Divided Rally

For six lonely years, a long-legged lamppost of a man who lives in an unpretentious country manor 125 miles southeast of Paris has been watching and waiting for the jerry-built Fourth Republic to collapse at his feet, as he always said it would. General Charles de Gaulle, at 61, still believes that in the "hour of catastrophe" France will thrust aside its inefficient coalitions, and turn instead to the only political force which has uncompromisingly opposed every postwar government it could not control: his own militant Rally of the French People (R.P.F.).

Since 1946, when Le Grand Charles walked out of his job as President of France because he could not get the authority he demanded, the "hour of catastrophe" has seemed so close, so often, that the weakling Fourth Republic has learned to live with it. But, as events turned, it was the waiting R.P.F., the biggest single voting bloc in the Assembly, that showed the first signs of crumbling. Last March, 27 of its 118 Deputies flouted party discipline to confirm commonsensible Antoine Pinay as Premier (TIME, March 17). A month later, in another test of strength, 34 Gaullists voted for Pinay's "save-the-franc" budget, and another 77 Gaullists, by abstaining on the vote, helped keep Pinay's right-of-center government in office. Last week, at its annual convention, the R.P.F. burst wide open.

Waiting Catastrophe. "The Rally of the French People must be rallied," declared General de Gaulle grandly, as he welcomed 800 R.P.F. national councilors to the hot convention hall in the Parisian suburb of St. Maur. He asked them to approve a censure resolution, requiring all members to vote the party line on crucial tests in the Assembly or be kicked out of the party.

Deputy Edmond Barrachin, a fast-talking and well-to-do Parisian columnist, was up on his feet in a flash. Supporting Pinay, he cried, was "not a question of right or left. It was a question of saving the franc when the state had only 4 billion francs [$11.5 million] in its coffers." What riled Barrachin most was that the R.P.F.'s policy of wantonly toppling cabinet after cabinet in an effort to provoke their national catastrophe often led to diabolical alliances of Gaullists and Communists. Barrachin's colleague, Deputy Andre Bardon, had already resigned from R.P.F. in protest against such tactics. "For me the Rassemblement was a rallying of the French," wrote Bardon in a letter to De Gaulle, "not a division of them ... I was not elected to wait for the catastrophe, to hope for power from a new apocalypse, and day by day to play a game of hoping for the worst."

Watching History. Le Grand Charles, sitting among his followers like a schoolmaster among his pupils, listened impassively. Then he rebuked the dissenters primly: he recognized their sincerity but remained unconvinced by their arguments. He put the censure resolution to a vote of the party and won it hands down(478-56).

At this point 22 rebels, all members of the Assembly, including Barrachin and General Pierre Billotte, shoved their way out of the convention and across the street to a bistro. There they announced that they were quitting the R.P.F. for good. How many Gaullists would follow and vote with Pinay remained to be seen this week. Barrachin claimed 30 Deputies and 20 Senators; loyal Gaullists conceded him at least 30. With the Gaullists thus split, Premier Pinay's cabinet seemed assured a longer lease of life.

Not that this made any difference to Le Grand Charles, who would go on opposing until he or the Fourth Republic collapsed. "We never believed we'd be in power tomorrow," he told his loyalists. "But it is up to us to lead the others. We were made for that . . . If I didn't believe we should be called upon eventually, I wouldn't be here now. I'd be back in my little village, watching history go by."

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