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When Dienbienphu fell, Mendès knew in his own mind that he would become Premier. Early in June, he made a speech which he expected to bring down the tottering Laniel government. The speech was the poorest of his career. Even while friends muttered polite sympathy, Mendès confidently began work on the speech that swept him into office twelve days later.
Hearth Chats. Mendès-France, the man in a hurry, had the list of his Cabinet members in his pocket when he made his appeal for investiture. He formed his government in a record 36 hours. He declared he might even choose men from parties that had not voted for him, and he made good the promise by picking two young MRPers, faithful attenders of the diners du travail. With an average age of 47, his was the youngest Cabinet in French history.
Mendès has also let light and air into the stuffy salon atmosphere in which French politicians have traditionally gone their subtle ways in a cloud of courtly titles ("Monsieur le Ministre, Monsieur le President'"), confiding their secret maneuverings to only a small group of ancient parliamentary correspondents. Adopting another Rooseveltian practice, he held press conferences, gave "straight answers when he could, said "no comment" when he could not. He also adopted the "corner of the hearth" chat, by broadcast Saturday nights direct to the French people.
Last week Mendès had news on his Indo-China timetable: "During the first week progress was made but, frankly, in the second week things did not go so well," he admitted. He sought to justify the French withdrawal in the Red River Delta: "If the positions held by the Expeditionary Corps remained dispersed and fragile, our negotiators would have had to do their job under the threat of tragedy, and their chances of success would have been terribly reduced." He still had hopes; he had come away from his meeting with Chou En-lai fortnight ago in Switzerland convinced that the agile Chou sincerely wants peace.
The difficulty is that whether or not Mendès-France brings off his promise of peace lies not with him, but with the Communists. Wrote France's leading commentator, Raymond Aron, in the conservative Figaro: "It now happens that M. Molotov and M. Chou En-lai become arbiters of French politics. They are free to provoke or avoid a ministerial crisis. If they grant a cease-fire within the prescribed time limit, Mendès-France will inevitably become suspect, since he will appear the favorite of those he himself calls his enemies."
Promises to Keep. In the 30 days allotted to him, Mendès has other tall promises to keep. He has promised to submit the kind of tough domestic economic program that successive postwar governments have flinched from. But Mendès insists that, economically, France feels better than it really is, that French prices are 10% to 20% above world prices, that French national income is only a meager 3% over 1929, that France's unsound trade balance with the rest of the world has been concealed by dollar aid. Socialist Deputies who support him on Indo-China may desert him over his economic plan.