The Master's Voice

In recent weeks, Charles de Gaulle, France's self-styled man of destiny, seemed to have lost his sure touch. The farmers who barricaded the highways earlier this summer were still seething with discontent; workers grumbled for higher wages. There was widespread despondency over the failure to win a settlement in Algeria. De Gaulle was blamed for the breakdown of talks with the F.L.N. nationalists in June, for the needless brutality of the French army at Bizerte. Through it all. De Gaulle stayed haughtily silent, apparently at a loss for a new idea.

Froth on the Surface. But last week, at long last, De Gaulle decided that it was time to rally the nation's support in his own inimitable way. Out went invitations to another of those majestic press conferences in the Elysee Palace. Some 600 journalists showed up in the glittering Salle des Fetes at the appointed hour. As the tall, haughty figure stepped from behind the red curtain to take his seat before them, photographers' flashbulbs popped and reporters' pencils were poised. For an hour, De Gaulle answered questions with his characteristic, measured and misty eloquence. But he dismissed his critics with a wave of his hand. "There have even been dissenters . . . [who] harbor old and new grudges," he rumbled. "But all that is nothing more than froth floating on the surface of deep waters."

France's reporters were livid with indignation. Next day, the stories reported a puffed-faced De Gaulle spouting empty answers, described him as "melancholy," "disillusioning," "worn," "tired."

But as so often happens when the press tries to cope with De Gaulle's rhetoric, the true significance of his statements became clear only later. His rolling periods contained two abrupt changes of policy.

The Giveaway. Almost casually, De Gaulle in effect indicated that he was willing to give Algeria to anyone willing to take it. ''In brief." rumbled De Gaulle, "we are not at all anxious to be the possessors and the keepers of this region." With that as preamble, he set aside the whole question of sovereignty over the oil-rich Sahara Desert region, which had been the sticking point in the last round of talks with Algeria's F.L.N. nationalists. "The realities are that there is not one Algerian--I know this--who does not believe that the Sahara should be a part of Algeria." It was a breathtaking concession which, as his critics grumbled, would probably have produced an armistice long ago, almost certainly would have forestalled the ouster last month of F.L.N. Boss Ferhat Abbas in favor of the more radical Benyoussef Benkhedda.

De Gaulle was still sticking to France's demand that French interests be allowed to exploit the Sahara's oil development, and that France be guaranteed travel routes through the desert to the new nations of black Africa that once comprised the French Community. But De Gaulle's acceptance of Algerian sovereignty in the Sahara might well reopen the bargaining with the F.L.N. almost immediately, and Benyoussef Benkhedda promptly expressed himself interested.

Message Received. On the troubled relations with Tunisia over the French base at Bizerte, De Gaulle was blunt to the point of rudeness. On a visit to France only last February, he recalled acidly, President Habib Bourguiba had accepted the French argument that France could not evacuate the Bizerte naval base so long as war threatened Europe. "Then, for reasons probably connected with what is happening in the Arab world, the Tunisian Republic suddenly changed its tone and its tune," sniffed De Gaulle. France certainly had no immediate plans to leave Bizerte. But this did not mean forever.

"The realities will remain," he said. "Would that Tunis take them into account and reach with Paris an agreement based on common sense. Such is the wish of France."

However blunt the words may have sounded to others, Bourguiba got the message. Already worried that the strained relations with France would ruin his country's economy, he returned from the neutrals' conference at Belgrade to call his own press conference, where he announced that the French were certainly welcome to stay in Bizerte until the threat of world war passes. He agreed to immediate negotiations to seek a "modus vivendi during the dangerous period." To get things rolling, he offered an exchange deal for French prisoners captured during the July Bizerte fighting. Bourguiba admitted that De Gaulle's statement had been embedded in "disagreeable" remarks about Tunisia. But these were "due, perhaps, to the game of political balance [in France]. You have to know how to interpret General de Gaulle and be accustomed to his fashion of speaking," he explained.

It was Charles de Gaulle's words on Algeria that stirred the anger of his most bitter enemies--the S.A.O. (Secret Army Organization), spearhead of Algeria's European ultras that has extended its organization to metropolitan France itself.

Three days after the press conference, De Gaulle wearily stepped into his official black Citroen limousine for the 140-mile trip to his country home in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. On a dark stretch of highway 90 miles from his destination, a shadowy figure waited in the trees, a detonator in his hand, a long wire leading to a jerrycan of gasoline and a 9-lb. plastic bomb concealed at the edge of the road. As De Gaulle's car passed, he pushed the plunger. Flame spurted across its path, searing the Citroen's paint, damaging a headlight. But miraculously, the bomb itself did not explode. Lumbering out to inspect the damage, De Gaulle delivered his verdict: "Just a joke in bad taste." His police did not take it so lightly. The man who pushed the plunger was caught a few miles away, confessed he was an S.A.O. member. Within hours, police raids began all over France. One S.A.O. member was caught with 150 plastic bombs in his car. More shocking was the arrest of two army generals: one was General Paul Vanuxem. brilliant veteran of the Indo-China war, the other was General Paul de Crevecoeur, former chief of the French contingent in Korea. These men, announced the government, were the principal leaders of the S.A.O. in France.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.