The President and the General

At exactly 4 p.m. the big brown C-54 touched the ground of the Washington airport. The door swung open; out stepped Charles Andre Joseph Marie de Gaulle.

The General looked down on a platoon of French air cadets and three squadrons of U.S. airmen, rigid at attention while the 94DEG heat wilted their khaki and soaked their hats. He stood there for a long moment, looking about him, blinking under the sun of a land he had never seen before. Then slowly Charles de Gaulle moved down the ramp, looking even taller than his 6 ft. 4 in., even thinner than his pictures. As his foot touched the ground, the 17-gun salute to a general roared into the hazy heat (four guns less than the salute for the head of a state). The faint est smile passed across the grey, impassive face of Charles de Gaulle.

Comment c,a va? While the smoke from the guns curled up into the haze, Henri Hoppenot, De Gaulle's representative in the U.S., introduced his chief to the State Department's Protocol Chief George T. Summerlin. The three men walked over to a little group of top French and U.S. military men. "Very glad," said De Gaulle, in his rehearsed English, stiffly shaking General Marshall's hand. He passed on to General Arnold, Admiral King, and Lieut.

General Vandegrift (of the Marines), to Major General Watson and Vice Admiral Brown, White House aides. A U.S. Air Forces band blared the Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner (an honor re served for heads of states, members of reigning royal families, and diplomats of ambassadorial rank, according to strict protocol). General de Gaulle's body clicked into ramrod attention, two stars gleaming just above the cuff-line of his saluting arm.

A sleek black Cadillac whisked the General to the White House. In the oval, creamy-walled old diplomatic reception room, Franklin Roosevelt said, "My, I'm glad to see you." The conversation limped along in mangled French and English. De Gaulle remained impeccably polite, unsmiling. Finally the photographers were through and Franklin Roosevelt said.

"Let's go upstairs and have some tea."

Visitor's Grind. That night General de Gaulle was given a dinner by Secretary of State Cordell Hull in the Carlton Hotel.

The General was miserably tired, his eyes ringed with deep black. But he drank heartily of Manhattans, French sauterne, American Burgundy and Portuguese champagne, and cleaned up his squab and asparagus tips. At 10:42 he was out in the lobby again. Many distinguished people have walked through the Carlton lobby, but never before had the well-dressed loungers bothered to stand up and applaud.

The General merely looked around at them briefly, mildly gestured his hand, kept right on walking. The applauders plainly regretted their lapse from indifference.

Next morning his minute-to-minute schedule ground on. At the sumptuous residence of Henri Hoppenot, at 2929 Massachusetts Ave., De Gaulle met the people who were carrying on the work of his Committee in the U.S. Still poker-faced, in a low voice he said: "France will emerge once again. . . . Let the past be past. . . .

Before the end of 1944 every German now in France will be killed, made prisoner or obliged to flee. It is up to ourselves to shape our future. . . ."

That afternoon the black limousine rolled into the grounds of the Walter Reed Hospital, where wounded men sprawled on the grass in their red jumpers.

General De Gaulle, with a horde of reporters strung out after him, strode down the low, vaulted corridor to the room of 83-year-old General John Pershing. The conversation jerked along, via an interpreter:

De Gaulle: "What do you think of the military situation?"

Pershing: "It definitely favors the Allies."

De Gaulle: "What do you think of the world situation?"

Pershing: "It would take some time to find out."

De Gaulle: "Mahomet once said that without war the world would be in a condition of stagnation."

Pershing: "We never had peace long enough to know."

The Reckoning. As De Gaulle's four days in Washington ended, U.S. and French officials counted up their chips. French diplomats and the General himself were pleased by the full red-carpet treatment he had been given--everything short of recognition as the head of the French Government. On their part, U.S. officials were relieved that General de Gaulle had conducted himself with tact.

The main thing that had been accomplished was announced by President Roosevelt several days later : an unqualified decision by the President to accept De Gaulle's French National Committee as the authority for civil administration of liberated France. But the U.S. Government, the President made clear, still refuses to do what General Eisenhower has already done in practice--accept De Gaulle's Committee as a provisional government.

Just before heading for Manhattan, General de Gaulle, giving the first real smile of his visit, held a press conference.

He made it clear that: 1) he intended to move his Government from Algiers to the French mainland "as soon as possible"; 2) he expected the French Empire to be restored but was ready to go along with changes that would grant greater autonomy to the more developed regions; 3) he had no fears of U.S. designs on French terri tories; 4) he believed a French army of occupation should be placed in the Rhineland, perhaps for "many years."

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