Most articulate of Premier Mendès-France's young braintrusters is J. J. Servan-Schreiber, 30, editor of the weekly political review L'Express. A U.S.-trained fighter pilot who served, with a Free French squadron in the Ninth U.S. Air Force, Servan-Schreiber was friend and counselor of France's Premier long before he came to power. This article was written by him for TIME.
Last week two significant events occurred within 24 hours. Tuesday evening Premier Pierre Mendès-France gathered in Paris, for the first time in seven years, all the chiefs of the French provincial and overseas administration. He outlined the economic revolution which he is about to launch. Wednesday evening, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles administered to the French Premier, for the first time since the end of the war, a diplomatic slap in the face.
These two events are not isolated occurrences. To put it bluntly, the present situation looks to us as follows: at the very moment when France at long last has at its head a young, dynamic and popular government, which has given rise to new hopes, American diplomacy is led into a kind of coalition, the aim of which is to provoke the downfall of Mendès-France.
Flummoxing the U.S. Why does the U.S. lend itself to this kind of game? For the simple reason, it seems, that many American diplomats find it easier to work with the old French political leaders than with the new regime. What they want, apparently, is to find again at the head of the French government one of their old associates who will tell them nothing but pleasant things and who will sign anything he is asked to.
It is only with a feeling of shame that a Frenchman can recall the manner in which his country behaved toward its American allies until a few months ago. But this truth must be faced, no matter how painful: outmoded American diplomatic methods met with French political cowardice and both got along splendidly. On the one side, in France, we had a series of conservative governments, unwilling to face serious reform in the country's economy. At the end of each month, they were compelled to borrow money to patch up the gaps. It was all very simple. The leaders of the old French regime promised the U.S. almost everything: a military victory in Indo-China. an enthusiastic vote for the EDC, ringing measures against the Communist Party, etc. All this in exchange for millions of dollars which bolstered the French deficits and enabled the State Department to display handsomely worded diplomatic communiques in its showcase.
But the day was bound to come when Americans would realize they had been flummoxed, that they had been paying for a regime which had nothing but illusions to sell. Fortunately, it was the French people who reacted first. Last June, after the crushing defeat of Dienbienphu, the French themselves, disgusted by all the years of cowardice and mediocrity, broke with the old methods and brought into power a new man before our friends and allies abandoned us.
The first part of the Mendes plan consisted of deflating illusions and facing facts. This is the story of Indo-China, and the story of EDC. The past has now been liquidated. The new regime must construct the future. The second stage opens with Mendès' economic plan. Two of its aims have top priority: