The Nation and the Little Man
By DARSIE GILLIE
ONE of the most distinctive features of French life, often pleasing, sometimes infuriating and fortunately not universal, is the acceptance of certain limits and the search for something like Perfection within them. No doubt it is connected With the very wide distribution of small proper- ties—much wider than in England. Your property is Yourself. It bounds you. But no one can stop You improving it, or at least managing it in your °A% way. It is connected also with the use of petit' in prewar newspaper titles. One cannot Imagine a British newspaper proprietor making a success with the Little Londoner or the Little Merseysider, for instance! But it is linked, too, With the forms taken by French nationalism. The desire that the citizen's accepted and respected littleness should be counterbalanced by the great- ness of the nation, a greatness achieved in part by the adventurous achievements of those who do not limit themselves to cultivating their own garden, and in part by the infectious charm of those who do. The contrast between the small man and the great idea, the Radical voter and the tremendous legend of the armies of the Year II, the stay-at-home Frenchman and the pioneer of the Sahara, is one of the underlying tensions of French life.
All French governments are involved in the double demand—not to disturb the even tenour ot the little man's life, but also to strike the chord of national greatness. French finances are the constant victim of the conflict. They have been the most urgent preoccupation of M. Gaillard, first of all as Minister of Finance and then as Premier. The acute anxiety that French industry 1.1-light be rapidly reduced to a halting pace when the reserve of foreign exchange was exhausted by the excess of imports over exports has been re- moved for a year by the credits accorded to France by the International Monetary Fund:the United States Government and the European Payments Union. The total value is $655 million. The part of these credits available for the trade deficit of 1958 will only just about cover it. France has a year in which to bring her exports up to
Paris something near the total at which her imports must remain if she Is to continue her programme of modernisation and industrial expansion, a year in which to make herself fit for competition within the six-Power Common Market. She is committed to her bankers, meanwhile, not to increase the Budget beyond the present estimate of 5,300 mil- liard francs with a deficit on current expenditure and investment of 600 milliard francs. She is also committed not to increase the Government's over- draft with the Bank of France or to indulge in other methods of internal inflationary finance. If she does not observe these conditions her bankers can suspend the credit facilities they have granted. M. Gaillard himself was at pains to remind the nation that it would be a disastrous error to relax the financial rigour which has induced France's friends to come to her help. The financial situa- tion, in other words, has acted as a sharp recall to the standards of the.careful little man, counting his sous before making any purchase and cultivat- ing his plot to the last square foot.
At the same time there has been a fairly sharp setback to the Government's hopes in two direc- tions. The proposals for constitutional reform to strengthen the executive and for an electoral re- form which would (amongst other things) reduce Communist representation are both meeting with great difficulties. The two are linked because both Conservatives and Radicals are likely to refuse any big measure of the first without satisfaction with regard to the second. But so far no new electoral scheme has been devised which would not badly damage one of the coalition parties. The MRP in particular is best suited by the same kind of electoral law that suits the Communists. Thus M. Gaillard's hopes of being the man to restore firm government in France and also of obtaining the sort of powers that would best facili- tate his financial task are waning. Secondly, the Government has been forced to abandon the very optimistic tone it had adopted about an approach- ing end to the rebellion in Algeria. Though the Government can certainly claim successes in some aspects of pacification and the FLN seems to have overreached itself with its terroristic dictatorship in some areas, yet the general picture is a better- armed and better-trained rebel force with a more intransigent leadership. This in turn means there is no prospect of reducing the military force en- gaged in Algeria. The generals- in fact seem to want reinforcements. The Government's plans for limiting military service to two years would in- volve a reduction of the trained and experienced men available in Algeria by thirty thousand to fifty thousand unless there is redistribution of the half the French army which is in Europe. But this includes both the untrained recruits and the al- ready much-reduced forces at the disposal of NATO. To keep men with the colours for more than two years would involve additional expendi- ture and, therefore, since the total cannot be raised, further cuts in civil expenditure.
The less optimistic view of military prospects in Algeria has had at least one advantage for the Government. It did smooth out more quickly than was expected the Right-wing opposition to the law which couples the grant of limited self-govern- ment in Algeria with cutting that country into a number of territories, each with its own Assembly, and so obstructing the claim to nationhood. This is not a good instrument for winning over a people which in the last three years has given 50,000 lives for the right to be a nation. But it does at least abolish the two electoral colleges which gave the million Europeans automatic equality of repre- sentation witJi the eight million Moslems. Some of the sharp Liberal critics of the law are now wondering whether, combined with some other measure of a more generous kind, or with a change of Minister, it might not after all be useful in opening the road to peace. It is unfortunate that in getting it through Parliament the Govern- ment made far more concessions to the Right in interpreting its significance than to the Left.
The fact remains that circumstances in three spheres—financial, the prospects of constitutional reform and the situation in Algeria—are all exer- cising pressure on the Government and on opinion in the same direction. The French are being forced to think out their policy in North Africa within the possibilities of limited means. You cannot talk about an all-out war without your bankers' agree- ment. Either operations will continue indefinitely on the present inconclusive scale, or the political problem of Algeria will have to be faced more realistically. From beyond the Atlas Mountains the whiff of petrol exerts its lure—petrol that would not pass through either the pipe-lines or the canal of the newly United Arab Republic. But it would have to pass through Tunisia or Algeria. Would there be much improvement if Algeria has to be held down permanently by half a million men and Tunisia becomes definitely hostile? Is the little man of France prepared to pay that price for an unlimited number of years, even if the idea of a French Sahara does warm him? It is to be hoped that he will find a more satisfactory compensation for his restrictions.
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