FRANCE—ALL IS NOT WELL

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33096, 11 December 1972, Page 12

FRANCE—ALL IS NOT WELL

(By

FLORA LEWIS,

. of the “New York Times. .I.K7DA i

through N.Z.PA.)

' PARIS. I Paris is a resort town now. It is beautiful and bright, even though the weather was stubbornly nasty for most of the summer. A few monstrous new sky- i scrapers blotch the horizon, but there is still a monumental grandeur to almost every; square and a sudden perspective of grace around almost every comer. To the eye, all looks well,; harmonious, delightful. But; there is something else, and it was expressed by two! very important men, who dis-1 agree on practically every-1 thing else. They uttered the same; words on the same day.! "France isn’t a healthy country,” they said, "it has grave; ailments.” "CIVIL WAR” The diagnosis came casu-! ally, an aside in conversa-! tions about practical matters, as though the disease were, too well known to dwell! upon. One of the men, a supporter of President Pompidou, said that the President would be achieving the most that could possibly be expected if he managed “to get through six or eight years after de Gaulle without a civil war.”

The other, an opponent of Mr Pompidou, spoke glumly about “the danger of a trag-, edv like Chile.” On the face of it, French-1 men are faring well enough. Last year, the per capita Gross National Product ( reached 5U52.064. substantially ahead ol West Ger-1 many’s SUS 1.848. Andi French experts predict that; the total Gross National I Product will overtake that of i Germany some time in the. middle of the decade, mak-1 ing France the fourth indus-l trial nation. New suburbs spill out far along the highways that radiate from Paris. But the Communist Party, supporting,

union demands for a higher; minimum wage and an ear-; her retirement age, complained recently that more; than a third of the workers' in Paris could not afford to', go away on their four-week vacation. “STATE RUNS ALL” The problem isn’t so much about how people live, or how they play, or how they feel, but about how the country functions. “It’s'an unprecedented system of socio-capitalism,”

said one Parisian. “The State runs everything, but the money is all in private hands. So we have all the bureaucratic disadvantages of socialism and : all the social disadvantages of capitalism.” The intricacies of the ■ power structure can be seen occasionally, when men change jobs or merge enter-, prises, but they are not charted. There is no Guide. Michelin to the real Estab-1 lishment — as distinct from I

the “Tout Paris” that glittei at balls and ballets. There is no “Anatomy of France” to match the analytical dissections of how things actually work that are available in other countries.; MYSTERIOUS “THEY” ! “It would be impossible,” > said a publisher. “ ‘They’ would never! permit it. ‘They’ would find’; a way to hound and torture anyone who tried.” "They” seem to be a fairly small group of people wno ■know each other, but many lof who stay unknown to the public. "They” move in and out of i Government jobs, but Public Service apparently serves to win private promotions, rather than the other way around. The Government “control” ■ that practically everyone mentions cannot be traced : through stockholdings, regui latory agencies or public decisions. It seems to function through a maize of personal contacts and tacit | understandings. “You’ll never understand the French economy, or French society nowadays, if (you persist in seeking a dis- ■ tinction between the State■ and the big companies,” said: a man of prominence. “They live in sybiosis, and; :they don’t have th. tell any-: 'body how it’s done.” LAISSEZ FAIRE Such thoughts are not to be read, not even in the far- , Left press, but they are ; spoken in private with remarkable frequency. They underlie politics, but they !don’t show on the political; surface, nor does the; speaker’s political prefer- ■ ; ence seem to affect the ] common assessment. They give an eerie quality to the talk of Paris, an undertone that clashes sombrely I with the cheerful melody of every day. It is not the pessimism, the . self-castigation, the painted i self-examination that Ameri- . cans have been either going ■ through or complaining! ? nnt much effort is

about; not mucn eiron ib made to decide what seems to be wrong. Nor are there catchwords, fashionable phrases to indicate that this is a mere echo effect, a parlour pastime, and not a serious mood of apprehen- ■ sion. It is hard to explain, even for the intensely intelligent French people involved. They tend to sigh, and shrug, and get on with the golf and good life.