European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 11, 1947, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Dear dont Send me a Cookbook i know that you mean to be but for me it will just be a look As i scan through its pages and find recipes with with with with with with pints and pints of partridges and so definitely but also make me want to scream cantaloupes and and Camembert and tiny new and Corn upon the salad and rare i read of them with and suppress a quiet soul so Send me a Book about or photography that will be or some card to fill in the but please dont Send hints How to economic unrest in France continued from Page 3 periods during the Ascendancy of Leon Blum late in 1946 and the Early period of the Ramaier government one of the reasons for this decline is the split in the socialist party Between its left and right the socialist several months carried a pledge to the communists that they would not join in any coalition government that would not include the As Leader of the right Wing reversed this stand when he persuaded the party to recommend that Ramaier dismiss the communists from the govern rather than resign with his Cabinet immediately after the refusal of the communists to support his request for a vote of the imponderable in this Situ i action and the Factor which May crystallize the division Between the left and the right in France is de Gaul Les rally of the French already his lieutenants claim that the ref has gained card carrying actual communist party membership is Esti mated today to be at a Peak of the workers have not for gotten that de Gaulle give them parades when there was no meat and no and went off to the Riviera for a vacation during the crucial Winter of it is not from the ranks of the workers that he is now gaining his the current government crisis was precipitated by communist support of thirty thousand striking Renault Auto workers who were demanding a ten franc hourly increase in their the support by the communists of this strike meant that they had decided the Experiment begun by Blum on january just before the fourth Republic came into was at an on that promulgated a decree reducing All prices from a packet of pins to a new citroen by 5 per cent he attached to it a provision for another 5 per cent reduction to become effective within the next sixty both reductions were most buyers Felt prices had been raised 20 per cent the week now the communists charge the program is a failure and the pledge to the workers to Roll prices Back to within reach of their wages has not been As the voice of the working they Are demand ing general wage increases As the Price of Industrial the government How that a wage increase now would simply mean a resumption of the steady upward March of in which in the end would More than nullify any temporary benefits that the wage increases would the contradiction lies in the fact that both within certain Are Frances ills Are they go Back to the War Days and to the German Many of the roots Are planted deep in the soil of individualism cultivated for centuries by the highly inde Corduroy Clad French France is a Rich before the War she was virtually self sufficient in food of few european countries to enjoy that Happy from the tip of the Brest Peninsula Westward to the Ger Man Border stretches mile after mile of pastures and heavily cultivated All bearing Rich in finisterre and cattle herds Are thicker now than they were before the flocks of fowl have been rebuilt to prewar yet throughout the country milk is still tightly rationed for the ill and the meat in the Large except for Frozen Argen Tine beef bought with precious French foreign is usually not to be found outside expensive Black Market which Are plentiful this have reached a new Low francs each or about a but during the Winter grocers were asking Twenty five francs a piece for when it is costs 250 francs for two pounds of average Dollar a beyond the slim ranges from a Pound in midwinter to in the when Lack of adequate refrigeration makes it impossible for profiteers to store it for Long France is currently entering a wheat crisis which experts in the government predict will become even More perhaps forcing reduction in the current half Pound daily ration the reason for these contradictions that the French Farmer will not submit to controls that take Money out of his the Thrifty peas ants prefer to sell their beef at Black Market prices or let it fatten in the pastures rather than accept the con trolled Low they prefer to make cheese and butter from their milk than to sell it in bulk to feed French children who need before the France cultivated eleven million acres of in ten from 1937 wheat production dropped to six million acres under partly As a result of a prewar French government Campaign to reduce wheat and partly because wheat prices Are tightly prices for Rye and Oats Are not controlled and More and More French acreage is being devoted to these crops instead of wheat the hard freeze last Winter froze most of the French crop of Winter wheat France appealed to the United states in desperation for seed wheat which she offered free to any the response was discouraging by Small and indications Are that Only a third of the acreage planted in Winter wheat was replanted after the at a thousand francs for 220 pounds of it just want Worth the work a second but the government cannot permit increases in the prices of even though that May be the Only Way to encourage the Farmer to Channel his production toward the legitimate Market the must be the average French worker today receives about seven thousand francs a at the artificially pegged rate of the franc is around the increases that French unions Are currently demanding would raise wages to about a which is regarded by the Cut As the minimum subsistence or minimum an average american couple Liv ing in most moderate circumstances in is Likely to find its minimum vital running to about fifty thousand francs a without including Black Market fashionable night clubs and shopping trips on the Rue de la on the other the French Middle forced to live largely on the Black Are slowly being smothered under the weight of High taxes and High every where in France businessmen com Plain that business is at a shops Are full of but prices Are beyond the reach of and no solution to the problem is yet in some say it is getting France has other problems just As acute As but for the moment at least the emphasis is on the immediate crisis of wages and there is the colonial crisis which the recent visit of president Auriol to North Africa was designed to Allevi ate in that part of the French there is the problem of Coal for next Winter and of Frances situation with regard to the current struggle among the big four Over the Viet Nam outbreaks in indo strongly supported if not led by communists in that French brought a sympathetic response from the communist party which opposes the fratricidal War now going on the revolt in about which Little has been brought the same support from the French with the communists out of the Rama Diers Cabinet lost no time in voting to press the suppression of these giving the communists another Opportunity to go before the workers and Call attention to the fact that the reactionary socialists Are crushing a proletariat like Bidault left for mos y y a member of the French in a speech that was widely warned the foreign minister that if he gave in on Frances he need not Bidault did not give but France is no nearer its cherished claims to some form of International control Over the Ruhr than she was when he boarded the train for the French position on Germany was ably expressed by Maurice Schu president of the at the recent world affairs forum in Cleve he in discussing american and French views on Germany what is your aim what is ours to prevent Europe again becoming a Battlefield and France a where thousands of your children would their fathers and sleep by the Side of millions of our to reach this aim it is necessary to build a then to integrate Germany into this but on the other we must not try to build Europe around be cause As pitiless experience has taught there would be no Europe and consequently no the establishment and the maintenance of this order depend on Amer if you draw away from physically or Britain will or will consider obliged to rebuild Germany against while Russia will or will consider forced to rebuild Germany against in either Case instead of becoming a will become again a All of these conflicts reflect the failure of Broad coalitions to govern in a country where chaotic conditions require the exercise of desperate with the socialists heading the the authority Falls on the shoulders of the weakest of the three major every Effort to find remedies for each specific situation meets either the passive Resis Tance of the on which the Church exercises enormous the Active resistance of the communists through the press and the or the indifference of the in but nonetheless Power Ful French de Gaul Les remedy for this weakness of the coalition is a new revision of the Constitution providing a Strong Central authority in the presidency which he still Hopes to and a government consist ing of members of his which he conceives As being above and uniting All in the current crisis there is talk that he might be called upon to form a if not with a new at least with All the authority that the Constitution of the fourth Republic the dangers of such a move in the present circumstances Are it would Speed the division Between left and the centrifugal pro Cess by which those on the Middle ground Are being Flung madly into one or the other of the once that process reaches the where the Middle ground is occupied Only by a few diehards there can be no solution except a test Between the two sides to see which is the perhaps an election would provide this test if the alternative would be civil with those still in the Middle suffering the inevitable Fate of being caught Between the