EUROPE'S SLEEPING PRINCESS

...voted to the generally-predicted struggle...

...Yet de Gaulle's appeal is extremist and everybody knows it...

...In .the present uncertainty, even France seeks a pole of positiveness...

...With a little imagination the French can see themselves churned up, pulverized, smashed, and re-smashed—like the Koreans—by the far larger armies of Russia and the West...

...Politics" to most is synonymous with "Corruption...

...that would have reinforced Russian and therefore Communist influence...

...Her national weakness still humiliates and hurts...

...In a remote French Alpine village, a board hanging on the front wall of the Town Hall tells the world in chalk that the population of the place had adopted the Cominform resolution against the American atomic bomb, for "peace," and all the rest...

...But he is at least a patriot," they declare, "and honest...

...The youth of both countries want reconciliation, if possible, unification...

...It is generally considered that the French worktngman is worse off than before the war...

...It came, and France counted 1,357,000 dead between 1914 and 1918...

...Fear divided the nation and shredded its nerves...

...In any case, he is the only French leader to whom it is attributed...

...it is a Rassemblement, a political union, and, nofa bene, not extreme...

...There is a confidence in France and a faith in her indestructibility, come Russians or high water...

...The foreign policy of one country translates itself into the domestic life of another...

...It is not a strong arm or a loud voice, any more than it is the jingle of gold and the rustle of greenbacks, that will awaken the sleeping princess...

...People have a disturbing sense of national inadequacy, national stagnation...

...Hope is the key to France...

...These doubts exist...

...He wishes to unite the country, not to expand it...

...Reluctantly, France is increasing her armed strength somewhat...

...French observers returning from America are dumfounded by the industrial revolution which the mobilization for war has wrought...

...Before she thinks of another defeat, before she thinks of the horrors of a possible Russian occupation, France this time thinks of herself as the victim of a war which will creep up every highway and enter every home...

...The real question is how to bridge the gulf between the French people and their government and between the French people and all the parties...

...This ABC of U. S. business is apparently a discovery for a Frenchman...

...The people are justly proud of French culture, which includes a deep devotion to personal freedom...

...Communist canvassers warned persons reluctant to sign the Stockholm "peace" pledge that there would be a cross on their door when the Russians arrived...

...She sleeps on...

...This civilized development conflicts with the barbarous trend of our times...

...It seems as though there is no France, there are only 43 million Frenchmen, individuals with great and just concern for themselves and much less, if any, for the community...

...For most nations, and particularly for the smaller ones, domestic policy reflects foreign relations...

...But there then appeared "Paix et Libertee" (Peace and Liberty), a goverment-favored committee of inspired propagandists who have captured the fancy of many Frenchmen with their witty, biting, anti-Communist rebuttal by placard...

...De Gaulle," Malraux explained, "is national, not nationalistic...

...Officials offer statistics about scores of cities and thousands of homes flattened during the conflict...

...The Marshall Plan, finest recorded manifestation of national generosity implemented by national wisdom, loses much of its emotional impact on the receiver because of the giver's petulant desire to be recognized as a philanthropist...

...Since France succumbed so abruptly in 1940, outsiders have the impression that her losses were negligible...

...That prospect is not bright...

...Yet in almost every company a woman will mention a husband, brother, or father killed in World War II...

...Many manufacturers and rich farmers hoard gold or export capital rather than expand production...

...For France the two horns of the dilemma are: surrender to totalitanan domination or expensive rearmament...

...The Third Force middle-of-the-road coalition government began, in the first semester of 1951, to oust Communists from munitions plants and sensitive bureaus, and to expel foreign Communists...

...Unanimously, however, Frenchmen complain that the Third Force governments were too weak to take decisive steps in any field...

...That hurts the French...

...In these circumstances, inflation arising out of rearmament threatens a reduction of living standards which must be painful and politically harmful...

...Perhaps this is why France is so elusive...

...Industrialists are deficient in hope, faith, and the readiness to risk...

...American methods offend French sensitivity...

...Now a new prince has appeared, a Frenchman, tall but not too handsome and not at all wealthy, a general...

...German Chancellor Adenauer, who was always pro-French, and French Foreign Minister Schuman, who speaks a good German, evoke more popular support than suspicion or opposition by their successful efforts to build bridges across the river of blood and hate that has separated their nations...

...The government is more a functioning bureaucracy than a representative democracy...

...Despite the legacy of three wars, France is wooing Germany, and the Germans are reciprocating...

