for the
crisis itself to have arrived in order to induce
the ,strict minimum of action on the part of the
government .6
As to agricultural policy, a journalist predicted:
One is surely going to continue to fill gaps.
The many agencies involved will be feverishly
agitated when there is a disturbance in-the
market, and will fall back into lethargy
between two crises.7
Loud demands for independence on the part of Vietnamese
nationalists led the Assembly to discuss the Indochinese war,
-which had not been done for almost three years. On that
-occasion a parliamentarian observed:
? -?=n-
?
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153.
The debate on Indochina for which we have been
asking so long is finally taking place. It is
probable that one would have continued to avoid
it had not a new event put public opinion on
the alert. Our Assembly seems to be-dondemned
to deal with problems only when they ariise in
dramatic fashion, to trail after events rather
than anticipating them. Thus the strikes of
last August were needed to make the Assembly
interested in the problems facing the wage-
earners, and the expressions of the farmers'
wrath were required to make the Assembly con-
sider agricultural problems. The tradition
continues. The present debate on Indochina is
a direct consequence of the emotion created by
the recent declaration of the National Vietnamese
Congress in Saigon about the relations between
Vietnam and France.8
Serious action, according to this belief, takes place only
under the menace of imminent catastrophe. "It seems," observed
a parliamentarian, after having recalled how unprepared the
French economy was for entering the common market, "that there
is a tendency to wait for some external constraint in order
to act. It seems that one is waiting for the difficulties
which will arise from the common market before proceeding
to the appropriate economic reforms in France. That would be
a government by catastrophe."9 According to a belief which is
widespread in the political class, the country will get, out
of the "rut" in which it has got "stuck" only under the pressure
of the increased numbers of young people born after 1940.
Similarly, according to General de Gaulle only "a grave crisis"
could lead to a "rebirth" of "a deep concern for national
salvation" in the country.10
While ostensibly waiting for this mutation, many among
_those in power console themselves by feeling that it is both
- difficult and worthwhile merely to assure the 'survival" of
the country -- an aim similar to the goal which one likes to
attribute to members of the government: that of simply
remaining in power.
To "anticipate problems" may then appear as strange be-
havior, as a counsel of perfection which is usually inappli-
cable in the difficult circumstances of the moment. All that
it is feasible to do is to deal with events as they come up.
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154.
"I am, to be sure, young," declared a deputy of the extreme
Right (Jean Marie Le Pen):
...but ever since I have been a citizen of this
country [sic], I have heard an exclamation which
characterizes French politics: Too late! Always,
too late! The beneficent maxim, "prevention is
better than cure," has been stricly relegated to
children's manuals, on morals.11
Reacting against this trend, a Premier (Pierre Mends-
France), addressing himself to a series of problems (those.
concerning North Africa), announced his resolution to anticipate
difficulties:
It is quite another matter to resolve these
problems in advance as we plan to'do.12
Such an affirmation tends to appear as simply boastful,
unless it turns out, in a rare instance, to be supported by
actions. One day the general rapporteur of the Finance
Committee of the Assembly (Charles Barangd) declared that "the
debate on finances which we are now beginning .occurs in
conditions quite different from those which have characterized
so many debates since the liberation." In general, continued
this experienced parliamentarian, the government had been
"pushed" by "difficulties" which "required immediate action."
This time, however, "the Premier asks us to make in advance
decisions of a kind which we have accustomed ourselves to
take only. under immediate pressure."13 In similar fashion '
a Premier (Edgar Faure) said about the Franco-Tunisian Con-
vention of 1955:
Let me note one satisfying thing about the
negotiations between the French and Tunisian
delegates which led to the present COnventions.
These Conventions appeared to us as necessary
by virtue of a lucid_view of the situation.
We did not wait for events to overtake us
and for necessity to transform itself into
a threat.
'Bu i a few moments later the Premier made a more realistic
allusion to what had happened. Addressing himself to an
enemy of the Conventions and assuring him that he, the
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155.
Premier, had well understood his references to the Tunisian
friends of France, Edgar Faure added:
We should perhaps have agreed at an earlier
moment to the concessions for which they were
asking us, rather than wait for our friends
to be reduced in importance by the tendencies
which we have to confront today. 14
In these conditions there are some who believe that the
country should be thrown into the water so that it would be
ft-reed to learn to swim. According to a major argument of the
"Europeans" in favor of EDC and of the common market, France
would consent to a general "renovation" only in consequence of
the "electro-shock" which she would receive upon entering into
European organizations where she would hopelessly fall behind
if she did not radically change.
In a similar vein one argues in favor of a major change
not so much by pointing to its merits as to the catastrophic
consequences of rejecting it.
Such was the principal argument which almost overcame
resistances to EDC and did overcome those against WEU. As the
decision approached in both cases, affirmations stressing the
advantages of one or the other institution receded in favor of
grim portents of the consequences of rejecting the arrangement
in question: the "Anglo-Saxons" would return to a "peripheral
strategy," they would unilaterally rearm Germany. For agree-
ment to be obtained it had, in large measure, to be a "gesture
of resignation" and also a gesture of ratification in a double
sense: not only a free assent to a treaty freely negotiated,
but also a forced codification of imminent developments which
one felt powerless to prevent. One of the motives of the
pa-ktisans of EDC for their hostility to its successor, WEU,
was to make one of their great arguments in favor of EDC come
true, namely that the rejection of EDC would lead to an im-
passe. Nonetheless, after the first refusal of WEU (December
24, 1954), when the Assembly was moving towards its acceptance
(December 30, 1954), a journalist noted this:
...it was with much relief that deputies of
various tendencies received the Premier's
unambiguous declaration that our Allies would
not agree to another negotiation.15
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Half a year later an adversary of the Franco-Tunisian Comtentions
observed: ?
We are being told: if you don't ratify
the Convention grave and unpredictable
consequences will occur. 16
Another parliamentarian addressed himself to the Premier in
these words:
You will surely not omit to tell us that the
ratification of the Franco-Tunisian Conventions...
is inevitable and that not to ratify them would
be even more risky than to do so. Parliament
has already heard this resigned kind of reasoning
in connection with the EDC and with the Paris
Agreements. 17
Fifteen years before, Parliament had listened (in Vichy,
July 10, 1940) to the reasoning of a political leader (Pierre-
Etienne Flandin) in favor of the transfer of full powers to
Marshal Pdtain:
If the delegation of powers to Marshal Petain
were to be refused)what would happen in France?
What would one say abroad? Terrible damage
would have been inflicted on the country.
Hence I view the acceptance of the proposal
before us as necessary. 18
Another political leader (Pierre Laval) underscored this:
I have wanted to speak to you in order to
underline an argument of M. Flandin who
has declared: "If you do not vote the
proposal before you, what will happen?"19
If all one does is, to deal with the most acute difficulties,
there will be little continuity in policy. Its progress will
resemble that which a satirical journal attributes to an aged
politician (Henri Queuille) whose infirmity is often viewed as
&symbol of that of the regime, "the progress of a dead leaf
pushed hither and thither by the yind."20 A deputy spoke of
? the -"habitual error" of engaging in "a course of action which
?
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157.
is -alternately hard and soft according o chance incidents or
to shifts in parliamentary arithmetic."41
The diverse policies which follow each other are likely
to involve a sacrifice of the more remote future in favor of
the days immediately ahead. For one thing, the principles of
action which have been described exclude enterprises with a
long delay in pay-off. "Even the most urgent reforms do not
usually lead to immediate benefits; it takes a few months or
frequently a few years for their advantages to appear. In
this sense a reform...is similar to an investment..." explained
a reformer (Pierre Mendes-France), who then added:
But the dominant tendency is to care only
for the present and to sacrifice the future.22
If this be the case, one does so to the accompaniment of the
demand that "a long-range policy be finally established" in
whatever the matter in question is. But there are always
circumstances which prevent one from proceeding right away to
"defining" such a policy at the time when one expresses the
wish for it.
- In addition, members of the political class easily attribute
to their colleagues a readiness to accept immediate advantages
even if these clearly involve a high cost in the future. A
senior official (Jacques Dumaine) affirmed in his posthumously
published diary (on April 5, 1946) that "the Socialists in the
government have proposed to offer the American government con-
cessions in the sphere of French demands concerning the Rhine-
land in order to obtain an increase in American financial aid."
Thiscivil.servant, who was not generally hostile to the
Socialists, added:
This proposal equated a historical act and a ,
temporary deal; it envisaged an impairment
o..E our security in the future for the sake of
a momentary lightening of our economic situation. 23
In-a=more generalizing and less direct fashion the same ob-
server said at another moment:
One tries to avoid a slight immediate
unpleasantness by means which involve
a-future catastrophe. Such is politics
sometimes. 24
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158.
--even frequently, according to.a widespread feeling in the
political class about itself.
It is even possible to attribute publicly such calculations
to those in power without creating any major difficulties be-
tween oneself and those to whom one imputes a rather deliberate
sacrifice of the future for the sake of the present: In this
vein an opponent of the "framework law" for Algeria (Jacques
Isorni) noted the various delays stipulated in that law and
reasoned as follows:
If the government has agreed to include in
the law delays before an Algerian executive
will be created, it is because the government
recognizes the danger of this institution....
Aware of the danger, the government asks us to
vote the law, assuring us that the peril thus
provoked will only materialize tomorrow.
Addressing himself to the Premier (Maurice Bourges-Maunoury)
the speaker added:
You are in fact asking us to light a fuse which
is long enough so that the bomb won't explode
right away. 25
The lack of regard for the future is, according to an
equally widespread belief, accompanied by a tendency to isolate
each problem from all the others which have to be dealt with at
the same time, though their solutions are evidently interdependent.
Against this tendency to take only "fragmentary" measures one is
in the habit of calling for an over-all plan each element of
which would be conceived in relation to the rest; one frequently
demands a "policy which is a whole," "an entire set of measures
which formone single bloc." As no definitionsof these ambiguous
phrases areoffered, it is easy for the government to affirm
that it does propose a "whole," and equally easy for its enemies
to maintain that "the propositions submitted do not form a
whole," which has been "the argument most used today" according
to a Premier looking back on a day at the Assembly which presaged
his imminent fal1.26
As against an imaginary policy that is a "whole" and that
extendsz-far into the future, "partial solutions" may sometimes
appear-vain or even harmful: they might merely "aggravate the
disorder." The image of perfect action may serve to justify
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the attachment to an existing state of affairs which one admits
to be highly imperfect. Speaking about measures against the
excessive consumption of alcohol, a deputy declared:
Let us not yield to the temptation to think
that we ought to do nothing as we cannot
resolve everything at one and the same time.
