Shaky Hand

The Poujade crusade, so triumphantly threatful only four months ago, was floundering badly, and Pierre Poujade knew it. With cynical and weary skill, the veterans of the National Assembly had made fools of his shopkeeper-Deputies, and expelled seven of them for faulty credentials. His shopkeeper voters waited in vain for the tax relief Poujade promised. Last week Poujade, who refers to himself affectionately as "the Little Poujade," retreated from Paris to his old home town of Saint-Cere and summoned to him his leaders from all over France.

There Poujade put on the old act at which he excels. "Up to now we have made propaganda," he cried. "We must pass on to acts." His notion of action: convocation in Paris, by fall, of the first

States-General since 1789.*Peeling off coat, vest and tie, Poujade orated: "When delegates from every corner of France, backed by half a million Frenchmen, gather at the Porte de Versailles, Republican legality will no longer be at the Palais Bourbon but there where we are." At this heady vision of a new march on Paris, every provincial shopkeeper and artisan delegate cheered lustily.

Poujade himself was moving his headquarters back to Saint-Cere, leaving only a shadow group in Paris to watch the machinations of the decadent Fourth Republic. The States-General, he explained, would not be a Parliament, but would result in "the reform of the state and its institutions, and automatically the passage to the Fifth Republic. My personal opinion is that a presidential-type regime will save the situation." He did not have to name his favorite candidate for President.

After three days of closed-door conferences guarded by stalwart, arm-banded youths of the Poujadist Service d'Ordre, the 400 delegates approved Poujade's program. All talk of mutiny was quelled by Poujade's threat to resign. "If you want me as active chairman," he said, "you must support me. The day I have to take the scalpel, my hand will not shake. But remember, the surgeon never operates without the full consent of the family." With a shouted ovation, the family gave its consent.

Many another Frenchman felt the need of an operation for the ineffectual Fourth Republic. But it was increasingly doubtful that France would choose loud-voiced Little Pierre as the surgeon.

Socialist Premier Guy Mollet won four votes of confidence from the Chamber of Deputies last week, on proposals to increase old-age pensions and levy new taxes to pay for them. The measure was a sop to his Socialist supporters, who are restive at the strong measures Mollet is taking in Algeria. Mollet's right-wing opponents do not want to bring him down, because it suits them fine to have a Social ist taking the unpopular but necessary action in Algeria.

-A body made up of the three "estates"--clergy, nobility and bourgeoisie--which achieved its greatest glory in 1789 when it met and launched the French Revolution. Meeting in the tennis court at Versailles, the third and largest estate defied the King, became the first legislature of the revolution.

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