...But the nationalism that usually expresses itself in a desire for supremacy, expansion, prestige, and militarism is gone...

...American propaganda tries to cope with them but gets too little help from American policy-makers or the opposition...

...Or, between these two extremes, the Rassemblement du Peuple Francais for national revival...

...The monuments to the dead had hardly been erected in the heart of every French town and village, the women had hardly dried their eyes, when France began building the Maginot Line and bracing herself for a third German attack...

...Will your war-in-Asia party carry Europe into war...

...Ill A wise European Ambassador in Paris said: "If the United States had not gone into Korea when the Communists attacked, France and Italy would have had to admit Communists into their governments...

...The glory of France died too recently to be a painless memory...

...They try persuasion and they try terror...

...The French intellect is coldly sober and shuns romantic all-black or all-white alternatives...

...After the defeat of 1870 at the hands of the Germans, France geared to avenge it...

...The middle class has been hit hard...

...France did not quit completely in 1940...

...A correspondent of Le Figaro of Paris, who recently finished a study tour of the United States, came to the major conclusion that the United States was not simply a bigger and richer France...

...again the national penchant for a third horn...

...he believes that problems will dissolve under his touch...

...France certainly needs an economic transformation, but it must wait upon a diminished emphasis on armaments and, equally, upon a new psychological approach...

...No country is autonomous...

...A de Gaulle meeting," Andre Malraux, a fervent Gaullist, said to me, "is the Metro," the subway, the masses...

...She therefore made her choice...

...Her most idealistic sons fought and fell...

...This explains the yearning in some quarters for a strong hand and strong personality...

...One sometimes has a feeling that she is not present...

...de Gaulle writes: "Communist dictatorship in the service of the Soviets...

...The American neutralism, accordingly, not to speak of French neutralism, would promote Communism in France...

...Mass production is a rarity...

...The justification for the admitted cheating on tax-payments is: "Look how the government spends on that and this...

...Despite numerous changes of governments, internal stability is also greater...

...No national hero can work miracles...

...Experts in the occult art of French domestic politics report a flutter of the princess' right eyelid...

...But most men know that the only defense against the Communist threat is internationalism, interdependence, rather than colonial dependence or nationalistic independence...

...U. S. abstention in Korea, moreover, might have implied U. S. abstention in the West...

...It is a mark of maturity, of civilized skepticism...

...For a time the Communists were winning the fence war for the walls of France...

...Simultaneously, her leaders explore all avenues of avoiding war...

...Fear of war in France has fluctuated with the tide of battle in Korea...

...For 44 years, especially in the last two decades of that period, much of the thought, time, and wealth of the nation was deLOUIS FISCHER, the distinguished foreign correspondent, recently returned from another journey through Western Europe...

...As a further expression of their nervous anxiety about war, the French favor talks with Moscow, even though the fruits are likely to be sour or puny...

...The Communists nevertheless are losing strength, and were it not for the economic worries of the underprivileged they would be weak...

...Three wars in 70 years have made France a second-class power...

...II French nationalism is vanishing...

...Thanks to international arrangements and to her own hard work, France has enormously increased production since 1947...

...The Schuman Plan for coal and steel is only one of the bridges...

...France must choose, Gen...

...the French ask...

...He is by her side and has brought her rich gifts, but he does not know how to kiss...

...There are modern industrialists, but there are also quite a number who live and work in the 19th Century...

...The Communists have worked diligently...

...They apparently possess financial resources for propaganda equal only to those of governments of large countries...

...In these matters, de Gaulle is as dependent on outside conditions as the Third Force governments...

...Perhaps France is witnessing the birth of a new kind of nationalism which regards international federation and anti-militarism as the best way to national and individual preservation...

...he is no Bonaparte or Boulanger, no master-mind-on-horseback...

...If the prince would give with greater grace and more love, instead of whispering dollar statistics into the ear of the sleeping beauty, she might open her eyes and invite an embrace...

...There was no comparison, he wrote: "The Americans produce and consume not merely to meet their material needs but because their genius obliges them to produce and consume...

...De Gaullism penetrates all sections of the community, from retired diplomats and rich industrialists to hard-working peasants...

...there is none of the excitement of growth, no atmosphere of personal or national security...

...The high prices and menace of inflation which unavoidably accompany rearmament occupy the forefront of the Frenchman's attention...

...I don't want my money to go to that kind of government...

...Thus de Gaulle, the competitor of the Communists and of the middle-of-the-road coalition called the Third Force, is himself eager to be regarded as a third force...

