FRENCH BREAD
By LEN ORTZEN
THIS year's harvest in France is disastrously inferior to last year's—which was not sufficient for the needs of the country. To what extent will this lack of wheat influence events in France? Nothing moves the Paris Press to an outbreak of gravely moral articles and solemn headlines more than the sight of queues outside a few bakers' shops. Bread is of great importance to the French, not only because it is an integral part of all their meals ; most of their revolutions have been preceded by bread queues. Deep and secret fibres bind them to bread. Throughout the cen- turies they have learnt to respect its values—nutritive, social, political—and they have kept this respect while losing many others. Bread is a symbol in France. Its colour and quality, availability and price are sure and permanent indications of conditions in the country.
So when the Parisians read, one fine spring morning a few months ago, that people had been seen queueing for bread they all had the same idea at the same time. They went out and bought an extra length of bread. The next day there were long queues outside all the bakers'. I joined four queues, and each shop sold all its bread before I reached the counter. People carrying bread were stopped in the street and asked for their source of supply. Notices appeared on the closed doors of bakers' shops to say that their stocks of flour were exhausted. The evening papers described the situation as agonising, critical, catastrophic ; the Communists blamed America for deliberately reducing the promised supplies of wheat to France ; the Right wing Press blamed the Goverment for inefficiency and bad distribution of flour stocks. In my guarder people were con- fused and angry ; of all the rationed foods bread had been the only one available consistently and regularly. Old Jauret complained petulantly to his few customers that it was little use obtaining forged bread tickets when even good ones were not honoured.
The Parisians were inerves—a much overworked word in their present vernacular. "Tout le monde est enema," people said, each speaker implying that he or she was the only person whose nerves were not on edge. Rumours of the Government's intentions cir- culated rapidly by word and in print; the ration was to be reduced, registration would be enforced, the making of pastry prohibited, bakers' shops would close twice a week. People returning from the provinces brought back tales of bread being available in abundance— not just bread, but lovely white bread. Meanwhile the Government assured everyone that there was enough flour and wheat in the country to maintain the ration until the harvest.
A few days later the bread ration was reduced from 300 grammes to 250. Impossible, everyone cried. "C'est impossible!—on ne peuz pas." Old Jauret bought some more forged bread tickets. "That's it," said the women shoppers in the market of the quartier. "We'll just have to get some forged tickets. It's shameful, the things we have to do in order to live." It was also decreed by the Government that all bakers must close on Sundays. This was rather a useless measure, as it resulted in long queues on. Saturday evenings, the purchasing of two days' bread and the consumption of stale bread on Sundays.
The situation calmed itself and remained quiet until the third week of the following month, when reports began to accumulate of people storming bakers' shops and taking away bread for which they paid but omitted to leave any ration tickets. The Government, somewhat belatedly, increased the controlled price of wheat, which was lower than that for any other cereal. Early in June the bread in Paris suddenly became a bright saffron yellow in colour. This, we were informed, was due to the increase in the proportion of maize. As a result, not only did the taste and nutritive value deteriorate but the mopping-up qualities of the bread disappeared very soon after purchase. The Parisians began to rouspeter more strongly than usual. People were puzzled ; they had been told of a good harvest the previous year. A few commented on the bad winter and the destruction of stocks ; some said that the farmers were feeding wheat to their pigs ; others that it was being exported or that it was being sent to feed the Germans. The Communist papers claimed that the workers were being starved ; " c'est la misere," they cried, with a touch of exaggeration. The President of the Republic and the Prime Minister both made a broadcast appeal to farmers to disgorge the wheat that everyone in the cities believed they had stored away in secret places. The President pro- posed the formation of local committees, consisting of the mayor, the cure, the schoolmaster and other notables, to induce farmers to sell their store of wheat. A number of Prefets made tours of their departements, meeting farmers and finding out how much wheat they could and would provide. Some other Prefets organised requisitioning. The Prefet of the Rhone Department went so far as to announce the introduction of new ration tickets for bread and registration with bakers; but he was mobbed by the crowd and forced to withdraw his scheme.
A little later in the month I went to stay with friends in Normandy. Monsieur Lenormand, my host, is one of the few Frenchmen I know prepared always to examine both sides of a question ; he is usually good-humoured and objective, even about bread. " Ah, what lovely bread," I exclaimed, as his wife cut the dark brown length at the dinner table. "You should see the colour of it in Paris."
"But you get more than we do," he said indignantly. "One hundred and fifty grammes is all you'll get here, after this week," he added warningly. "We've just been told by the Prifet that we've got to fend for ourselves too ; every village has to live on its own resources until the harvest. Own resources! This is a market- gardening community ; we grow hardly any cereals at all."
In the village there were a number of official posters on the walls, signed by the Prefet of Calvados and appealing to farmers to co-operate with mayors in meeting the emergency ; the posters stated further that the names of farmers who had done their duty patriotically would be published, and that undoubtedly it would not be necessary to add a list of those who had failed in their duty. The next day each of these posters had a neighbour issued by the Depart- mental Farmers' Union, asserting that this region had produced and delivered more wheat than any other, and therefore the bread shortage was not the resppnsibility of the local farmers. "Exactly," said the villagers. "It's always the same. Everyone argues over whose responsibility it is, but no one does anything about it."
The mayor of the village, however, is a practical Socialist whose first step was to order everyone within the commune to register at one of the two bakers' shops. Monsieur Lenormand's wife—who has a household of eight, including her husband's parents, to cater for—decided, with true Norman caution, to register half the family with each of the two bakers. But just before the lower ration came into effect one of the bakers decided to go away for his annual holiday. The remaining baker refused to serve any but his regis- tered customers unless they obtained a certificate from the Maine. Thus Madame Lenormand learnt, as did everyone in the village eventually, that the mayor had taken the unprecedented precaution of checking the two lists of registrations.
Even the reduced ration of 15o grammes soon exhausted the flour stocks of the village. The local leaders—mayor, schoolmaster and cure united for once over this all-important matter of bread—decided it was of no use appealing to higher authority. At this point the French flair for improvisation, the preference for individual action, showed itself to be an asset as well as a liability. The cure, calling to mind certain tuyaux of his Resistance days, proposed a visit to an essentially wheat-growing area, where stocks of last year's harvest were still likely to exist. The mayor provided him with a lorry and a gendarme to sit beside him—the latter being a kind of insurance against possible interference from official control, for the transfer of certain foodstuffs from one departement to another is illegal without prefectorial permission.
The cure returned with a lorry-load of wheat that was sent to be ground. The mayor showed his appreciation by consenting—having previously refused—to welcome monseigneur the bishop when he visited the village church for the confirmation service. French bread has its properties of reconciliation as well as dissension.
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