Now or Never

Premier Pierre Mendees-France had only a week to go on his promise to get peace in Indo-China or quit. Even those who considered him merely resolute for surrender could not help admiring his energy and decisiveness.

However much anyone could question his aims, no one could question Mendees' courage. Last week he walked into an Assembly that resents the way he has gone over its head to the people, and told the deputies in his flat, staccato tones: "If the negotiations should fail on July 20, we would have to safeguard the expeditionary corps ... In other words, it means sending conscripts."

Pledge Fulfilled. Since 1946, no French Premier had dared to suggest that draftees should be sent to fight in the jungles and paddies of Indo-China; only last weekend the Socialists had reaffirmed their stand against it. Mendees went beyond mere suggestion. Already, he went on, preparations were under way. Troops were getting inoculations and tropical uniforms; permission had been obtained from the NATO command. Said Mendees: "The national interest demands that the vote be already obtained when I hand in my resignation." It would be the last act of his government, he declared. "Thus, I will remain faithful to the wish I expressed on taking office, that I would leave my successor a better situation than I myself inherited."

In sheer surprise, even the Socialists joined the Gaullists in applauding. But the M.R.P. benches were silent. Resentful of Mendees' takeover of the Foreign Ministry, which had been for so long their province under Bidault and Robert Schuman, the M.R.P. was increasingly hostile, increasingly apprehensive of Mendees' course. MRPers repeated their charge that Mendes planned a complete capitulation to the Communists. Snapped Bidault: "Never before has one Frenchman done as much to cut off the arms France extends to her allies." In the press, Maurice Schumann, longtime Quai d'Orsay lieutenant of Robert Schuman, launched a series of articles accusing Mendees of "isolating" France and thus paving the way toward a disastrous slide into the Communist orbit. The Communist negotiators, Mendes retorted, "will recognize specifically, if they should be tempted to forget it, that every attempt to disassociate France from its allies and its friends will come up against an irrevocable reply that it cannot be accepted."

Fresh Troubles. All week long Mendees worked with an eye on the clock (he had one placed on the table before him at Cabinet meetings). His plan for economic reform was still to be submitted. The two Cabinet members assigned to find a compromise on EDC had already reached a stalemate. And in Tunisia and Morocco, fresh trouble welled up.

In his role of political Cassandra, Mendees had long warned of the need for greater concessions to North Africa's nationalists, and as Premier, had created France's first ministry for Tunisian and Moroccan affairs. But it was already dangerously late. In Tunisia, terrorists shot a municipal councilor, bombed a police chief's home, and machine-gunned a bus and a cafee, killing eight people. Mendees sent 1,600 French paratroopers to Tunis.

At week's end Mendees hurried off to Geneva, where Molotov was waiting for him. Before he left, he sent Ambassador

Henri Bonnet to see Dulles in Washington, urging him to send a top-level representative back to Geneva or to come himself. Not to do so would be a disastrous blunder. Bonnet pleaded, which would encourage the Communists to raise their demand.

For Mendees-France, it was now or never. He had packed only enough clean shirts to last until July 19.

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