What's the Matter with Kelly?

Last week France had its fourth government in seven weeks. A small but revealing fact in the situation was that the new Premier, Dr. Henri Queuille, who had been active in French politics since 1914 and a cabinet minister 22 times, was unknown in the U.S. Very few Americans could make more than a stab at pronouncing his name.*

In his youth a rural physician in Neuvic, central France, now a 64-year-old Radical Socialist, Dr. Queuille is small (5 ft. 4 in.), slight, and endowed with a mouselike talent for making himself inconspicuous. Last week he ordered the members of his cabinet not to leave Paris for two months, in view of the financial emergency. His program stuck close to the Reynaud plan, which had caused the Socialists to upset the last two governments. Fear of Charles de Gaulle was making the Socialists meeker.

Nevertheless, everyone wondered how soon small Dr. Queuille would go flying out the revolving door of French politics. That door has been whirling faster & faster of late, exasperating the friends of France abroad and infuriating her people at home. The large number of French parties, fostered by a system of proportional representation, means that one party can hardly ever control more than 35% of the National Assembly. This in turn means that the party in power must govern in coalition with other parties--which keep a jealous watch and often kick over the traces when they get restive.

The one thing that may slow down the revolving door is the knowledge that if he comes to power Charles de Gaulle can stop it altogether.

*The New York Herald Tribune suggested that the best way to pronounce Queuille was as a Southern colonel would say the last two syllables of "you cur, you" (yuh cuh yuh). The Tribune found, however, that some Americans called him Kelly.

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