THE U.S. & MENDES-FRANCE AS A FRENCH EDITOR SEES IT-

Most articulate of Premier Mendes-France's young braintrusters is J. J. Servan-Schreiber, 30, editor of the weekly political review L'Express. A U.S.-trained fighter pilot who served, with a Free French squadron in the Ninth U.S. Air Force, Servan-Schreiber was friend and counselor of France's Premier long before he came to power. This article was written by him for TIME.

Last week two significant events occurred within 24 hours. Tuesday evening Premier Pierre Mendes-France gathered in Paris, for the first time in seven years, all the chiefs of the French provincial and overseas administration. He outlined the economic revolution which he is about to launch. Wednesday evening, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles administered to the French Premier, for the first time since the end of the war, a diplomatic slap in the face.

These two events are not isolated occurrences. To put it bluntly, the present situation looks to us as follows: at the very moment when France at long last has at its head a young, dynamic and popular government, which has given rise to new hopes, American diplomacy is led into a kind of coalition, the aim of which is to provoke the downfall of Mendes-France.

Flummoxing the U.S. Why does the U.S. lend itself to this kind of game? For the simple reason, it seems, that many American diplomats find it easier to work with the old French political leaders than with the new regime. What they want, apparently, is to find again at the head of the French government one of their old associates who will tell them nothing but pleasant things and who will sign anything he is asked to.

It is only with a feeling of shame that a Frenchman can recall the manner in which his country behaved toward its American allies until a few months ago. But this truth must be faced, no matter how painful: outmoded American diplomatic methods met with French political cowardice and both got along splendidly. On the one side, in France, we had a series of conservative governments, unwilling to face serious reform in the country's economy. At the end of each month, they were compelled to borrow money to patch up the gaps. It was all very simple. The leaders of the old French regime promised the U.S. almost everything: a military victory in Indo-China. an enthusiastic vote for the EDC, ringing measures against the Communist Party, etc. All this in exchange for millions of dollars which bolstered the French deficits and enabled the State Department to display handsomely worded diplomatic communiques in its showcase.

But the day was bound to come when Americans would realize they had been flummoxed, that they had been paying for a regime which had nothing but illusions to sell. Fortunately, it was the French people who reacted first. Last June, after the crushing defeat of Dienbienphu, the French themselves, disgusted by all the years of cowardice and mediocrity, broke with the old methods and brought into power a new man before our friends and allies abandoned us.

The first part of the Mendes plan consisted of deflating illusions and facing facts. This is the story of Indo-China, and the story of EDC. The past has now been liquidated. The new regime must construct the future. The second stage opens with Mendes' economic plan. Two of its aims have top priority:

Priority No. 1. Wrest away from the Communist Party the grip it holds today on 5,000,000 Frenchmen by giving back to the French people the long-forgotten feeling of social and material progress; in other words, by restoring hope.

France's national income is still mired today where it stood in 1929. In a generation, our country has made no progress. We are the only nation in the Western world to present such a sorry balance sheet. Out of this situation French Communist propaganda easily derived its main strength. In the eyes of many Frenchmen, the Communists were the only ones who talked about progress. The fact that the new government has registered a real impact on the nation has already thrown confusion into the Communist ranks. The bosses of the Communist machine in Paris are deeply disturbed. They sent emissaries to several provinces with explicit orders to fight the confusion in their ranks by explaining that "Mendes-France is the last and slickest of all capitalist stooges."

Priority No. 2. Put back Franco-American relations on a healthy basis. This can only be achieved if France ceases to stand like a beggar in the U.S. bread line.

When the old regimes decided to rely on American charity, they committed an unpardonable crime against Franco-American friendship, which can only be based upon mutual respect. The Atlantic alliance should not rely on satellites.

For two years before he came to power, Mendes-France gathered around himself a group of technicians and businessmen to examine ways and means by which France might be able to get along without relying on American subsidies. Not one of the old governments ever asked its own experts to undertake the same kind of study.

Breaking the Crust. The essential aim of the Mendes-France revolution is to break the crust which weighs upon the French economy and hinders its free development. This crust is made up of layers of protections, subsidies and financial subterfuges. Today, the French economic machine is geared to the production rhythm of its weakest components. The state has nearly become an agency to stifle competition.

Everybody expected Mendes-France to come out with a system of state planning. He did the opposite. He decided to plunge French economy into international competition as quickly as possible by reducing customs tariffs and opening the frontiers. Thus he will gradually lift a great part of the protective decrees. Mendes-France will issue no ukases; it is the old order of free competition which must clean house.

But when a business has to face the necessity of reconversion, it may apply to the state. The government will provide both plans and credit, and it will assume responsibility for unemployed workers who will need readaptation to new jobs.

These are the main principles of the French "New Deal." If it succeeds, France should find herself healthy and independent, instead of lagging one generation behind.

The Old Regime. Formidable resistance rises against Mendes-France. He has the support of the majority of the workers and of big business. Against him stands the greater majority of small and medium-sized industrial, commercial and agricultural enterprises, all those who were able to survive only in the incubator of protection. They don't realize that without radical treatment, most of them are condemned to death.

These small and medium-sized enterprises have strong influence in the National Assembly. They have formed the political basis of all the French governments of the last years, particularly those of Pinay and Laniel. Today these men of the old regime are trying very hard to bring the new government down. They tried to do so in the confused EDC debate. Their big offensive failed. They have now opted for a classic gambit in the history of nations: they appealed to foreign powers. These "friends of America" messaged Washington and even Bonn that the new government had dangerous schemes in mind; they hinted that it was seeking a "neutralist" foreign policy.

Mendes-France refuses to make promises to the allies that are incapable of being kept. He is a less easy man to handle than his predecessors. Foreign diplomats who were loth to see their postwar arrangements crumble were only too eager to listen to Mendes-France's internal enemies. Washington's attitude suggests that American diplomacy may have joined the ranks of those who seek Mendes-France's downfall.

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