...To sell everything you can and to buy everything you are offered is the way in which human activity manifests itself...

...His friends say de Gaulle has it...

...About the present situation," the second highest French occupation official in Germany told me, "the Germans feel just like the French...

...The only hope is Charles de Gaulle," reads a de Gaulle poster...

...French capitalism is short on initiative and daring...

...In one factory employing over 200 persons, the Communists stopped a spontaneous strike for better pay after the employer signed the pledge...

...In France the mentality of the rentier is still strong...

...he believes in his destiny...

...The result is an average level of individual income that does not satisfy the white-collar worker, the public official, or the manual laborer...

...The General's closest collaborators admit he is arrogant and difficult to work with in a team...

...It is proof of their disappearing power...

...It never disappears...

...This is where the Communists come in with their appeals for peace, disarmament, and lower living costs...

...National defense, the supply of food and raw materials, employment, prices, inflation— everything depends on international arrangements...

...Supineness in the face of a Communist aggression in Asia would have doubled the fear of Russian aggression in Europe and made it necessary to have Communists in authority in the hope of making Moscow friendlier...

...The high cost of wars and military preparation between wars has drained the strength and sapped the spirit of the nation...

...Awake," he commands...

...What is needed is an intangible, spiritual something which would induce national optimism and evoke a sense of national community...

...Scratch a Frenchman and you find a neutralist...

...Penny-pinching is no substitute for enterprise, imagination, and progress...

...Will we be another Korea...

...The French national genius leans toward the tentative and moderate...

...Official France, while defending such measures, realized, however, that they constituted no basic cure...

...The feudal outlook is not so widespread in France as in Italy, but it is not dead...

...The CGT, which they dominate, cannot win a strike unless they join one initiated by or supported by the Catholic and Socialist free trade unions...

...She has little taste for either and would prefer a third horn which she knows does not exist...

...And since anyone who does not wish to pay taxes can easily find some blemish on a French government, even the conscience is not guilty...

...His articles on world affairs have appeared in many publications, including Harper's, The Nation, The Saturday Review of Literature, and Look...

...But de Gaulle's Rassemblement is incapable of ruling France without at least part of the Third Force as partner...

...France, awake...

...Is it possible for America to arm and arm and arm," a French politician mused, "without a day arriving when she will precipitate herself into the fight...

...At the height of the war, scared businessmen advertised in Communist magazines, to play safe...

...The man or country or influence that can raise per capita income in France and achieve its equitable distribution will be the real savior or benefactor and may awaken the princess...

...It is most natural for America to want the Marshall Plan, yet it is the last thing in the world the French would like to remember...

...France shows little of this spirit for rearmament or even for her long-range economy...

...This is not, however, to underestimate the deluding appeal which Communism makes to Europeans and others who feel that the existing system serves them inadequately...

...The princess has gone away to sleep either from fatigue or a deep desire to forget...

...Indeed, so great seems the need for clear affirmation that de Gaulle is followed (as probably the French Communist Party is followed) by many who distrust his promise to awaken the princess and who dislike the personality of the prince...

...French Communism rises or subsides with the cost of living and the Russian imperial peril...

...The demagogues of the world still court the mob with appeals to a nationalism, which is isolationism in one of its aspects and imperialism in another...

...Regime of the parties which means impotence and decadence...

...The present, immediate Communist challenge partakes of the nature of a military threat from outside abetted by a conspiracy within...

...When the war clouds compete for his attention, he relates the two phenomena and decides that they could just as well disappear together...

...he would be much worse off but for government financing of all manner of social services, including premiums for new babies which, incidentally, are raising the birth-rate...

...She has not yet learned to live as a second-class power...

...Now, just as France, Europe, and, indeed, the entire world is beginning to recover, a tragedy has overtaken mankind: more armaments, less food, clothing, housing, less laughter, less hope...

...Among the people, and in high political circles as well, a feeling exists that whereas the Kremlin expects countries to fall into its red lap by social ripening and will therefore and for other reasons refrain from war, the United States is over-zealous, impetuous, and hysterical...

...The Rassemblement (RFP) is de Gaulle's party, but it avoids calling itself a party...

...Among his books are "Oil Imperialism," "The Soviets in World Affairs," "Men and Politics," "Machines and Men in Russia," "A Week with Gandhi," "Empire," and "Gandhi and Stalin: Two Signs at the World's Crossroads...

...The possession of wealth looms larger than its use...

...He would never make a coup-d'etat to achieve power," they all assert...

...Frenchmen inquire...