H.J KAPLAN
19
a French invention, like champagne and perfumes. In short, nothing but
poli tical and moral frustration; and no longer even the prospect of turning
things around. With the result that a couple of months ago, the new
incumbents having - with what appeared to be an arrogant disregard for
the promises they had made during the electoral campaign - raised taxes
and proposed to reduce the deficit of certain state enterprises by trimming
entitlements, the entire country went into a sort of temper tantrum, with
strikes paralyzing public services, no mail, no rail, subway or bus travel,
huge demonstrations, for weeks on end. It was over by Christmas, all pas–
sion spent, and billions lost and nothing much to show for it all, except
perhaps further to chasten the so-called political class and leave the coun–
try deeper in debt, with more bankruptcies, more unemployment and
even less confidence in French institutions - private and public - than
during the dismal years of Socialist rule.
Now from all this one might expect that the Last Days are at hand,
but my own feeling is that things are likely to get better, if only because it
is difficult to see how they could get worse. There's a great deal of ruin in
a country, as Adam Smith once said, and there are times when govern–
ments are simply bound to do things wrong until - exhausted, desperate
and having run out of wrong things to do - they are obliged to do a few
things right. To be sure, the French have never been high on Adam Smi th
- and in situations like this they are more likely to quote Paul Valery, to
the effect that civilizations no longer believe that they last forever. . . . But
again, I don't propose to get into all that now. Suffice it to say that, having
heard the bulletin about the President, I left my desk, turned the radio off
and the television on, and spent the next hour watching the comings and
goings around the handsome apartment building on the very posh rue
Frederic Le Play, near the Ecole Militaire, where Franyois Mitterand -
attended by a physician specialized in pain control and a few intimates, had
elected to cease taking nourishment and die.
The hour stretched into a week, and quite a week it was. I am old
enough to remember the passing of many great national leaders,
Roosevelt, to begin with, and Stalin, Kennedy, Churchill, de Gaulle. This
time, wi th a series of spectacular events and pseudo-events organized and
choreographed by the government in accordance with Mitterrand's
instructions and under the direction of the testamentary executor he had
chosen for this purpose, the billionaire head of a great media empire, the
entire country was riveted day after day, indeed hour after hour, by the
removal of the mortal remains to the little town of Jarnac, the President's
birthplace, and the "private" ceremonies there, by the high mass at Notre
Dame de Paris in the presence of scores of heads of state, and by the pro–
cessions and demonstrations at the Bastille and the Pantheon and in other
