Retreat from Fear?

Socialist Premier Guy Mollet is a Frenchman who seems so shy and timid that in World War II the Gestapo once let him go, after arresting him as a Resistance leader, because they could not believe he had the requisite tough qualities. Last week this deceptively mild ex-high-school teacher of English stirred up an international commotion by challenging the foundations of Western policy and criticizing France's allies (particularly the U.S.) in terms more caustic than any other French Premier has used since the days of Charles de Gaulle.

In an interview with U.S. News & World Report, Mollet declared that Americans have bestowed their "fantastic" sums of financial aid so "haughtily" and with so much "preaching" that they have made themselves "detested" round the world. The U.S., he said, is overemphasizing the military side of its policy, and so letting the Communists steal peace as a weapon of propaganda. From the time both the U.S. and Russia exploded the H-bomb, Mollet has "never believed" in the threat of a major Soviet attack, and in his opinion the position the U.S., Britain and France took at Geneva last summer, in putting German reunification ahead of disarmament, was "a bad one."

Patriot's Proof. At a time when critics from Reykjavik to London to New Delhi are potshotting at the U.S., there was very little freshness in Mollet's words; the newness was that they should come from the mouth of a French Premier. Only three weeks before, Mollet's Foreign Minister and Fellow Socialist Christian Pineau had made a calculatingly indiscreet speech suggesting that there was no longer a common purpose in Western foreign policy (TIME, March 12). Behind such taunts and twists were a whole hatful of political factors, not the least Mollet's own political predicament.

"To prove one's French nationalism today," said a Swiss observer last week, "one doesn't have to criticize Russia, or even Germany. One does better to denounce the U.S."

Mollet, in his ten weeks as chief of France's first Socialist-run government in eight years, has had frustratingly little chance to carry out Socialist policies. Like most Socialists a visceral pacifist, he has been compelled by events to call up troops to wage war in Algeria. Pledged to enact the welfare state, he must refrain from Socialist economics because the Algerian campaign eats up all his revenues. With only the field of foreign affairs left in which to strike popular attitudes, Mollet and Pineau have accordingly thrown themselves with ideological ardor into pooh-poohing the Soviet military menace, urging disarmament, and gigging the U.S.

This has landed Socialist Mollet, who is no Popular Fronter,* in the bear's hug embrace of the Soviets. At a Moscow reception last week Nikita Khrushchev turned jubilantly to Foreign Minister Molotov and said: "Do you remember how we defended this [disarmament] position at Geneva and then did not insist on it when we saw that it was irreconcilable with the Western stand?" Without giving Molotov time to answer, Khrushchev added: "Now Mollet is saying what we said."

In sounding off as he did, Premier Mollet reflects a Europe-wide mood that is increasingly jeopardizing NATO's purpose. Iceland's Parliament has called for withdrawal of NATO troops from the island on the ground that tensions have eased so much since Geneva. In answer to Mollet, the Bonn government last week sent Paris a bristling note that all but accused the French Premier of adopting the Soviet line. Germans thought they heard in Mollet the dawn echoes of a familiar French dream: an unspoken alliance with Russia against a strong Germany.

Yet for all the official German reiteration of its devotion to Western policy, the fact is that in West Germany, nobody is keen to join the new German army. Business wants no new defense industry to dislocate the country's roaring prosperity. Hardfisted Finance Minister Fritz Schaffer has decided that a mere 5.5% of the gross national product is a sufficient contribution for defense costs, and last week refused again to kick in the $760 million that Bonn has hitherto paid for support of the Allied troops who constitute the country's only defense.

The Link Theory. "The trouble," reported TIME Correspondent Jim Bell, "is that the Geneva Summit meeting killed the fear on which NATO was built." At ceremonies outside Paris last week marking NATO's seventh anniversary, General Alfred Maximilian Gruenther put an optimistic face on things, and tried to get abreast of the new trend. As if acknowledging some force to Mollet's charges of exaggerated preoccupation with military matters, Gruenther said: "Because NATO has so grown in stature and in military strength . . . NATO can now move with greater strength into other [social and economic] fields. We at SHAPE are pleased that the time has now come when greater emphasis can also be placed upon these nonmilitary activities."

An arm's length away from Gruenther stood Premier Mollet, solemn in black Homburg. When it came his turn to speak, he seized the occasion to pledge anew his government's dedication to the NATO alliance. "I need not repeat to you," he said, "that France will re-establish at the very earliest possible moment the full strength of her contribution to the common defense on continental soil."

The need for France to give such a reassurance stems partly from the kind of remark made recently by Socialist Pineau: "We want to remain a link between the blocs, but without renouncing our friendships." To become a link between East and West, said Mollet, correcting his Foreign Minister, France would have to "cease to belong to the West."

* As a left-winger himself, he likes to say that the Communists are not Left but East.

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