FRANCE: Drop by Drop

For months the French newspapers have been translating the U.S. phrase “cold war” as la guerre froide. To an imaginative and linguistically fertile people, this lacked a certain savor. Last week a new and entirely French label for the “cold war” was launched by one-eyed President of the Republic Vincent Auriol himself.

Deploring the “cold war” at an Anglo-American Press Association lunch, M. Auriol called it la guerre perlee. Since the ’20s, Frenchmen have referred to a slowdown strike as une greve perlee (literally, a drop-by-drop strike). Thus, la guerre perlee means the “drop-by-drop war.” Connoisseurs predicted that the French press would snap it up.