Let us not say...that all fragmentary measures
ought to be rejected as long as an all-
embracing plan dealing with the entire
problem has not been voted. My dear
colleagues, if we want to wait for such a
plan to be voted...we might as well admit
that we are resolved to do nothing.27
How can one explain the tendency to "immobilism" which
the political class so readily attributes to itself?
(1) The grave difficulties which France has constantly
encountered since 1914 are supposed to absorb those in power
to such an extent that they are hardly able to do anything but
deal with the difficulties of the moment. "Four years ago,"
a-deputy (Pierre Andr?reveals, "I asked a Premier: at what
moment...do you think of the France of 1970? He answered me
that he did lowt have the time to look farther than fifteen
days ahead.""There are already enough troubles for the day;
what imprudence to engage in acts which one can for the moment
omit with. impunity!
(2) After the first few months in the life of a govern-
ment, its members must spend a great deal of effort on insuring
its survival from day to day, which again reduces the energy
available for long-run pursuits.
(3) Those politicians who see the advantages of certain
innovations may be so impressed by their constituents' attach-
ment to the established order of things that they are discouraged
from attempting reforms.
(4) Or again those in power desiring changes may fore-
see -- the past furnishes many instances -- that multiple
strivings for varied and incompatible changes will only
neutralize each other to the benefit of the status quo.
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160.
oy One fears the unleashing of conflicting forces which
might be provoked by an imprudent tampering with the "delicate
equilibrium" which has been attained at the price of so many
efforts and So many conflicts with a long past. "Educational
reform," a Premier affirmed "is an urgent matter." "The
government," he added, addressing himself to the Assembly, "begs
you not to evade it as we often tend to do in the case of
difficult problems."29But to those who know the intensity of
the reactions likely to be evoked by every proposal for change
in this domain, the "temptation" not to touch the matter does
not seem so unreasonable. At least there should be, in a
sphere where one proposes major innovations, a state of acute
crisis which might help in overcoming the resistances against
the innovation. In most domains the situation appears similar
to that which obtains in Parliament when a group, deeply
divided on a certain issue, has managed to work out a formula,
for instance for an ordre du jour which the group as a whole
will be able to approve. "The text," said a journalist,
speaking about the ordre du jour proposed by the Socialists
when the Assembly debated the London Agreement establishing
WEU, "had been worked out with such difficulty, and composed
so carefully, that it became from the very moment of its creation
a delicate matter, or an outright impossibility, to abandon or
to amputate it. The suppression of any one of its paragraphs
would have disrupted the equilibrium of the concessions made
by all groups within the Party, and thus would have risked
reopening the quarrel."3? In the same sense a journalist wrote
about the present relations of church and state that they
"constitute a complex edifice which has been slowly built in
the course of fifty years of a religious history which was often
agitated and which finally seems to have found a point of
equilibrium. One could not attack any one of the aspects
of the present situation without risking a shattering of the
whole and a_revival...of struggles which have abated."31
Once one has put into question the established order of
things, the consequences are often felt to, be unpredictable.
One does not know where one will end up; one fears that an
impasse may develop. This is the apprehension which often
counteracts thedesire of deputies to "massacre" the government
of the moment. The Premier who is in office at a given moment
relies, according to a belief frequently expressed in the
political class, mainly on the difficulty of replacing him as
the factor which will ensure his survival for some 4me. "What
other policy with what other combination of groups?"'he may
ask tho-se:t4ho plan his overthrow. (He may wish to say; and he
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161.
will certainly be understood as saying: which other set of.
ministers with which other head of the government? But that is
a question which is often easier to answer than the first one:
governments, more often than not, change without policies or
the composition of the majority being much modified.)
(6) Governments having to look forward to "death" in the
near future may be little disposed to engage in long-range
enterprises. "Governments," a leader explained, "renounce...
all long-range policies as they know that they will doubtlessly
not have the time to execute them to their end." 33
.But what is it that is really supposed to discourage a
government from acting? Is it the apprehension that its
successors may not continue and carry to its completion an
enterprise which a government had begun? Or is it the danger
of working for competitors who will appropriate one's initiatives
and draw benefits from them, having left to the initiators only
the unattractive early phases of the enterprise when the costs
of change are more impressive than its ultimate advantages?
Naturally both motives are likely to be present and fused.
But in the image which the political class has of itself the
second plays a crucial role: one believes so easily in the
"immobilism" of those in power because one sees them motivated
by strictly personal concerns.
If I am above all interested in my own career, then the
instability of governments will make it imprudent for me to
concentrate. on long-range enterprises. "A continuous pre-
occupation with the state of his health," said a politician
of the Third Republic (Charles Danidlou) about one of the
leaders of the time (Andre Tardieu) "made him more interested
in isolated and sensational acts by which he might be remembered
he often told us this. than in long-run enterprises which he
was not sure he would be able to complete."3"A continuous
preoccupation" with my political "state of health" may have
the same consequences.
