Still on Its Legs

Genevieve Tabouis, the veteran French news commentator, said to a fellow newsman last week: "The French people are old. We are very witty, very charming and very intelligent, but we are old and we want to stay quietly by our own fire. The Germans are less charming but they are young--they want to fight, to make love, to possess . . ." Mme. Tabouis was trying to explain why the old, tired French do not want to face the problems of EDC (the European Army project including Germany).

Premier Joseph Laniel is for EDC--conditionally. Said Laniel to the French National Assembly: "For my part I refuse to seek solutions to the difficulties of the hour in equivocation or delay. I am for Europe. I say it clearly. But on certain conditions, which I have stated no less clearly . . ."

Laniel, whose government must resign in January when France inaugurates a new President, was trying to get some sort of moral support (not ratification) for EDC out of the Assembly, to give his lameduck government a little more standing at Bermuda. The Premier watered his resolution down as far as he could without draining it of all meaning: "The National Assembly . . . asks for assurances that the policy of building a united Europe will be continued . . ." Then Laniel put the squeeze on the Deputies by submitting the resolution to a vote of confidence. This meant that, if the measure was voted down, not only would the government fall but the Assembly itself might be dissolved. The Deputies were properly horrified at the prospect of being prematurely ousted from their red plush seats in the Palais Bourbon.

The Assembly solved the problem in its own way, by means of abstentions. The vote: for the government resolution, 275; against, 244; abstentions, 103. This meant that the motion was carried, the government was still on its legs, and France would have a voice at Bermuda--but since a majority of the Deputies had failed to endorse EDC, it was an all but fatal blow to that embryonic enterprise. Said one diplomat: "If EDC is born in France, it will be born by Caesarean section. And it practically involves the death of the government bringing it forth."

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