Popularity Without Order

The higher President Charles de Gaulle soars in the affection of his countrymen, it seems, the less popular his government becomes.

De Gaulle was at his happiest last week, touring the green and wooded hills of Franche-Comte, plunging like a stilt-walker amid cheering crowds, grasping outstretched hands, patting the heads of schoolchildren, and leading community sings of the Marseillaise.-- He acted as if the Algerian problem were over and for gotten, and promised his listeners that now "we shall build Europe, the real Europe, the Europe of peoples, and thus the Europe of states and not of words, myths and schemings." But in Algeria there was more terror (see above), and behind him in Paris were frustrated legislators, politicians and judges.

Condemned Unheard. The National Assembly considered itself deeply insulted when Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville made an appearance to defend De Gaulle's concept of a Europe consist ing of federated but sovereign states, and stipulated that the plan could only be debated, not voted upon. All ten Communist Deputies flatly refused to attend the session. More than half of the Deputies -- Socialists, Radicals, Popular Republicans, Independents -- walked out en masse. Left facing empty benches, except for Gaullist Deputies, Couve de Murville complained, "We were condemned before we could be heard." Later, 293 of the 550 members of the National Assembly signed a manifesto rejecting De Gaulle's view of European organization as "old-fashioned" diplomacy.

Instead, they proposed that European states give up a measure of national sovereignty to achieve a closer union, and concluded: "We affirm our conviction that only a United Europe, partner on the basis of equality with the U.S., will preserve the future of our liberties and peace." The signers of the manifesto represented enough votes to bring a motion of censure against De Gaulle's government, but they hesitated to embarrass De Gaulle on the eve of what may be the ultimate Algerian showdown. They also dreaded pushing him into ordering a popular referendum on the European issue when--as in all Gaullist referendums--the vote would be less on the question at issue than on De Gaulle's popularity.

Misguided Dogs. On the first day of the Franche-Comte tour, police arrested six persons charged with being part of an S.A.O. commando intending to assassinate De Gaulle. Police claimed the plotters had hoped to plant explosives at a railway underpass near Vesoul and blow up the presidential auto as it went through. Imitating smugglers, the S.A.O. group were also reported to have trained bomb-carrying dogs to respond to ultrasonic whistles: they could then be directed near De Gaulle in a crowd and the bombs exploded by remote control.

The "teledogs" were ridiculed in Paris, but the bitterness behind these and other fantastic schemes of revenge was no laughing matter. Neither was De Gaulle's determination to get back at the S.A.O.

Still incensed because a military tribunal had failed to condemn to death the captured S.A.O. chieftain, Raoul Salan, De Gaulle ordered the public prosecutor to begin a new trial. To avoid the charge that Salan was facing double jeopardy, the prosecutor indicated he was concerned only with Salan's acts since his arrest in Algiers on April 20--specifically the writing of directives to the S.A.O. from his cell at Paris' Sante prison.

De Gaulle also moved against the man whom Salan proclaimed to be his successor, the once eminently respectable Georges Bidault, 62. A member of the Assembly, a noted Resistance figure, twice Premier and nine times Foreign Minister of France, Bidault used to be a leader of the M.R.P., the Catholic party that supported De Gaulle in the '405. Now Bidault is in hiding abroad, issuing fiery S.A.O. proclamations. Last week De Gaulle demanded that the Assembly lift his parliamentary immunity so that he may be tried for treason in absentia.

-- At Lons-le-Saunier, De Gaulle visited the grey, slate-roofed house of Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle who, in 1792, gave the Marseillaise to Revolutionary France, received a gold watch that had once belonged to the composer. In Paris they marked the occasion with a story. Charles and Yvonne de Gaulle, it seems, were spending a quiet evening in the Elysee Palace, the President reading, his wife knitting. Suddenly the radio blared out the Marseillaise. "Oh, listen, Charles," cooed Mme. De Gaulle, "they're playing our song!"

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