NEWS OF THE WEEK
FRANCE has fended off General de Gaulle once more. That is one interpretation of the latest fitful jerk in the governmental machine. Any man who accepts the position of Prime Minister of France in present circumstances deserves both admiration and sympathy, and both will be extended without reserve to M. Robert Schuman, who once more shoulders a burden become all but intolerable. His prospects are of the darkest. The Socialists, who have brought two successive administrations down and refuse the responsibility of forming one themselves, gave M. Schuman their votes on Tuesday and enabled him to secure eleven more than the 311 necessary for survival, but it is plain that he cannot count for a moment on their consistent support. By their wantonly destructive tactics they are showing themselves the enemies not merely of their own country but of all Western Europe, for the disastrous instability of France is the most disturbing factor in politics west of the Iron Curtain today. The one hope is that M. Reynaud, though he brought down his Government, may by his exposure of the country's financial position have given public opinion a sufficiently salutary shock to sober it. He made his mistakes. His financial reforms would undoubtedly have fallen much harder on the industrial workers than on the peasants. M. Schuman's Finance Minister, who may be M. Schuman himself, must alter that. The new Prime Minister on Tuesday gave an admirably realist analysis of the situation, warning the Assembly remorselessly of what must happen to a country that consumed more than it produced, ran away, from its currency, left it to speculators to determine its standard of living and by actually overthrowing Governments jeopardised the very existence of its political institu- tions. That is an accurate diagnosis of France's position today, and the problems inherent in it have to be faced by a Government with no assured Parliamentary majority, for all that M. Schuman can count on with any certainty is his own Mouvement Republicaine Populaire party and a few small groups. If the Socialists withhold their support one more French Government will crash. Their con- duct will depend on the extent to which they realise that the economic condition of France is degenerating continuously, and that every new Government will have an even harder task than its predecessor. There can only be two beneficiaries of the present state of political irresponsibility—General de Gaulle and the Communists, and the advent of either to power might precipitate something like civil war.
