+
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1957.
The French cry "Waiter!' and get 'la douloureuse'
...IT MEANS THE BILL WITH
THE STING IN IT... WHICH IS LIFE IN FRANCE TODAY
T
HE French, after a whacking great meal beginning with truffled goose liver and the white wines of Alsace, and travelling gastronomically through the Burgundy country and ending most likely with a little bit of the Cognac region glowing in a balloon glass, have a sad name for the thing that comes at the end of it all.
They often call the waiter to bring "la douloureuse"literally meaning "the sad thing." Sometimes we call it "the damage." And we both mean-the bill.
The elementary summing-up of what is happening in France today is that the French once more don't agree with the total at the end of "la douloureuse," although for 15 months and
20 days they were fairly happy with the meuk being
served up by the waiter and
his chefs-Socialist Prime France Minister Guy Mollet and his Government.
In the one year, three months and 20 days of their service, Mollet and his leaders have won votes of confidence in Parlamenta record survival in postwar France.
34
The deficit
And with
digestion, and pay.
From SYDNEY SMITH: Paris
Committee
hammer on
rejected interests began to £90,000,000 worth of proposed the docts of the Palais Matignon W receipts by the Govern- to tell M. Moilet that his roble ment.
bluff of going it alone *would lead to nowhere but ruin.
It was on that issue that Government was Mollet's thrown out, by what is for the
fairly the
Harrow French margin of 213 votes to 250-on the question of a Budget which would in fact bring in only one- tenth of what is needed to phy for French bankruptcy.
abou!
He says 'No'
MOLLET a stubborn, honest,
rather unimaginglive litle, provincial mayor of Amicus, flatly refused to climb down.
Alterthoughts-the digestion singo-cmong his Sucz sup- porters began to mount but elimb-
t
the
There to never anything
ratical NOW suddenly comes the bill. visibly
the guests' French Government crisis. decision that they have in- is never logical by average Molle argued that
by down don't want to standards certainly not so
40 Nasser would cost Market stendards of purely national
more in lives and loss of face plans. interes!.
in his Algerian struggla shan Like all French · crises, this
This one comes after Socialist could be saved by using Mic оррента
be about
Canal on Nasser'a terms. shown such B Orm something not at all related Mollet has
North kand in directly to the true reason,
Africa-cust £1,000,000 a day-that many of This time, the Government, those who supported the rather heading for the biggest financja naive curly opproaches to the crisis since the thirties, with a terrorists
raised their horror deficit so big
cried that it hardly hands in
and mitters any more-£1,400 "Fascist,"
to
million-is trying to stup the
gop with Anancial reforms and tax increases that involve only
a total of £150 million.
Of £38,000,000 worth of tox increases slone, Parliament's
POCKET CARTOON by OSBERT LANCASTER
"I suppose the Foreign Office have noticed that every time. Aly Khan gets a new girl the French Govern-
ment fulls
have
Brotherly hate
ND the people who threw him out the Communists, the contre Right parties, and the Mondes-France Radicals all hate each other.
to
The powerful Industrial end economic interests of France only saw it in terms of each and they reach far into heart of France's Parliament.
tho
So Suez is one dish on the menu the price of which began to look too high.
North Africa is the bcxt. went with Prime Minister Molle more than a year ago to Algiers. Then he flew in with him 3,000 of the toughest shock police in Francc-not to protect himself from terrorists but from a million engry French retulers who rightly feared a French Secialist climb-down.
and Customs
paste
LA BELLE FRANCE
Union
Cummings
from ALGERIA Having terrible time-Pierre
up and pay "la douloureuse" if And they're saying in not Mollet?
So here we are all the way Presidente-has now to find al around the circle. Who is able new waiter to present the old to persuade the French to pick bill.
Paris last he Ands many Anke "Ja
that if at name ho
They realise the potentialities of the Empire's industrial pro- duction. They consider Britain
President Coly, a tired and a is doing a sharp deal and they and marr since he lost his de- dauloineuse! with him and ask have revised their whole viewʊ ightful wife. Madame la the Americans to chip in of the European plan.
They have revised them too after realising that they BAC opening the way to a crushing German competition,
The circle
NATO is en the bill too--and
whatever is sald from the top la France no one can pretend that the French Man-in-the- Bistro is happy about his new German allie-nor the price of the alliance.
All Parts knows as usual that whatever rocky Government may be ditched together succeed him it will have to
Mollet began to understand
He curry out practically the same the altuation.
switched
While the blits for each new even more forces frem Nato to North dish-Suez, North Africa, Nato programme, or one desperate.
Africa.
That last him at least commitments, and the Common Communist abstention from Market--begin to look too high, awkward votes, and brought the act only to that Man-in-the- Mendes-France Radicals in his Bistro but the Mon-in-the- cost ot. living, Government to a state of revolt. Bordroom,
mainly thanks to Algeria, tas steadily climbed beyond wage adjustments.
Could anything avem illogical than all that?
more
This is how subtly, almost imperceptibly the change has come about.
Suez once and for a long time was for the French a splendid and noble gesture. In the last 20 days, with Britain's climb- down to Nasser, which hurt them most, they have begun to Tealise that continued noble solitudo would be terribly cxpensive.
A shaking
his
measures
A be departies,
Who can succeed Mollet? AND
must £1,000,000-a-day new majority
in found
408 among 42 strong-arm Algeria have only created more excluding the 100 Commiste and better and tho half hundred terorists-bigger
Foujadists. But Mollet holds ambushes-and financial strain,
over 100 votes in Trouble, too,
goes Morocco and Tunisia.
on:
Parliament,
anxi no
succted trim one cath without Sociallet support doe COMTS
just just the same programme-Just Was due to put the same bill which the French
It is just two weeks ago that Mollet's defeat deputations from industry led before he
by
Vast shipping sand ou through the European Common have refused to pay.
ALGERIAN WAR
GLOIRE
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