Calling Charles Back

After dinner one night last week, Charles de Gaulle donned a blue dressing gown and retired to the study of his stone farmhouse at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, leaving orders that he was not to be disturbed. Perhaps with some foreboding (if he believed all the experts), De Gaulle turned on his TV set and concentrated on an election that might keep him in Colombey the rest of his days. When it became clear that the voting for a new National Assembly had turned into a landslide for Gaullist candidates, France's President could not resist making a jubilant telephone call to Georges Pompidou, the interim Premier whose government was toppled only last month by a rebellious Parliament.

"Ah, these French!" exulted le grand Charles. "I haven't even left--and already they call me back.''

Firmly United. Strictly speaking, De Gaulle had not even threatened to quit this time. But his ministers had repeatedly warned that a defeat for the Gaullist Union for a New Republic (U.N.R.) would result in an "immediate, grave crisis." At the Elysee Palace, De Gaulle's files were packed and ready for removal to Colombey; to friends, he pointedly remarked that he might soon start on Volume IV of his memoirs. After the October constitutional referendum in which, as De Gaulle privately admitted, he had won only a "flabby" victory, many observers predicted that the U.N.R. would lose up to half its 176 Assembly seats in the current elections. When the prestigious Institute of Public Opinion predicted a 30% vote for Gaullist candidates, editors were so skeptical that only one Paris newspaper, the Gaullist Paris-Presse, carried its forecast.

In fact, Gaullist candidates rolled up 31.9% of the popular vote--nearly twice the total they had won in 1958 when De Gaulle returned to power--and established the U.N.R., in Interior Minister Roger Frey's words, as "the first party of France."

The Gaullists got more votes than any other party in modern French history. The final outcome would not be known until this week, since the election is decided in two rounds. But in the first round, in which only those candidates who won a clear majority in their districts were elected, 61 of the 96 winners either belonged to the U.N.R. or were endorsed by the Gaullist Association for the Fifth Republic. Nine of the victors were ministers in Pompidou's government. In runoffs to fill the other 386 seats at week's end, Gaullists gleefully predicted that they would win a majority in the Assembly. In any case, they would attract enough strength from the other parties to ensure a Parliament firmly united behind the policies of Charles de Gaulle.

Magic Slogan. By their votes and by their abstentions (the percentage of stay-at-homes was the largest since 1881), the voters dealt a crushing blow to the "parties of yesteryear," in De Gaulle's scornful phrase; parties that represent no "doctrine" but only a "clientele." The election went far toward resolving the conflict between France's old. divisively individualist parliamentary tradition and the strong presidential system that De Gaulle believes is essential if France is to achieve stability and self-respect.

The powerful Socialists were badly mauled in many of the industrial and provincial centers where they were once strongest. The Catholic M.R.P., once considered "le coming" party because of its wide appeal to young voters, was reduced to the status of a regional grouping whose only remaining influence is in France's far east and west. The Radicals and conservative Independents turned out to be more clubs than parties. Though the Communists captured 21.8% of the vote, a slight increase over 1958, they fell far short of their leaders' expectations.

With only one exception--onetime M.R.P. Premier Pierre Pflimlin, who dropped 60% of his support--leaders of the non-Communist opposition either were defeated outright or lagged far behind U.N.R. candidates. Independent Paul Reynaud. 84, last prewar Premier and formerly a supporter of Charles de Gaulle, was badly beaten by De Gaulle's hand-picked candidate. Resistance Hero Jules Houcke, 64. who did not even make a single public campaign speech. Former Socialist Premier Guy Mollet, who commands a smooth local machine as longtime mayor of Arras, ran 1,200 votes behind a little-known Gaullist. In Normandy, former Radical Premier Pierre Mendes-France, 55, dour Cassandra of the intellectual left, was hopelessly outdistanced by urbane Jean de Broglie. 41, De Gaulle's civil service chief. From Toulouse to Versailles, many other old-line politicians were defeated by newcomers who, in the French phrase, were "parachuted" into critical constituencies.

All a candidate seemingly needed td" win was the Gaullists' magic slogan on the ballot: "For the Fifth Republic." In Marseille, U.N.R. Candidate Yves Le Tac, a stranger to the area, who had survived two assassination attempts by the SAO in France, went into hiding throughout the campaign for fear of SAO retaliation. In the end, he led all candidates, including a millionaire shipowner who is one of the region's few popular capitalists. Independent Deputy Edouard Frederic-Dupont, who has presided over his Paris district so long that he is called the "Archbishop of the Left Bank." trailed an unknown Gaullist who is not even a proper bohemian.

Fatal Excess. Just before the voting, De Gaulle abandoned his favorite pose of being above party politics. In a powerful pre-election speech on nationwide TV and radio, he urged France to vote against the old-line parties and support his candidates, who were guardians all of "the good of the state, the fate of the Republic, the future of France." The most damaging blow to old-line parties was struck by one of their most respected leaders. Socialist Mollet. An implacable antiCommunist, he is one of the chief targets of France's Reds, who call him a "social traitor" and "America's man." But with that fatal French excess of cleverness. Mollet declared that Socialists losing in the first round should support Communist candidates rather than Gaullists, arguing that the ten or twelve additional Communist Deputies who might thus get elected would be less of a threat to the nation than an equivalent increase in "unconditional" Gaullist strength.

Mollet's proposal was immediately trumpeted across France by the right-wing press and the government's unabashedly partisan TV and radio network, which reminded Frenchmen of the unsavory Socialist -Communist -Radical "Popular Front" government that unforgettably permitted Hitler to reoccupy the Rhineland in 1936. Backing away from Mollet's blunder, Socialist Party strategists in such strongholds as Marseille refused to make any deals with the Communists. In dozens of constituencies, including Mollet's, Communist candidates who scored heavily in the election's first round did in fact withdraw in favor of Socialists and other candidates who had any hope of beating Gaullists. At best, they hoped to deny the U.N.R. a majority in the Assembly. "Mollet." crowed a Gaullist official, "gave us 400,000 votes."

American System? "And now,"breezed a newly jovial De Gaulle on his return to the Elysee Palace last week, "we can get down to serious things." He would almost certainly interpret this victory as support for all his intransigent positions --his opposition to negotiations with Russia over Berlin, his longing for a nuclear force de frappe of his own, and his ultimate vision of a Europe united under French leadership.

At home, there will be a political regrouping that may well end the disastrous fragmentation of French parties and lead to what is already being called the "Americanization" of French politics.

What may emerge, actually, is a three-party system consisting of the Communists, a moderate left wing drawn from the old Socialist, Republican and Radical parties, and a conservative grouping composed of the Gaullist U.N.R. and the old right-wing parties, some of whose leaders have already proposed such a merger. Such a realignment should greatly reduce the danger that, after De Gaulle. France will return to the chaos of the Fourth Republic. But this will depend in large measure on whether the U.N.R. can grow into something more than an appendage to Charles de Gaulle's personal prestige. Anti-Gaullists are fond of pointing out that De Gaulle's ministers have no policies--until De Gaulle announces them. For the present, De Gaulle's rule is so personal that his favor may be more important than an official position. Says former Premier Pflimlin: "The important thing at this point is not to be in De Gaulle's government but in De Gaulle's mind."

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