Jerry-Building & Baby-Kissing

A sick man with a face the color of wet cement took over the reins of government (but hardly the reins of power) in France last week. Andre Marie's party, the conservative Radical Socialists, was in bad health too.

In fact, all France was politically maladjusted: at least 40% of its voters favored Charles de Gaulle, about 25% favored the Communists. Andre Marie would try to govern, as Robert Schuman had before him, with an uneasy coalition of the M.R.P., the Socialists, and the Radicals. This coalition represented a majority of the Assembly, but less than 35% of present French sentiment.

Whether Marie could make his majority stick for more than a few weeks depended largely on his Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, foxy little Paul Reynaud, 69, who is probably the oldest man in France still taking boxing lessons (two hours a week), and says he can revive France's economy if given a free hand (and plenty of free enterprise).

Three times the Socialists, who had brought down the Schuman government, agreed to accept Reynaud, whom they hated; three times they reneged. Finally, Socialist Elder Statesman Leon Blum got them to stand quietly in harness.

Last week Marie, 51, moved from the Ministry of Justice, where he had served two solid, undistinguished terms, to the Hotel Matignon, the Premier's official residence. There he would nurse his fragile government and a lung ailment, contracted in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. Marie is what the French call a "Sunday poet"; he has written the lyrics of two operettas (Ecole des Maris and Gentil Bernard).

Marie's new government looked like a jerry-built imitation of other governments, all unsuccessful. Reynaud had been Premier in 1940 when France fell. Blum and Paul Ramadier, two former Premiers, were back in the cabinet. Cracked one Paris newspaperman: "It looks as if the Third Republic is being called on to save the Fourth Republic from a Fifth."

To Charles de Gaulle, against whom most of the jerry-building was directed, the new government looked even worse. Said he: "France is led by a government spawned by political machinations which only pretends to represent public sentiment. These [cabinet shuffles] are games which no longer interest anyone but the professionals." Meanwhile, le grand Charlie was getting pretty professional himself. Said one of his aides: "He is out in the country meeting people. I think you call it baby-kissing."

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