If I feel my death to be my annihilation; if posterity
is unreal for me because I will have fallen back into nothing-
ness when it enjoys existence; if I am above all attached to
my ephemeral self, then long-run enterprises will in any case
tend to seem pointless. During the conference at Versailles,
Clemenceau conceded, in the course of a conversation with
GNP filn
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162. -
Maurice Barrs, that the positions which France was obtaining
on the Rhine were fragile:
--_certainly, we have failed to reach our
historical aimsIbut so what, we have lived!
and in fifteen years?
-- in fifteen years? I shall be dead by then.35
A joke, to be_sure, but probably a significant one.
Finally, if I want to be in power as often and as long as
possible, I_must not risk antagonizing any group or individual,
if I can at all avoid it. But to act involves precisely such
risks. "To-the extent to which a reasoned policy involves a
choice," a leader (Pierre Mendes-France) recalled, "it cannot
fail to antagonize a fraction of the country at the beginning."
Hence "if one does not want to antagonize anybody, one condemns
oneself to immobilism." When governments are unstable, it is
particularly important not to antagonize anybody: I may
reasonably expect that I will have to leave my present
ministerial post before a certain policy, which displeases some,
will have achieved its pay-off; and at the next ministerial
crisis -- which I should prudently assume to be imminent -- I
might need the support, or at least the toleration, of precisely
those whom the policy in question would antagonize, Hence I
will tend to act only when things have come to such a pass
that perpetuating the present state of affairs may provoke even
more discontent than a change.
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163.
NOTES
Notes to Chapter 1
1. Jacques Fauvet, La France d4chir4e, Paris, 1957, p. 38.
2. Loc. cit., p. 14.
3. Loc. cit., p. 8.
4. Le Canard Enchatn4, January 25, 1956.
5. Jacques Fauvet; op. cit., p. 128.
6. Jacques Fauvet,- Le Monde, October 31 - November 1, 1954.
7. F41ix Gouin, A.N., July 5, 1956; 3.0., p. 3257.
8. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 44.
9. Combat, February 3, 1958.
10. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 31.
11. Loc. cit., pp. 1287129.
12. Raymond Barrillon, Le Monde, January 9, 1954.
13. Raymond Triboulet, A.N., March 2, 1956; J.0., p. 639.
14. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 42.
15. Ibid.
16. tbc. cit., p. 147.
17. Loc. cit., p. 43.
18. Ibid.
19. Loc. cit., p. 44.
20. Milmanuel Berl, La France irr4e11e, Paris, 1957, p. 34.
21. Loc. cit., pp. 39-40.
22. Loc. cit., pp. 43-44.
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164.
23. Georges Helluin, A.N., January 16, 1958; 3.0., p. 67.
24. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 38.
25. Emmanuel Berl, op. cit., p. 34.
26. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 40.
27. Loc. cit., p. 42.
281. Jean-Marc Th4olleyre, Le Monde, April 6, 1957.
29. Francois Goguel, quoted by Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 39.
30. Ibid.
31. Loc. cit., pp. 71-72.
32. Loc. cit., p. 73.
33. Emmanuel Berl, op. cit., p. 41.
34. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 39.
35. Combat, February 3, 1958.
36. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 77.
37. Demain, April 11-17, 1957.
38. Aims Paquet, A.N., July 28, 1956; J.0., p. 3721.
39. Christian Pineau, A.N., JUly 10, 1956; J.0., p. 3349.
40. A.N., October 8, 1955; 3.0., p. 4971.
41. A.N., November 17, 1953; 3.0., p. 5192.
42. AN., August 26, 1954; 3.0., P. 4266.
43. A.N., October 7, 1955; 3.0., p. 4880.
44. A.N., March 9, 1956; p. 800.
November 29, 1955; J.0., p. 6047.
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165.
46. Le Monde, July 7-8, 1957.
47.--Emmanuel Berl, op. cit., p. 58.
48. .Cf. Le Monde, February 21-22, 1954.
49. -Cf. Le Monde, December 17, 1955.
50. C.R., March 26, 1955; J.0., p. 1107.
51. Christian Pineau, A.N., February 18, 1955; J.0., p. 803.
52. A.N., November 5, 1957; J.0., p. 4652.
53. Edmond Barrachin, A.N., October 18, 1955; J.0., pp. 5131-
5132.
54. Pierre Garet, AN., October 18, 1955; J.0., p. 5133.
55. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 65.
56. Loc. cit., p. 38.
57. Ibid.
58. Chamber of Deputies, November 8, 1906; cf. Georges Bonne-
fous, Histoire politique de la Troisi&ce R4publique, Vol. 1,
_pp. 48-49, Paris, 1956.
59. A.N., July 5, 1956; J.0., p. 3280.
60. Emmanuel Berl, 224_91.t., p. 33.
61. Francois Goguel, Le regime politique franqais, Paris, 1955,
g. 89.
62.. Jacques Fauvet, op.-cit., p. 62.
