Langer, Wahl Predict Faure Will Continue Mendes-France's Policies

Premier Edgar Faure's new French government will continue the policies of the deposed Mendes-France government, William L. Langer '15, Coolidge Professor of History, and Anthony N. Wahl, teaching fellow in Government, said yesterday.

Faure, however, will probably be more cautious than Mendes-France in his actions, according to Langer. But his objectives will be "essentially the same," he said.

Explaining the fall of Mendes, Wahl noted that although the Assembly approved of most of his policies, it wanted "his legend of personal power to die."

If the French government slips back into its old immobility, however, Mendes-France may be tempted to take his program directly to the people, Wahl said. "Politicians could then drop party alliances and embrace a modified Mendes-France program, giving him a majority of deputies to form a government."

Faure Favors Ratification

Wahl also felt that Faure is more internationally minded than Mendes-France and more willing to work with the M.R.P. He will press for ratification of the Paris agreements on West German rearmament before attacking domestic problems.

Both Mendes and Faure have much in common, being "young, intellectuals, economists, and excellent debaters. Flexibility is their main difference," Wahl said. They are both members of the Radical Socialist Party, and Faure served under Mendes-France as his Finance Minister in the przeceding cabinet.

Neither Langer nor Wahl were willing to predict how long the new government would survive. They felt that the life of the cabinet will depend on a number of as yet undetermined factors. In 1952 Faure managed to hold a government together for only six weeks.

Wahl lived in France from 1945 to 1955 and also did graduate work there. After the fall of the Mendes-France Cabinet he predicted that the assembly would accept Faure as its twenty-first post war premier.