Fateful Dance

Like dancers in a ragged pavane, the familiar men in French politics whirled through the precise, formal movements of a familiar French ritual--the search for a new government.

Within 15 minutes of the Assembly vote that felled them, Premier Rene Pleven and his cabinet ministers sped to the presidential palace in their official black cars and submitted their resignations to President Vincent Auriol, getting into their usual traffic snarl in the courtyard. Then they rushed back to carry on their cabinet assignments as before, until a new cabinet emerged.

Just as he had been forced to do so many times before (ten), the President sent out summonses for les pressentis--the politicians who, theoretically, are eligible to form a new cabinet. First, by custom, came the representative of the party which brought down the government, the Socialists. Would Monsieur Christian Pineau care to try? No thanks, replied Monsieur Pineau. One by one came les pressentis from the other parties: General de Gaulle's R.P.F., the Independents, the Catholic M.R.P., the Radical Socialists (who are neither radical nor socialist, but right-wing).

By week's end, President Auriol had been turned down five times. A sixth candidate was trying, with slim chances of success. The dance has its own logic: in a coalition of central parties in which none has a majority, the party undertaking the coalition must make concessions to buy the support of some other party. Unless he wants to pay an exorbitant price, a buyer must not seem too eager to buy.

Too many shrugging Frenchmen are apt to regard such crises as merely a bad joke, and to say that the government runs itself without a Premier. But with the war hotting up in Indo-China, with a budget crisis at home, and with parliamentary decisions waiting to be made on NATO and the European Army, the pavane is in grave danger of becoming a danse macabre.

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