63. -Jr, Paul-Boncour, Sur les chemins de la d4faite, Paris, 1946,
p; 293.
64. Jacques Fauvet, op. cit., p. 23.
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166.
1
Notes to Chapter 2
? Jean Zay, Souvenirs et solitude, Paris, 1945, pp. 155-156.
2 ^ Assemble Nationale (A.N.), October 17, 19563 Journal
Officiel, Debats parlementaires, Assembles Nationale
(1122.), p. 4178.
3 ? Edward Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, London, 1954,
Vol. 2, p. 304.
4. Loc. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 189-190.
5. Charles de Gaulle, L'appel, Paris, 1954, p. 53.
6. "Maroc et Tunisie, le probane du protectorat;'La Nef,
nouvelle serie, No. 2, Paris, 1953, pp. 7-9.
7. Andre Stibio, Carrefour, March 25, 1953.
8. A.N., October 8, 1955; J.0., p. 4956.
9. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, October 13, 1953.
10. Jacques Isorni, A.N., May 11, 1954; J.0., p. 2344.
11. Pierre de Chevigne, cf. Le Monde, December 21, 1955.
12. Andre Mutter, A.N., October 18, 1956; J.0., p. 5490.
13. Edgar Faure, A.N., November 2, 1955; J.0., p. 5490.
14. A.N., June 9, 1954; J.0., p. 2872.
15. A.N., March 22, 1957; J.0., p. 1800.
16. Raymond Marcellin, A.N., February 4, 1955; J.0., p. 754.
17. Pierre Andre, A.N., November 19, 1957; J.0., p. 4869.
18. A.N., August 31, 1954; J.0., p. 4488.
19.
A.N.,
December 20, 1954; J.0., p. 6628.
20. A.N., October 28, 1957; J.0., p. 4607.
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167.
21. A.N., March 27, 1957; J.0., p.. 1907.
22. A.N., March 9, 1954; J.0., p. 758. .
23. Vincent Rotinat, rapporteur of the committee _on national
defense of the Council of the Republic (CA.), December 8,
1953. Journal Officiel, Debats parlementaires, Conseil
de la Republique p. 2108.
24. A.N., May 29, 1957; J.0., p. 2634.
25. Andre Stibio, Carrefour, November 21, 1951.
26. Rivarol, December 30, 1954.
27. Le Monde, November 14, 1957.
28. Combat, April 6, 1954.
29. Marc Bloch, L'etrange defaite, Paris, 1946, p. 119.
30. Paul Reynaud, Au coeur de la male, Paris, 1951, p. 813.
31. Loc. cit., p. 801.
32. Weygand, Rappel au service, Paris, 1950, pp. 227-28.
33. Carrefour, December 7, 1955.
34. Andre Frossard, Histoire paradoxale de la Quatrieme
Republique, Paris, 1954, p. 30.
35. Georges Mamy, Le Monde, December 25, 1954.
36. Yvon Delbos, A.N., December 27, 1954; J.0., p. 6876.
37. Pierre Henri Teitgen, A.N., November 19, 1957;
J.0;, p. 4884.
38. Carrefour, August 26, 1953.
39. Roger Stephane, L'Observateur, August 27, 1953.
40. Georges Mamy, Le Monde, October 20, 1955.
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168.
41. L'Express, July 5, 1957.
42. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, November 14, 1957.
43. Le Monde, December 31, 1952.
44. Raymond Barrillon, Le Monde, May 23, 1957.
45. Claude Estier, L'Observateur, June 25, 1953.
46. Combat, April 24, 1954.
47. Demain, May 9-15, 1957.
48. Georges Mamy, Le Monde, February 9, 1955.
49.- Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes
April 1, 1957.
50. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, June 10, 1953.
51. Georges Mamy, Le Monde, May 29, 1953.
52. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes
March 7, 1952.
53._ Robert Aron, Histoire de Vichy, Paris, 1954,
54. Loc. cit., pp. 463-465.
55.. Loc. cit., p. 552.
56. Auguste Pinton, C.R., March 26, 1955; J.0.,
Politiques,
Politi ues,
pp. 438-439.
p. 1117.
57._LPierre-01ivier Lapie, A.N., January 17, 1957; J.0.,
p. 106.
58._ Guy Mollet, A.N., January 22, 1957; J.0., p. 214.
59. Le Populaire, quoted in Le Monde, June 6, 1957.
60. Meeting of the Comit4 directeur and of the parliamentary
groups of the Socialists, June 7, 1957. Cf. Claude Ezratty,
Le Monde, June 9-10, 1957.
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169.
111 61. Edmond Barrachin, A.N., November 29, 1955; 3.0., p. 6039.
62. Franpis Mitterrand, A.N., November 2, 1955; 3.0., p. 5484.
63. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, November 17, 1955.
64. Le Canard Enchatn4, April 10, 1957.
65. Andr4 Frossard, op. cit., pp. 29-30.
66. Georges Mamy, Le Monde, June 6, 1957.
67. Meeting of the Comit4 directeur and of the parliamentary
groups of ,the Socialists, June 7, 1957. Cf. Claude Ezratty,
Le Monde, June 9-10, 1957.
