Evening star., 1952-03-04
France and NATO

It is not surprising that the latest govern
mental crisis in Paris has moved Senator
Connally and other influential members of Con-
greSs to threaten that they will vote against
further American aid to France unless France
puts its fiscal house in order The threat is not
to be undereStimated It reflects growing and
understandable impatence with an ally that
seems all too reluctant to adopt policies designed
to keep it solvent, save it from ruinous imitation
and enable it to shoulder the economic burden
it must shoulder if it is to complete the great
tasks it has undertaken as the European con-
tinents kngpin member of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization.
Basicaly, in terms of its industrial and
agricultural resources both at home and overseas,
France-whch has staged remarkable produc-
tive comeback under the Marshall Plan
possesses what is required for a sound and
proSpering economy. However, wholly apart
from the drain involved in its valiant and costly
struggle against the Communists in Indo- China,
its fiscal policies have been self-impoveriShing
and conducive to bankruptcy because they have
encouraged dangerous inflationary spiral and
left the national treasury bare of the funds
needed to finance a greatly expanded defense
program. In sum, although the French-as Sec
retary Acheson has just pointed out-have
already approved a military budget tailored to
cover their enlarged responsibilities in the NATO
alliance they have baked up to now at the
idea OF raising additional revenues to pay for the
job they are committed to do.
Thus France is without government today
because a majority of the National Assembly has
forced out Premier Faure by voting against his
proposal for higher taxation. In other words,
although the country's foreign-policy commit
ments have been upheld, only minority of the
members of Parliament has been willing to
impose increased levieS on individual and cor
porate incomes in order to raise the money
required to carry out those commitments. Inter
estingly enough the unwillingness here has been
expressed not by the Socialists but by rightist
elements led by the DeGaullists in combination
with the Communists. The French conservatives,
I In short are the ones who in this instance have
{ taken the thoroughly unconservative position OF
refusing to do what is clearly necessary to curb
imitation, pay for rearmament and in general
equip the country to play the key role assigned to
it in the Western defense build-up.
At the moment with the French once again
In search of Premier, their situation looks less
than encouraging. The basic reason for this. OF
course is their domestic disunity, as reflected in
their multiplicity of clashing political parties,
none of which can command more than minor
ity in the National Assembly. The result-which
ever since the end of the war has pedeviled the
country with cabinet crises-is a fundamental
governing weakness that places a recurrent ques-
ton mark over the outlook for NATO This is so
8 because France is continental Europes most i'm
portant member of the alliance, and even though
it has already made great and vital contributions
to that alliance doubts about its dependabihty
arise every time 1t suffers governmental up
heaval Moreover even though the present up
heaval may soon be overcome, 1t Is difficult to
see how there ever can be real steadiEess at