Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS Paris Awaits The Deadline By William Henry Chamberlin Paris French Prime Minister Mendes-France's somewhat melodramatic promise to obtain a cease-fire in Indo-China by July...
...His determination to resist his brutal captors was beyond praise and his example was an inspiration to all ranks...
...It is a terrifying thought that the Soviet Government now exercises the power of life and death over every French cabinet...
...On the other hand, France might become more impotent than ever, more incapable of taking action on EDC or any other problem...
...Will this circumstance affect his ideas of what is an "honorable settlement" and make him more amenable to Communist pressure at home...
...Persuasion," wrote Gibbon (I am not certain of the exact words), "is the resource of the weak...
...Geneva has been not only a Munich but a bloody Munich, with the French and British submitting to the ultimate humiliation: negotiation with an enemy who was constantly advancing...
...Nor is it likely, in the long run, to save the rest of Indo-China, any more than Munich saved what was left of Czechoslovakia or Yalta saved what was left of Poland...
...Eden...
...This would awaken both Britain and America to the desperate seriousness of the situation in Southeast Asia and to the need for emergency action, even if it upsets some cherished illusions and budgetary plans...
...In some respects, a breakdown of the negotiations would be preferable...
...There are no labor disturbances, as there were last summer...
...The Chamber of Deputies has suspended its sessions, so Mendes-France will at least serve out his first month in office...
...Second, British foreign policy (although still pretty sound in Europe) is suffering from a bad case of Mioawberism, of hoping against hope that the Soviet and Chinese Communists will not behave as Communists have always behaved, that something pleasant will turn up...
...A very crowded two weeks in England, before coming to Paris, left two dominant impressions: First, Britain has experienced a very substantial economic improvement during the last eighteen months...
...On several occasions, he was beaten senseless with belts and bayonets...
...And the weak can seldom persuade...
...It is too soon to pronounce judgment...
...How much, if anything, can be saved from the sorry wreck of Indo-China remains to be seen...
...Perhaps the best commentary on the Labor-party political mission to China and the businessmen's industrial mission to China is this citation accompanying a decoration which Queen Elizabeth conferred on Fusilier Derek Kinne, a war prisoner in Korea: "For over two years, he received most cruel treatment under conditions of extreme degradation...
...A cry will go up that the Communists are pretty reasonable after all (if you only give them what they want), and there will be praise for the masterly statesmanship of Mr...
...One might think such an item would dampen the British desire to see the Chinese Communist Government, with veto power, installed in the United Nations...
...but anti-Communists here are keeping their fingers crossed about Mendes-France, whose brain trust includes some well-known fellow-travelers and whose journalistic support is most vocal in neutralist organs like he Monde...
...By dragging out the Geneva talks and refusing to agree to a cease-fire, Molotov "liquidated" the Laniel-Bidault Cabinet, which was pitifully weak but still committed to a pro-American orientation...
...his position is worse than Chamberlain's at Munich or Roosevelt's and Churchill's at Yalta...
...It is hard to know what to hope for when the July 20 deadline is up...
...The questions of EDC, of German sovereignty and rearmament, ?properly recognized as urgent at the Eisenhower-Churchill meeting in Washington, are temporarily pushed into the background...
...The Communists are giving the new Premier conditional support, though they will doubtless turn on him if he makes good his promise to reject a dishonorable peace settlement...
...Mendes-France can scarcely survive a failure to bring home peace from Geneva...
...Moreover, such an agreement will give a formidable lift to the appeasement forces in Great Britain and France...
...One's first impression here is that the Chamber is split three ways on this vital issue, with the largest group (but not a majority) in favor of EDC, a strong minority opposed to any form of German rearmament, and a third group (mostly Gaullists) willing to accept German rearmament, but not the submergence of the French Army in a European Defense Community...
...Any agreement that may be reached will be strictly on the Munich-Yalta pattern and will involve the abandonment of millions of anti-Communist Vietnamese (notably the Catholics in the southern part of the Red River delta) to the merciless vengeance of Ho Chi Minh...
...Everything seems in a state of suspense as the fateful deadline approaches...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS Paris Awaits The Deadline By William Henry Chamberlin Paris French Prime Minister Mendes-France's somewhat melodramatic promise to obtain a cease-fire in Indo-China by July 20 or resign has created a feeling of tense expectancy in Paris and, to a lesser extent, in London...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 30
