The 19th Fall

It had been a sickly creature from the beginning, so there was neither surprise nor shock last week when the 19th postwar government of France died. Its demise merely added the exclamation point to a long and melancholy sentence.

For Frenchmen it brought the familiar word "crisis" back into the headlines, but no assurance that the politicians' response would be equal to the danger.

For France's allies it increased the conviction that France is unwilling or unable to take its proper place as a world power.

It increased the possibility that France would give up the fight and lay Indo-China open to Communist absorption.

The government of Millionaire Joseph Laniel had survived two Indo-China debates (the last by only two votes). The opposition insisted on a third debate.

Laniel tried to head it off by asking the National Assembly simply to "note," not even approve, his government's Indo-China war policy and let the matter be.

The Assembly decisively rejected Laniel's attempt as too easy an out. The burly Premier, a dead cigar jutting from his impassive face, strode off the Assembly floor, took his Cabinet with him for a meeting with President Renee Coty.

The decision was to handle the matter as a vote of confidence. "It is rationally unthinkable," commented Finance Minister Edgar Faure with a shake of his head, "but the fall of this government is passionately wanted." Word from Geneva. The desire of the Assembly might not be rational, but it was plain. The Laniel government had refrained from doing much of anything about anything, so as to offend no one.

But the people--or at least the Assembly politicos--were tired of the Laniel crowd.

There was increasing turmoil over the long-postponed EDC decision. Russia's Molotov brought matters to a boil by ruthlessly dismissing the idea that there was a way to negotiate an honorable peace in Indo-China.

Radical Socialist Edouard Daladier, Foreign Minister at the time of Munich and now a man Molotov praises, struck first. Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, he cried, had "failed to get anywhere at all." Bidault, just off the train from Geneva and even more sleepy-lidded than usual, confessed that he could not report "promise of certain success" at Geneva.

"But," said he, "it . . . depends on you to a large extent whether in the uncertain sky of Lake Geneva a healthy wind will blow away the clouds ..." Then from the Radical Socialist benches came the voice of ambitious Economist Pierre Mendes-France, most outspoken advocate of the theory that France is "militarily overextended" and must get out of Indo-China. "We are not Americans," said he. "We cannot see the world with their eyes ... It is possible to end the disorder immediately, but it is not this government that can do it." Just Short of a Year. As a maneuver to head off the inevitable, Bidault's Cath olic M.R.P., biggest party in Laniel's coalition, raised the bogey of "dissolution" -- the constitutional provision that stipulates that the National Assembly may be dissolved and new national elec tions held if within 18 months two cabinets are overturned by absolute major ities (at present, 314 votes) on votes of confidence. French politicians, anxious to hold on to their red plush seats, were too canny to be intimidated. They maneuvered their votes so that Laniel lost his vote of confidence (306 to 293) but not by the crucial 314 votes. The line-up against him included: 96 Communists, 104 of the 105 Socialists, 33 of the 76 Radical Socialists and 44 of the 75 Gaullists. Laniel had lasted just 14 days short of a full year, the second-longest-lived postwar government.*

According to the custom that the man most responsible for bringing down a government is given the first chance to form a new one, President Coty asked Mendes-France to try. He would have a hard time without the Communist vote, which he spurns, and without Bidault's M.R.P., which spurns him. Communists the world over may well have calculated that the fall of Laniel would produce a surrender government in France. But an unfavorable vote for Mendes-France would be a significant rebuff to Moscow.

The likelihood was that divided France would continue to be governed by a , coalition. In the meantime, the govern ment would be run not by men with authority but by political zombies, powerless to make basic decisions. In the next government some of the faces would be different, but they were almost certain to wear the same ghostly pallor.

* Longest: Henri Queuille (391 days).

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