MENDES-FRANCE SIR,—When I read Mr. Sam White's letter (formally about
my review of Mr. De Tarr's book on the French Radical Party) I felt that I had indeed fallen
into the sere and yellow leaf. I couldn't remember saying any of the things that Mr. White imputed to me, for example about Tunisia. My memory had gone to pot. But I have looked at my review and I see that it is Mr. White's memory that has failed him. I never mentioned Tunisia or Morocco or Algeria. I was not doing a general survey either of the career of M. Mendes-France or of the Fourth Republic. I confined myself to the role of M. Mendes- France in the Radical Party, to what I called his take-over bid. 1 noted that it failed disastrously. My review gave several reasons for the failure, among them weaknesses of M. Mendes-France and of his most vehement supporters, I did say 'this was a man.' I didn't say this was a perfect man, and I* did say that his great political gamble failed. Out of that failure came, in part, the crisis in which the Fourth Republic faded away I think M. Mendes-France has some share in the responsibility for the collapse of the Fourth Republic and I think that his recent role has not been im- pressive. It is a pity he didn't get elected to the new Assemblee Nationale but that was the fault of the electors of Louvicrs, not of General de Gaulle. Had M. Mendes-France got even the limited oppor- tunities that parliamentary life under the Fifth Republic offers, he might be more effective. Like Mr, Adlai Stevenson (until this month), M. Mendes- France suffers from the lack of an official platform. I think that he, as well, as France, loses by this.— Yours faithfully,.
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