Numbered Days

Behind the big smile that Pierre Mendes-France wore on his statesman's rounds last week was a disappointed and embittered man. After seven months in office, Mendes-France agrees with the popular estimate that his days as Premier are numbered--and that the number is a low one.

The Premier has grown increasingly remote. Most of the bright young brain-trusters who clustered about him in the early days and spouted eager advice while a barber shaved him or a waiter served lunch have been banished from the inner chambers. For intimate guidance, Mendes now relies on only three disciples--Jean Soutou, 43, and Claude Cheysson. 35, who are intelligent Quai d'Orsay types, and Simon Nora, 33, who is something of a financial wizard. Even emissaries specially summoned from as far away as Indo-China find themselves closeted with the young aides for lengthy interrogations, then see the well-briefed Premier himself for an hour or less.

The Premier, according to a reliable reading of his current mood, is depressed chiefly for these reasons:

P: The Socialists' (105 seats in the National Asisembly) refusal to join his government. Mendes now concedes that in his first days as Premier he moved too fast, and did not lay proper groundwork for Socialist cooperation. The issues that attracted them (IndoChina, North Africa, EDC) are now disposed of; some of his proposed economic reforms may prove pure hemlock to the Socialists.

P: The Assembly's close vote on German rearmament. In private, Mendes keeps referring sadly to the narrowness of the plurality (27 votes). He deliberately let EDC die on the assumption that he could get a husky plurality for straight German rearmament. He now realizes that his gamble has hurt French prestige abroad.

P: The breakdown of French negotiations with the Tunisian nationalists. This is the deepest of all Mendes' disappointments, because he had looked on Tunisia as a beginning, whereas all the other hard decisions taken were endings.

While he was away last week, the National Assembly convened to elect a new President. On the third ballot. Deputies voted 232 to 188 to turn out Incumbent Socialist Andre Le Troquer. whose party has been most consistently behind Mendes' policies in spite of its refusal to join his Cabinet. In Le Troquers place the Deputies elected Pierre Schneiter of the Roman Catholic M.R.P. Though Schneiter, a Resistance hero and mayor of Reims, is personally not hostile to Mendes in the fashion of Mendes-hating M.R.P.er Georges Bidault and his followers, the election was everywhere understood as a rebuff to the Premier. "The sole of the boot was for Le Troquer," rejoiced one anti-Mendes Deputy, "but the heel was for Mendes."

The vote showed, at any rate, that a majority exists to bring down Mendes the minute a convenient issue arises. Some of Mendes' young supporters would just as soon see him fall shortly, so that out of office he can begin a new grouping of the left, which would return him to power with a stronger mandate. Mendes himself is not in such a hurry to quit office. "As long as I continue to do useful work," he says, "I'll not give up."

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