Pisa Passes

Nine times in his eight months in office Premier Robert Schuman, the lean, leaning tower of French politics, had tottered on the brink of failure. Nine times he survived a vote of confidence by margins as small as 33, 23 and 16 Assembly votes.

Last week he survived another crisis, the civil servants' strike, and then this week he crashed, a victim of the law of averages and of the almost mathematical perfection of the Socialist Party's stupidity.

For a while the civil servants' strike looked serious to everyone except Finance Minister Rene Mayer, in whose department it started, and who had other things to worry about. When the strikers presented their demands to Mayer, he did nothing at all about it. In fact, he left for his Normandy home to nurse his ulcer.

The strike spread; customs officials, tax collectors, food ration officers and criminal court clerks walked out. Schuman made the strikers understand that he was not going to be pressured into compliance.

Near normalcy had been restored in the government departments when Schuman went before the Assembly to defend his military budget. The Socialists, who are part of the coalition supporting M.R.P.

Leader Schuman, proposed an amendment cutting military appropriations about 4%. They had been so directed by a rigid mandate of their party meeting in June.

Schuman would not accept the amendment nor this kind of one-party dictation to his coalition. He said he would resign if the amendment passed. When the vote came, his Socialist ministers rose from the government benches and resigned to sit and vote with their party. Schuman was beaten, 297 to 214.

What next? Nobody knew, least of all the Socialists. Perhaps another coalition; perhaps even another try for Schuman with a reshuffled cabinet. Perhaps, though improbably, the Assembly would dissolve itself and give Charles de Gaulle a chance in a general election.

Asked for a statement, Schuman kept his record of good sense and dry humor. Said he: "The way in is the time to make statements--not the way out."

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