Rebirth

In France, in a spontaneous burst of struggle and liberation, a nation had been reborn. In Paris last week a much more difficult feat of political obstetrics was taking place--a government for the reborn nation was trying to come to life. Charles de Gaulle had settled down in the old War Ministry on the rue St. Dominique.

Most of his colleagues in the Provisional Government, still unrecognized by Britain and the U.S., had come up from Algiers to help him govern France and the world's No. 2 empire, most of it still in French hands.

As an aseptic start, the Gaullist Government formally "abolished" the "French State" of Marshal Henri Philippe Petain. "In law," it proclaimed, "the Republic never ceased to exist."

To quiet the clamor of the resistance movement for a bigger administrative role, De Gaulle reshuffled his Government twice within a fortnight. Most important changes: as Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Georges Bidault, president of the National Council of Resistance. (The former Foreign Commissioner, Rene Massigli, was appointed "Ambassador" to London.) As Commissioner of State, Jules Jeanneney, former President of the French Senate.

To curb the great manhunt sweeping France, Charles de Gaulle asked resisters behind the lines to give up their arms (women partisans first). He planned to draft the F.F.I.'s trigger-itchy young men into the regular French Army.

But the reborn Government was still in a kind of political twilight sleep, and General de Gaulle moved as warily as a sleepwalker. Wrote the Herald Tribune's Sonia Tomara: "De Gaulle has passed hours interviewing members of resistance groups. ... He has noticed that they are not in agreement either among themselves or with the men who have been in exile. ... He knows the country is in ferment, seething with new ideas and aspirations, but also craving peace and order. . . . His conclusion has been that he should not take rash measures."

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