M. Laniel at Bay
As the Spectator goes to press, M. Laniel faces his second ote of confidence in a week. On this occasion, as on the pre- ious one, he has chosen this device in order to postpone an (ordinary vote in the Assembly and thus reduce the impact of the Opposition speeches. Whether he will succeed in the second vote as he did in the first is uncertain; at all events, it is grossly misnamed, for the one thing that nobody feels about M. Laniel's government is confidence. Last week, the Assembly on reflec- tion refrained from defeating him for the same reason as it elected him eleven months ago—because France needs a govern- ment at this crisis in her affairs, and the deputies do not know where else they are going to find one. This week Dien Bien Phu has fallen and all the half-formed fears and accusations of governmental ineptitude in Indo-China have become articulate. Great decisions must now be taken—whether it be to clear out or to go on fighting, to evacuate or to send conscripts—which ought to have been taken months, perhaps years, before, and as the Government"has failed to take them the Assembly is now claiming the right to do so instead. The truth is, of course, that the Government has failed largely because the Assembly has failed. Both of them have proved inadequate for the commit- ments that France has partially chosen to assume, and partially had thrust upon her by her allies, in the post-war world. Whether M. Laniel stands or falls, the West must henceforth assume that France has shot her bolt in Indo-China and any further resistance will have to be backed by somebody else. As is argued in an article on a later page of the Spectator, " the real problem is to limit French policy to what her citizens are really prepared to do and not to involve her in mutually exclusive if heroically attractive commitments."
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