FRANCE'S DARING YOUNG MAN

Most noteworthy of the delegates of 63 nations assembling in Washington for an International Monetary Fund Conference is Felix Gaillard (pronounced guyyar), France's youngest finance minister in this century.

Born: Nov. 5, 1919 in Paris, son of a wealthy mining engineer and heir to rich estates in the cognac-producing department of the Charente, north of Bordeaux.

Education: honor student at Paris' Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques; served six months in the army during World War II, and another six months chopping trees in the Chantiers de Jeunesse, Petain's version of the Hitler Youth. Joined the Resistance, preparing schemes for economic harassment of the Germans; at 23 got the year's highest grades in competitive exams for appointment to the elite corps of Inspecteurs des Finances, a backstage group that furnishes France with many of her top diplomats, financiers and civil servants.

Early Career: as protege of Planner Jean Monnet helped draw up program for postwar modernization of French industry. Spent a year in U.S. as Monnet's assistant. In 1946 was elected a Radical Socialist Deputy from the Charente; in 1953, as Secretary of State to Premier Rene Mayer, launched le plan Gaillard, a five-year program for French atomic energy development. After holding junior office in four successive Cabinets went into temporary eclipse during the premiership of fellow Radical Socialist Pierre Mendes-France, who thought him overly conservative, overly Europe-minded. In 1955 headed French delegation which laid the groundwork for the Common Market and Euratom treaties.

Attitudes: zealous advocate of European economic union but holds U.N. in deep contempt. ("What right have Krishna Menon and the other curly-heads got to lecture us? Must France sit and listen while Ibn Saud talks about democracy?") Has no intention of asking additional U.S. aid for France: "We must do things by ourselves from now on."

Personality: has scholar's bespectacled face, broad-shouldered body of an athlete. Excels at tennis, swimming and skiing, plays 15-handicap golf ("Maybe I'm good enough to play with President Eisenhower") and first-rate bridge. Much sought after by Parisian hostesses. Arrives late to work, leaves the office every night by 9 to dine with the family in his elegant Avenue Foch apartment. (Madame Gaillard, widow of one of France's wealthiest financiers, has two children by her previous marriage, a son by this one.) His chief handicaps: a malicious wit--"Nothing outside, nothing inside" was his verdict on a bald colleague--and the widespread feeling that he is a coldly ambitious golden boy "sunk in upper-class surroundings."

Current Performance: in his three months in office, faced with galloping inflation and declining gold and dollar reserves, he first demanded a 10% cut in the government budget, then succeeded in devaluing the franc by 20% without ever using the horrid word "devaluation." ("Every country has its totems--holy things which are not mentioned.") To prevent a new round of inflation, he now demands selected price controls and a six months "wage truce" from labor. The latest Bank of France statement shows France for the first time in two years taking in appreciably more foreign exchange than it pays out.

The Future: stoutly maintaining that "it is false that France is sick, false that she is old," Gaillard argues that if his countrymen can be held to austerity for 18 months "we will finally find ourselves in the open air."

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