All Power to De Gaulle

From the speaker's tribune in Paris' cavernous Luxembourg Palace one morning last week, France's Premier Michel Debre, a short, subdued man in a dark suit, unhappily told the French Senate: "Last week we almost witnessed the collapse of the state." Then he formally requested near-dictatorial powers for his boss, Charles de Gaulle. Shaken by his subordinates' fumbling vacillation in the face of the Algiers uprising, De Gaulle had bitterly concluded that if France was to have effective government he must provide it personally.

Aware that they had no real alternative, both the Assembly (441-75) and the Senate (226-39) quickly voted De Gaulle the powers he wanted. For the next year, De Gaulle will have the right to issue decrees with the force of law in the fields of: 1 "maintenance of law and order"; 2) "the security of the state"; 3) "the pacification and administration of Algeria." Only after the emergency powers expire next February will Parliament get a chance to ratify or reject De Gaulle's decrees.

But obedient as it was, Parliament had misgivings. With undisguised suspicion of Debre, the Assembly wrote in a proviso that all decrees must be signed by De Gaulle personally. Deputy Paul Coste-Floret clearly spoke for his fellows when he said: "Many of us would have legal qualms about doing this if General de Gaulle were not the head of state." Their only assurance that De Gaulle would not abuse his power lay in his own restraint. It was an ominous turning for the Fifth Republic--which had ceased, in all but name, to be a republic. France was again following its oscillating journey from too much diffused power in an ineffectual Assembly to too much power in one man's hands.

The Lease-Breaker. As his first major act of personal rule, De Gaulle summoned Minister of the Sahara Jacques Soustelle, 48, a Gaullist since the 1940 fall of France. Abruptly, with no attempt to soften the blow, De Gaulle told Soustelle that he was fired--"because your personal stand on Algerian questions is too different from my own." Bitterly, Soustelle replied: "You might have waited until June 18, 1960. That would have finished off a 20-year lease on my life."

Along with Soustelle, De Gaulle sacked Communications Minister Bernard Cornut-Gentille, 50, also for "softness" toward the insurgents. Four other Cabinet ministers were reassigned, including Defense Minister Pierre Guillaumat, who was kicked upstairs to the job of Minister Delegate in charge of atomic energy. To replace Guillaumat, De Gaulle called from active duty with the paratroops in Algeria Reserve Lieut. Colonel Pierre Messmer, 43, a career colonial administrator. There was not a man left in the Cabinet with any political strength independent of De Gaulle's.

Erin Once More. As well as anyone else, De Gaulle knew that his Fifth Republic will be finally judged by whether it can end the five-year-old Algerian revolt, which divides and embitters French politics. He ordered a sweeping roundup of right-wing extremists in both Algiers and Metropolitan France. In France itself three key men were jailed: Insurgent Leader Pierre Lagaillarde (see below), and two right-wing M.P.s who had flown off to Algeria and were arrested on their return: fiery Fascist Lawyer Jean-Baptiste Biaggi, and a tame Moslem, Mourad Kaouah, onetime Algerian soccer star.

De Gaulle now seemed to be moving toward dividing Algeria into new political units organized around the country's chief ethnic and religious groups: the Arabs, Berbers, Europeans, Jews and Mozabites (an austere Moslem desert sect). Instead of countrywide self-determination, in which the Arabs would clearly prevail, De Gaulle would be seeking some form of federation of semiautonomous communities--a kind of Gallic version of Britain's 1921 partition of Ireland.

In the end, any settlement in Algeria depended on the rebel F.L.N., which had hitherto questioned De Gaulle's determination to curb the French army and Algeria's European settlers. Now that he had done so, would the F.L.N. seize the moment to enter negotiations accepting self-determination for Algeria? Unfortunately, the F.L.N.'s political imagination seems no equal to its guerrilla audacity. The F.L.N. apparently regarded the settlers' insurrection as a hopeful indication that another settlers' flare-up might cause the total collapse of French rule in Algeria.

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