Whose Flu?

France was down with the worst case of flu since the disastrous pandemic that followed World War I, killing an estimated 100,000 Frenchmen. The flu wave last week threatened to invade Britain, where doctors nervously checked up on their drug supplies. It had infiltrated Italy, where Communist propagandists proved that even a sneeze is a weapon in the class war. Cried Red Unita: "A slight cold, easy to catch these days, may have fatal consequences for the underprivileged, who generally lack . . . the money to buy aspirin."

But the situation was worst in France. From Premier Henri Queuille down, few seemed to have been spared. Two hundred Paris cops were on sick leave. In the Rhone Valley, 100,000 people were flat on their backs. In Alengon, schools had to be closed for want of teachers and pupils. Chief Flu-Fighter Dr. Lucien Bernard, of the Ministry of Public Health, was struck down himself.

His ministry carried on without him, however, informing Frenchmen that, the minute they caught sight of a flu suspect, they ought to press a handy piece of gauze over mouth and nostrils. One eminent physician declared: "Consumption of alcohol is at least as efficient a preventive as any drug." Beneath public health notices declaring: "He who avoids flu performs a public service," France's barflies drank deep and gloriously in the full consciousness of civic virtue.

At week's end, the flu (and the hangovers) were still far from under control. Sneezing, snorting Frenchmen speculated about where the flu came from. "I think," said one housewife, "it is an experiment in Russian bacteriological warfare." Others recalled that the post-World War I flu, which supposedly started in Spain, had been known accordingly as the Spanish flu. This one, Frenchmen were sure, had crossed over from Italy. They promptly called it la grippe Italienne. With an acerbity that boded ill for European unity, Italians in Paris retorted by calling it influenza Francese.

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