"Lets Hope"

"We were about to perish for lack of air," said Finance Minister Rene Mayer last week. "We had to smash the window with a single blow." Mayer chiefly meant that, without devaluation of the franc (TIME, Feb. 2), French recovery would have been stifled through inability to sell goods abroad. But for a few days last week, Rene Mayer and Premier Robert Schuman had French Socialists at their throats. As advocates of dirigisme (directed economy), Socialists did not like the breeze of free enterprise that threatened to blow through the smashed window.

From Buried Pots? For Socialists it was almost a crisis of conscience. Commented the independent Combat: "France takes the initiative in seeking recovery on the principle of a system that everyone thought was finished."

The Socialists blasted the proposed law to set up a free market in gold. To Premier Schuman and Finance Minister Mayer, the free gold market was the lodestone that would draw hoarded gold and hidden assets from buried iron pots and foreign banks. This in turn would stimulate production and provide a stabilizing base for currency and foreign trade. To the Socialists, the 25% fine to be levied against hoarders was inadequate punishment for unpatriotic speculators.

After an all-night session of the Assembly, Rene Mayer partly appeased the Socialists. He proposed, as a blow at black marketeers, to withdraw all 5,000-franc notes from circulation. The balky Socialists swung into line. The Assembly adjourned at 5:45 a.m.

The Bitter Pill. Less than ten hours later, the weary legislators returned to vote on the gold proposal. Premier Schuman staked his government's survival on the measure, gave the Socialists a clear choice. With the Communists and the Gaullists eagerly waiting for the coalition government to prove its incompetence to rule, the Socialists decided to stick with Schuman. Schuman's margin: a comfortable 98 votes.

Meanwhile, Rene Mayer's economic window-smashing had bewildered and frightened Frenchmen. Prices of oranges, chickens, beans, eggs skittered nervously upward. Many a thrifty soul with a sockful of 5,000-franc notes spent an anxious two days before he learned that the government would redeem his notes in full--if he could prove that he came by them legally. Said a Paris policeman: "This is a bitter pill, but we will have to swallow it. Let's hope it will save France."

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