France After Dien Bien Phu
By D. R. GILLIE Paris.
THE defenders of Dien Bien Phu are dead, wrote the Figaro the day after that improvised fortress had fallen, " because we did not know how to conduct this war. We have been incapable of either throwing ourselves into it or refusing it; we have failed to foresee how it would test us, failed to foresee its consequences and, from the beginning, failed to see it against the background of world events." This incoherence is connected with another aspect of the Indo-China war that cannot but strike British and Americans as extra- ordinary. No French conscripts have taken part in it. It has been fought by professional soldiers and volunteers, by North Africans and Senegalese, by the mercenaries and broken men of the Foreign Legion—and of course by the Vietnamese on oth sides. This fact makes the military losses all the graver for rance, since it means that the Frenchmen who are killed or .- permanently incapacitated or captured are all drawn from the military elite of the nation, needed to train and lead the units that form France's contribution to European and Atlantic defence. But it has also meant that losses have fallen on a relatively restricted circle, that the average French mother has not had the same interest in the war as the British mother has in much less bloody events in Malaya or Egypt.
This delegation of the French nation's interests in any particular sector to a picked group has become one of the marks of French life in the last fifteen years. It was already— and necessarily—typical of the Resistance. Relatively small groups of men and women acted in the name of the nation, relying on the more or less passive support of the majority. This was the necessary form of underground action. Any other would have led to massacre and rapid collapse. But it corres- ponded also to a characteristic of the present phase of French national life. The collapse of 1940, with, underlying it, the debility due to the terrific losses of 1914-18, has undermined general confidence in the effectiveness of French national action. But faith still burns bright in organised or naturally coherent groups whether of opinion, function or interest. This had many advantages during the period of reconstruction. The energetic self-confidence of settlers and officials in North Africa certainly made possible the maintenance of French authority there. The mysterious world of railway administrators and technicians superbly restored their sector of the shattered national life. The intensity of party life frequently led to local achievement. For the time being the French nation resembles a tree whose trunk, is failing in vigour but whose branches are still showing undiminished vitality. This accounts for the very varied impressions that France gives, self-confident energy in one sphere, lack of public interest and healthy reaction in another. The restoration of France to her place in the world has been the work of enthusiastic groups. There has never been a post-war government capable of co-ordinating them. self-interest combined to disregard the fact that the territories in question were not only in the French Union, but also, much more permanently, in Asia. The result was a war from which France could only satisfactorily extricate herself by an immense effort to carry out and wind up her commitments without any advantage to herself.
At the same time another group of enthusiasts, with far more justification, but also without having really obtained the assent of a sufficiently large section of the nation to be sure they might not be disowned, was committing France to her European policy. This was originally planned to devtelo slowly, mainly economic in its first stages, later political an finally military. But the problems of Western defence an German rearmament thrust the military aspects of European union into the foreground, threatening France with a German partnership in which, with her increasing Far Eastern burdenS, she would be unable to hold her own.
The two policies—a European defence merger and what was mysteriously called ' presence' in Asia—were, by a strange aberration, the particular themes of one party, the MRP. They were not, of course, the exclusive responsibility of that party,* There is no party from the Socialists on the left to the Gaullist4 (or at least.General de Gaulle) on the right which has pot somd responsibility for France's commitments in Asia. And ne party, except the Communists, which does not contain some advocates of EDC. But under the French coalition systeni parties try to acquire prescriptive rights to certain ministerei The MRP for long occupied the ministry responsible for Indoi China and except for one brief month-has held the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ever since 1944. M. Robert Schuman created and M. Georges Bidault, with rather different emphasis.' has carried on France's Eur'opean policy.
For a long time past France has obviously been in need 41 a frank and realistic reassessment of policy, such as can b ili carried out under the two-party system of government whe t ever electoral fortune changes sides. This is a far more difficu operation under a multiple system in which the same partie necessarily participate in coalition after coalition and morq often than not through the same men. What France needed to be told a year ago was that she had beCome involved in th4 Indo-China war on a series of erroneous assumptions but that there were only two ways of extricating herself from it--4 disaster or a substantial measure of military success, requiring a great effort. But all governments were necessarily too much involved in the past to say such a thing at all, much less tO say it so that it would carry conviction. Opinion has remaine4 deluded with the idea that there was an easy way out: that successive governments were just continuing their former policy to cover up past mistakes and that the best way to end the war was to give the government as little rope as possible tO carry. it on. The loudest propaganda about it remained that of the Communists denouncing " the dirty war". as an imperialist crime. No government has dared even to suggest that conscripts might be sent to Tongking.
The fall of Dien Bien Phu is all the more painful to French hearts for the pride felt in the gallantry of the fifty-five days' defence. Is the continuancettpf her great military tradition only to be proved by pure wastage in the service of a strategy and a policy based on a failure to analyse the issues ? Even today the government's only comment after the disaster has been that the strength of the Expeditionary Force will not ba diminished and the attitude of the French delegation at Geneva will not be changed. But how can any government start talks ing sense without a sufficient breach with the past, to revieW the situation and tell the nation the unpleasant truths about it 1, The problem is, therefore, essentially one of French internal politics. The conference of Geneva may momentarily prolong the Laniel government's life, but that is purely provisional It is, indeed, the government that succeeded in opening negotiations on Indo-China but it is also the government that approved the strategy of Dien Bien Phu. Only six iii inths ago M. Laniel told the Assembly that the military strength of Viet-minh had reached its maximum. General de Gaulle was the man to whom it would have been natural to turn, had he not committed the long error of organising a party, which he denied was a party, and which, as a political instrument, has broken in his hands. His prestige has certainly risen since he once more stood alone, but not high enough for present pur- poses. His reputation for political skill certainly stands low. No other military man has any chance at all. It is, therefore, within the parties that the elements of a renewal must be sought. There is nowhere else to look. There is no other material with which to build. But there is another reason why France must not look for a saviour but make use of the commonplaces of her political life to solve her problems. 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. The school of the Resistance is not necessarily the right one for these more humdrum days. The opportunity for reassessment that her Political system did not provide is now being imposed on her by misfortune. The parties cannot avoid it if they would. They will have to abandon some of their leaders and will have to have the courage to call the factious minorities to order. There is after all some satisfaction in coming back to earth. Tax returns are improving and the franc is a great deal firmer on its feet.
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