68. Edward Spears, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 297-298.
69. Charles de Gaulle, op. cit., p. 65.
70. Le Monde, May 17, 1957.
71. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, May 17, 1957.
72. A.N., December 20, 1954; J.0., p. 6622.
73. A.N., December 20, 1954; 3.0., p. 6638.
74. Andr4 Stibio, Carrefour, August 27, 1952.
75. Pierre Montel, A.N., October 28, 1955; J.0., p. 5341.
76. Raymond Barrillon, Le Monde, May 22, 1957.
77. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Politiques,
December 10, 1952.
78. Carrefour, October 7, 1953.
79. Edward Spears, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 201.
80. Weygand, op. cit., p. 228.
81. A.N., February 23, 1955; J.0., p. 884.
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170._
82. -Robert Guillain, Le Monde, June 11, 1954.
83.- Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, September 4, 1953.
84. Carrefour, September 30, 1953.
85. Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Lieutenant en Algirie,
Paris, 1957, pp. 155-257.
86. Paul Reynaud, A.N., August 6, 1954; J.0., p. 3918.
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171.
Notes to Chapter 3
1. A.N., November 12, 1955; J.0., p. 5647.
2. Pierre-Henri Teitgen, quoted in Le Monde, March 22-23, 1953.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. Georges Mamy, Le Monde, October 10-11, 1954.
8. A.N., October 12, 1954; J.0.,-pp. 4676-4677.
9. Andre Chgnebenoit, Le Monde, December 22, 1956.
Charles de Gaulle,
op. cit., p. 58.
A.N., December 22,
1954;
1954;
1954;
J.0., pp. 6741-6742.
A.N., December 21,
J.0., p. 6691.
A.N., December 22,
J.0., p. 6751.
10. Fran9ois de Menthon, A.N., December 18, 1956; J.0., p. 6096.
11. Jacques Isorni, A.N., December 18, 1956; J.0., p. 6093.
12. Emile Hugues, A.N., December 18, 1956; J.0., p. 6094.
13. Cf. Le Monde, May 30, 1957.
14. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes PolitiqUes,
June 10-11, 1954.
15. Loc. cit., June 15, 1954.
16. 14100C. cit., May 28, 1957.
17. Claude Estier, L'Observateur, November 24, 1955.
18. Camille Chautemps, letter to The New York Times,
August 16, 1945. Quoted by Jacques Benoist-Mechin,
Soixante jours qui ebranilrent l'occident, Paris, 1956,
Vol. 2, pp. 219-220.
19. -Loc. cit., pp. 228-229.
ale
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172. .
20. Jacqiies Fauvet, Le Monde, December 28, 1952.
21. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, February 9, 1955.
22. Charles de Gaulle, op. cit., p. 66.
23. Edouard Moisan, A.N., November 17, 1955; J.0., p. 5826.
24. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Politiques,
May 9, 1955.
25. March 26, 1957; J.0., p. 1858.
26. Alfred Fabre-Luce, Le sicle prend figure, Paris, 1949, p. 168.
27. Demain, November 25 - December 1, 1956.
28. Jean Farran, Paris-Match, October 22, 1955.
29. Quoted by Jacques Benoist-Mechin, op. cit.., Vol. 2,
pp. 268-269.
30. Loc. cit., Vol. 3, p. 453.
31. Edward Spears, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 308-309.
32. Quoted by Jacques Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., Vol. 3,
pp. 454-455.
33. Andre Chtnebenoit, Le Monde, August 21-22, 1955.
34. Le Monde, September 1, 1955.
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173.
Notes to Chapter 4
1. A.N., December 29, 1954; 3.0., p. 6938.
2. A.N., October 8, 1955; 3.0., p. 4950.
3. A.N., January 22, 1957; J.0., p. 203.
4. Le Canard Enchaine, June 17, 1953.
5. Le Monde, June 13, 1953.
6. Camite Cadillac, May 24, 1957; cf. Le Monde, May 26-27, 1957.
7. Michel Debre, La Republique et ses problemes, Paris, 1952,
p. 20.
8. Loc. cit., p. 98.
9. Jaques Fauvet, Le Monde, December 25, 1952.
10. Robert Gauthier, Le Monde, February 17-18, 1957.
11. A.N., July 28, 1955; J.0., p. 4417.
12. A.N., June 12, 1957; J.0., p. 2684.
13. A.N:, July 28, 1956; J.O., p. 3722.
14. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Po1itiques,1
November 12,.1951.
15. Carrefour, January 28, 1953.
16. May-24, 1957; cf. Le Monde, May 26-27, 1957.
17. Anatole de Monzie, Ci-devant, Paris, 1941, P. 288.
18. Andre Stibio, Indiscretions, Paris, 1951, pp. 178-179.
19. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Politiquesp
-June 9, 1954;
20. May-_24, 1957; cf. Le Monde, May 26-27, 1957.
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174.
21. Pierre Pucheu, MA vie, Paris, 1948, p. 44.
22. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, May 31, 1957.
23. Demain, May 30 - June 5, 1957.
24. Ibid.
25. J. R. Tournoux, Combat, October 4, 1957.
26. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Politiques,
June 7, 1957.
