Word: mending
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Confidence. In Paris, as he had promised he would, Mendès-France got the Assembly to schedule debate on the Paris agreements the week of Dec. 13. Then he plunged into what the French call the terrain de l'embuscade (ambush country) of French politics-the budget. Most of France's 19 postwar governments have been trapped and brought down not on the high ground of national or foreign policy, but in the tricky thickets of the budget...
Characteristically, Mendès tried to flush out lurking marauders at the start. French Deputies hate to raise taxes but love to raise the salaries of government workers. Since the Assembly cannot increase the government's allocations, its favorite device for forcing the government to increase salaries is to send any budget item back to committee. Mendes sternly warned that he would tolerate no "untoward maneuvers." Unbelieving, the members of the Assembly went right ahead, prepared to send back to committee the estimate for the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs...
...Mendès stalked to the rostrum. Tight-lipped and curt, he announced that he was making the approval of this minor item a matter of confidence, and staking his government on the outcome. What was more, he warned he would repeat this procedure as often as necessary to get the budget voted on time...
Deputies grumbled unhappily about "government by machine gun," but few thought the Assembly would dare to refuse Mendès his vote of confidence. He was too popular with the country, his victories at London and Paris too recent, his scheduled visit to Washington too close. They grumbled; but Mendès-France, too, seemed to be well in control of things...
...eight Frenchmen and pro-French natives were dead, more than 30 wounded. Paris Le Monde lamented: "All this happened as if an invisible hand were looking for a way to destroy Franco-North African solidarity at the exact moment when we were about ready to strengthen it." Premier Pierre Mendès-France, who wants peace and a settlement in North Africa, had just served notice, in one of his fireside chats, that his government was going ahead with plans to let French Africa "have her large part in the social and economic expansion of the entire French Union...