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Priority No. 1. Wrest away from the Communist Party the grip it holds today on 5,000,000 Frenchmen by giving back to the French people the long-forgotten feeling of social and material progress; in other words, by restoring hope.
France's national income is still mired today where it stood in 1929. In a generation, our country has made no progress. We are the only nation in the Western world to present such a sorry balance sheet. Out of this situation French Communist propaganda easily derived its main strength. In the eyes of many Frenchmen, the Communists were the only ones who talked about progress. The fact that the new government has registered a real impact on the nation has already thrown confusion into the Communist ranks. The bosses of the Communist machine in Paris are deeply disturbed. They sent emissaries to several provinces with explicit orders to fight the confusion in their ranks by explaining that "Mendès-France is the last and slickest of all capitalist stooges."
Priority No. 2. Put back Franco-American relations on a healthy basis. This can only be achieved if France ceases to stand like a beggar in the U.S. bread line.
When the old regimes decided to rely on American charity, they committed an unpardonable crime against Franco-American friendship, which can only be based upon mutual respect. The Atlantic alliance should not rely on satellites.
For two years before he came to power, Mendès-France gathered around himself a group of technicians and businessmen to examine ways and means by which France might be able to get along without relying on American subsidies. Not one of the old governments ever asked its own experts to undertake the same kind of study.
Breaking the Crust. The essential aim of the Mendès-France revolution is to break the crust which weighs upon the French economy and hinders its free development. This crust is made up of layers of protections, subsidies and financial subterfuges. Today, the French economic machine is geared to the production rhythm of its weakest components. The state has nearly become an agency to stifle competition.
Everybody expected Mendès-France to come out with a system of state planning. He did the opposite. He decided to plunge French economy into international competition as quickly as possible by reducing customs tariffs and opening the frontiers. Thus he will gradually lift a great part of the protective decrees. Mendès-France will issue no ukases; it is the old order of free competition which must clean house.
But when a business has to face the necessity of reconversion, it may apply to the state. The government will provide both plans and credit, and it will assume responsibility for unemployed workers who will need readaptation to new jobs.
These are the main principles of the French "New Deal." If it succeeds, France should find herself healthy and independent, instead of lagging one generation behind.
The Old Regime. Formidable resistance rises against Mendès-France. He has the support of the majority of the workers and of big business. Against him stands the greater majority of small and medium-sized industrial, commercial and agricultural enterprises, all those who were able to survive only in the incubator of protection. They don't realize that without radical treatment, most of them are condemned to death.