27. Raymond Dronne, A.N., November 5, 1957; J.0., p. 4650.
28. A.N., June 12, 1957; J.0., p. 2683.
29. A.N., June 12, 1957; J.0., p. 2699.
30. Cf. Le Monde, July 7, 1953.
31. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, June 14, 1957.
32. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Politiques,
May 23, 1957.
33. Leo Hamon, Terre humaine, July, 1951, p. 31.
34. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Politiques,
January 14, 1952.
35. Loc. cit:, January 15, 1952.
36. J. R. Tournoux, L'Information, June 6, 1953.
37. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Politiques,
,May 29, 1953.
38. Le Canard Enchatne, June 27, 1951.
39. Pierre Emmanuel, L'ouvrier de la onzieme heure, Paris,
1953,. p. 27.
40. October 8, 1955; J.0., p. 4947.
41. _Andre Stibio, La Voix du Nord, March, 4, 1953.
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175.
42. July 17, 1957; 3.0., p. 3700.
43. -August 25, 1955; cf. Le Monde, August 27, 1955.
44. May 31, 1957; cf. Le Monde, June 2-3, 1957.
45. -June 5, 1957; cf. Le Monde, June 7, 1957.
46. Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes Politiques,
May 27,1953.
47. Georges Mamy, Le Monde, June 24, 1953.
48. L'Express, September 26, 1953.
49. Ibid.
50. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, May 26, 1953.
51. Jacques Soustelle, A.N., March 21, 1957; J.0., p. 1781.
52. Andra Stibio, La Voix du Nord, June 20, 1953.
53. -Claude Bourdet, L'Observateur, June 4, 1953.
54. Georges Altschuler, Combat, November 29, 1952.
55. Lao Hamon, Terre Humaine, July, 1951, P. 35.
56: Jacques Soustelle, A.N., June 5, 1956; 3.0., p. 2308.
57. Alfred Coste-Floret, AN., November 17, 1953; J.0., p. 5206.
58.? -Michel Debra, C.R., November 12, 1953; j.0., p. 1743.
59. Maurice Schumann, A.N., May 31, 1956; 3.07, p. 2180.
60. June 8, 1956; cf. Raymond Barrillon, Le Monde, August 29, 1956.
61. --Guy Mollet, A.N., March 27, 1957; 3.0., p. 1910.
62. Raymond Badiou, Le Monde, May 6-7, 1956.
41163, Jacques Dumaine, Quai d'Orsay, Paris, 1955, p. 351,
?(tebruary 8, 1949).
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176.
64. Michel Raingeard, A.N., August 28, 1954; J.0., p. 4348.
65. A.N., October 8, 1955; J.0., p. 4959.
66. Gasion Palewski, Combat, July 10, 1956.
67. A.N., October 8, 1955; J.0., p. 4947.
68. Andre Stibio, Liberte de l'Esprit, March-April, 1953.
69. Claude Bourdet, L'Observateur, November 20, 1952.
70. Christian Pineau, Le Monde, January 7, 1956.
71. A.N., October 8, 1955; J.0., p. 4945.
72. Robert de Jouvenel, op. cit., p. 51.
73. Gilbert Grandval, Ma mission au Maroc, Paris, 1956, P. 141.
74. A.N., October 16, 1956; J.0., p. 4133.
75. Lucien Rebatet, Les decombres, Paris, 1942, p. 59.
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177.
Notes to Chapter 5
1. Jean Ferniot, L'Express, November 28, 1957.
2. Demain, May 30 - June 5, 1957.
3. L'Express, May 28, 1955.
4. Robert de Jouvenel, op. cit., pp. 53-54.
5. Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, Memoires d'un Francais rebelle,
Paris, 1948, pp. 123-124.
6. bemain, December 13-19, 1956.
7 Leon Bailby. Cf. Edmond Wellhoff, Autour du deput4
Moyen, Paris, 1932, p. 180. -
8. Speech of June 18, 1942; cf. Charles de Gaulle, op.
pp. 672-673.
9. Cf. Le Monde, May 11, 1957.
10. A.N., January 11, 1955; J.0., p. 5.
11. La Nef, December, 1956.
12. January 14, 1954; cf. Le Monde, January 16, 1954.
13. July 22, 1954; J.0., p. 3541.
14. A.N., October 8, 1955; J.0., p. 4964.
15. 'A.N., October 6, 1955; J.0., p. 4813.
16. -Jacques Soustelle, A.N., June 9, 1954; J.0., p. 2863.
17. February 10, 1956; J.0., p. 245.
18. *A.N., may 21, 1957; J.0., p. 2596.
19. A.N., March 13, 1957; J.0., p. 1546.
20. Andre Stibio, Antoine Pinay, Paris, without year, p. 21.
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178-,
21.
22:-
23.
Paul Reynaud, A.N., January 31, 1956; J.0., P?
140.
A.N., February 4, 1955; J.0., p. 760.
A.N., October 6, 1955; J.0., p. 4813.
24.
,
A.N., October 11, 1955; J.0., p. 5027.
25.
A.N., October 12, 1955; J.0., p. 5062.
26.
A.N., March 26, 1957; J.0., p. 1857.
27.
Le Monde, July 25, 1953.
28.
Georges Bidault, A.N., November 20, 1953; J.0.,
p.
5354.
29.
A.N., October 8, 1955; J.0., p. 4957.
30.
A.N., October 8, 1955; J.0., p. 4927.
31.
A.N., January 22, 1957; J.0., p. 189.
32.
Le Canard Encha1n4, May 22, 1957.
33.
Ibid., December 16, 1953.
34.
Georges Rotvand, Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes
October 8 and 12,. 1956.
35.
Le Canard Enchatn4, November 6, 1957.
36. -Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, October 29, 1953.
37. --Demain, May. 23-29, 1957.
38: :Pierre Brocas, Le Monde, January 15, 1958.
39. -Georges Mamy,.Le Monde, October 20-21, 1957.
40. Emile Hugues, A.N., October 30, 1955; J.0.; p. 5384.
41:--Roger Gaborit, A.N., October 13, 1955; J.0., p. 5103.
42. Congress of U.D.S.R., November 8, 1953; cf. Le Monde,
---:---November 10, 1953.
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179.
43. Raymond Barrillon,-Le Monde, November 10, 1953.
44. January 30, 1958; cf. Le Monde, February 1, 1958.
45. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, June 8, 1957.
46. Raymond Barrillon, Le Monde, March 26, 1957.
47. Andre Morice, A.N., January 22, 1957; J.0., p. 190.
48. Jean-Michel Flandin, A.N., July 7, 1955; 3.0., p. 3678.
49. Cf. Le Monde, June 4, 1957.
50. Cf. Le Monde, May 15, 1957.
51. Cf. Combat, October 4, 1955.
52. Cf. L'Express, October 17, 1955.
53. Roger Stephane, L'Observateur, April 30, 1953.
54. Paul Deheme, Economie et Realites Mondiales, January, 1953.
55. Andre Frossard, Bulletin de Paris, November 17, 1955.
56. Philippe Barres, La victoire au dernier tournant, Paris,
1932, p. 97.
57. Pierre Pucheu, op. cit., p. 216.
58. Charles de Gaulle, L'unite, Paris, 1956, p. 299.
59. Andre Fontaine, Le Monde, May 4, 1956. '
60. A.N., March 8, 1957; J.0., p. 1407.
61. Cf. Le Monde, June 18, 1953.
62. Jacques Fauvet, Le Monde, September 21, 1957.
63: Jacques Isorni, A.N., January 21, 1958; J.0., p. 162.
64. Andre Chenebenoit, Le Monde, December 12, 1952.
65. Le Canard Enchain, August 21, 1957.
66; Jacques Soustelle, A.N., September 26, 1957; 3.0:, p. 687.
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180.
Notes to Chapter 6
Pierre Pflimlin,.A.N., November 14, 1957; J.0., p. 4783.
2. L'Express, October 20, 1955.
3. r. Robert de Jouvenel, op. cit., p. 141:
4. - N. Jacquefont, Le Monde, December 25, 1953.
5; Robert de Jouvenel, op. cit., p. 115.
6. - Charles Moraze, Les Francais et la Republique, Paris,
1956, p. 133.
7. Pierre Drouin, Le Monde, October 16, 1953.
8. Raymond Dronne, A.N., October 23, 1953; J.0.,
p.
4545.
9.
Valery Giscard d'Estaing, A.N., January 17, 1957; J.0.,
p.
94.
10.
Press conference, December 4, 1954.
11.
-A.N., November 12, 1957; J.0., p. 4725.
12.
A.N., December 10, 1954; 3.0., p. 6092.
13.
A.N., August 5, 1954; d.O., p. 3860.
14.
C.R., August 3, 1955; 3.0., pp. 2189-2190.
15.
Raymond Barrillon, Le Monde-, December 29, 1954.
16.
Edmond Barrachin, A.N., July 7, 1955; 3.0., p. 3678.
17.
Raymond Pinchard, C.R., August 3, 1955; p. 2176.
18.
Cf. Jacques Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 226.
19.
Loc. cit., pp. 229-230.
20. -Le_Canard Enchain& December 16, 1953.
21. Pierre de Chevigne, A.N., July 28, 1955; 3.0., p. 4438.
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181.
22. Le Monde, April 8, 1953.
23. Jacques Dumaine, bp. cit., p. 78.
24. Loc. cit., p. 281.
25. A.N., September 30, 1957; J.0., p. 4438.
26. Guy Mollet, A.N., May 17, 1957; 3.0., p. 2564.
27. Madeleine Poinso-Chapuis, A.N., October 21, 1955; 3.0., p. 5199.
28. Pierre Andre, A.N., November 19, 1957; J.0., p. 4869.
29. Felix Gaillard, A.N., November 5, 1957; J.0., p. 4633.
30. Raymond Barrillon, Le Monde, October 10, 1954.
31. Georges Hourdin, Le Monde, April 30, 1957.
32. Raymond Barrillon, Le Monde, December 9, 1952.
33. Pierre-Henri Teitgen, A.N., March 14, 1957; 3.0., p. 1596.
34. Charles Danielou, Dans l'intimit4 de Marianne, Paris,
1945, p. 145.
35. Philippe Barrs, op. cit., p. 26.
36. Le Monde, April 10, 1953.
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