Report on France

"Here is a true report which should not be hidden. Never has France's stock fallen so low." With these words elegant, scholarly Pierre Brisson, 58, managing director of Paris' oldest daily, Le Figaro, shook up his staid readers and set off a fusillade of protest in the French press. Just back from his first trip to the U.S. in four years, Brisson reported: "In Washington, in New York, distrust is everywhere." Brisson, whose paper takes a dim view of Premier Mendes-France reported that Americans felt that France, by reneging on EDC, had gone back on her word. When Brisson argued that France is rightfully worried about Germany after three invasions, he reported that a top Washington "policymaker" replied: "One understands that a woman has nerves, that she makes hysterical scenes, that she doesn't know what she wants. One understands all this, but it doesn't make her any the less unendurable."

Paris' thin-skinned dailies erupted in a rash of indignation. Le Monde accused Brisson of "sowing doubt and distrust." Left-wing Combat answered by attacking the U.S.: "I would say the stock of the U.S. has never fallen lower, whereas that of France is rising visibly . . . I would say that if Germany has really become so soon a confidential partner, one should not have been so stupid as to crush her."

The most slashing attack came from the small, pro-Mendes-France intellectual weekly, L'Express, edited by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (TIME, June 14). Gasping at "the audacity of telling us that distrust is everywhere in America and that Mr. Foster Dulles . . . cherishes a lot of mental reservations about the chief of the French government," L'Express lumped Brisson and Le Figaro with "those wretched persons who dug a ditch for France . . . who twice a year sold Americans on the great Indo-China illusions . . . who sold the prestige of France in Asia and the young graduates of Saint-Cyr for American subsidies." The new government's policies, firmly declared L'Express, had filled the ditch with solid ground.

The week's bombardment left Brisson outwardly unruffled. Sitting in Le Figaro's Champs Elysees office and fingering the Legion d'Honneur rosette in his buttonhole, he said: "I expected a violent reaction. Unfortunately, I had to give a conscientious report."

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