Medal Mania

According to one sardonic French saying, half the riders in the Paris Metro wear the Legion of Honor while the other half have applied for the medal. More than most people, the French love to get awards, and last week, at annual awards ceremonies, medal mania was in full swing. The country's most prestigious decoration, the Legion of Honor, was given to 1,500 men and women, including venerable (77) Film Director Rene Clair and Feminist Writer Louise Weiss, as well as a pop singer, a swimming champion, a truck driver and a physical-education teacher in Brazzaville, capital of the Congo Republic.

In addition, a bewildering array of other government awards was distributed last year. Medals of Meritorious Work were handed out to 200,000 people who have been employed for 25 years at no more than two different private companies. Those who stayed home to stem the decline of France's birth rate were not forgotten. Mothers of five legitimate children received the Bronze ATCH Medal of the French Family. Criteria for winning this award were somewhat less severe for mothers who received gold medals for producing ten children for France, with no questions asked about the fathers.

Pin the Wound. The annual proliferation of decorations has led critics to observe that the government selects winners with the same skill as the blindfold player in a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Periodic attempts to cut back on medal giving, however, have usually failed. True, the Revolution halted the French kings' practice of showering crosses, ribbons, stars, neckpieces, plaques and palms on court favorites, but not for long. Revolutionary Louis de Saint-Just made the bizarre proposal that decorations awarded to those wounded in the revolutionary struggle be affixed to the exact area of the wound.

Napoleon Bonaparte revived medal mania in earnest when he founded the Legion of Honor in 1802. Initially the Legion was supposed to be a corps of distinguished persons rewarded for "services eminents" to France.

Says Armand Bourven, Deputy Secretary General of the Legion:

"Napoleon wanted a small elite group, but he was flooded with demands for the decoration --as were subsequent leaders of France." As a result, the number of those entitled to wear the Legion's red ribbon soared from 6,000 in 1802 to 280,000 now.

Scandals involving medal peddling erupted throughout the 19th century. Premier Maurice Rouvier in 1887 even gave the husband of his mistress the Legion of Honor, presumably for the services eminents he had rendered the chief of government by his complaisance.

In recent years the ranks of decoration wearers in France have been swollen by purchasers of secondhand medals in flea markets. The lowest-ranking medal of the Legion of Honor, the "Chevalier," can be bought for $50 at the French government mint. There are, of course, penalties (up to two years in prison) for wearing unauthorized decorations, but these are seldom if ever enforced. One reason may be that having a medal does not involve much in the way of an earthly reward; the holder of the lowest grade of the Legion of Honor, for example, gets the princely stipend of $5 a year. On the other hand, the red ribbon sometimes impresses policemen and plumbers, and according to one recipient, "it helps to get better service in restaurants."

No Limit. The last attempt to restrict awards was made by Charles de Gaulle, who abolished 17 government awards in 1963, leaving a mere 102 extant. At the same time, he established the National Order of Merit, known as "the poor man's Legion of Honor." No limit was placed on the number of these awards, and 90,000 have already been given to such people as a carpet-factory foreman, the head of off-track betting and a bicycle-race winner. The bonanza of medals is not restricted to Frenchmen. "During a French state visit to, say, Egypt," notes one French diplomat, "we'll toss out 40 Legions of Honor" --adding that of course the French expect to get that many medals in return.

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