A Vocation for Grandeur

(See Cover)

Seven former Premiers and Presidents of the Fourth Republic stood bareheaded in Le Havre last week at the funeral of Rene Coty, the last President of that era. But it was Charles de Gaulle, the man of the Fifth Republic, who stepped forward to deliver the eulogy. He clearly intended it also to be a funeral oration for the Fourth Republic. Praising Coty's "breadth of vision and good sense," President de Gaulle turned with bitter words to the old "regime, paralyzed by its own confusion," and its leaders, "who failed through impotence."

He spoke for France. Only two days earlier, in elections to the National Assembly, 6,165,000 Frenchmen overwhelmingly repudiated the irresponsible political system that for twelve years condemned the nation to perpetual crisis. They did so by giving De Gaulle's candidates the parliamentary majority that has eluded every other party in French history. The election came close to annihilating the old, bickering party blocs. The voters also entrusted De Gaulle with sweeping personal powers such as no other ruler of France has wielded since Louis Napoleon. For France, five years of stable government seemed assured. More than that, a new spirit of unity and self-confidence had asserted itself in the nation that for so long had been the sick man of Europe.

Back on the Rails. Thus the election was more than a momentous turn in French politics. Its impact would be felt on both sides of the Atlantic, for a strong France is vital to the entire Western alliance. But the massive endorsement of De Gaulle also stirred misgivings. For, asked Western statesmen, if he had been a cantankerous, willful ally at the head of a divided nation, what headaches were in store now that Charles de Gaulle was the absolute leader of a united France? He had often repudiated NATO commitments, brusquely disavowed the West's attempts to negotiate a Berlin settlement with Russia, pooh-poohed every attempt to reach agreement on disarmament, and, despite the entreaties of his allies, pushed stubbornly ahead with his force de frappe, a nuclear deterrent that had neither present logic nor present value in Western defense planning save as the core of an independent European deterrent--and De Gaulle had yet to suggest that he would welcome other fingers on the trigger.

In victory, De Gaulle himself was as jubilant as if his horse had come in first at Longchamps. "Now," he declared triumphantly, "we can put France back on the rails." To his ministers, he exulted, "I set out to break the parties. I alone could do it, and believed it could be done at the moment I chose. I was right, despite everyone." Few in his political party, the Union for a New Republic (U.N.R.)--or in all France, for that matter--had shared his view of the outcome. Only four weeks before, the national referendum on De Gaulle's proposals for popular election of future Presidents gave le grand Charles a bare majority, with no competing parties in the field. On the basis of those results, almost all the pundits doubted that De Gaulle could even hold his existing parliamentary strength in the big elections for the National Assembly.

First Since Dagobert. But when the votes were in last week, De Gaulle's U.N.R. had almost annihilated the parties of France's far right wing, badly mauled the moderate left, dashed the Communists' hopes of dramatic gains. As it turned out, the Reds did gain slightly, ending up with 41 seats in the Assembly; this was a far cry from the 150 seats they won as recently as 1956. "Our country," declared De Gaulle, "has voted for itself." Of course, the country voted overwhelmingly for Charles de Gaulle. Week after week, the man who sees himself as "the guide of France'' waged a relentless vendetta against the "outmoded parties" and their vieux schnoucks, the old hacks whose only concern, in his words, is with "their own little soup pot, on their own little fire, in their own little corner." He made trip after trip to the remotest corners of France, comporting himself with the benevolent grandeur of a Louis XIV inspecting the royal domains. At crossroads, children waved paper flags, and plump farm wives wept with emotion at the sight of their President in the flesh.

Often he reached remote villages never before visited by a French chief of state; at one town hall, the mayor proudly declared that De Gaulle was the first chief of state to visit those parts since Dagobert, King of the Franks, in A.D. 623.

In the electronic age. le grand Charles could also use le petit ecran--the TV screen--which nowadays reaches every corner of France's hexagon. (Griped one defeated politician: "How could we win with De Gaulle talking against us in every household?") De Gaulle shrewdly plied his audiences with the usual campaign promises: higher farm prices, better schools, new roads. But always he returned to the one theme that never failed to stir the French--their nation's "eminent and exalted destiny."

Dismayed Eurocrats. As De Gaulle endlessly urged, the voters swept out of office dozens of leaders of the "parties of yesteryear." Unhappily, many of these were among France's staunchest and most influential advocates of a strong Western alliance and European unity. Their loss would be immediately felt by Britain, whose negotiations for Common Market membership have been deadlocked for weeks by France's refusal to lower the price of admission. The reason for the trouble, insist the British, is Charles de Gaulle's determination to keep them out of Europe. But the high priests at Common Market headquarters in Brussels think this charge is unfair. They point out that France, backed invariably by impartial Eurocrats, is simply insisting that Britain must accept the terms of membership as laid down by the Treaty of Rome; to relax them, say the French, would be to slow the headlong momentum of Europe's economic integration.

On other grounds, the Eurocrats themselves had reason for dismay at Charles de Gaulle's new strength. Gone glimmering were their hopes for rapid political integration of Europe, which, according to the Rome Treaty, is the grand design of the Common Market. De Gaulle wants no part of a United States of Europe in which France would have to surrender sovereignty to a common Continental Parliament. He wants unity in Europe all right, but of a different kind. For him, the target is the "Europe des Etats," a loose alliance of autonomous nations. Charles de Gaulle clearly hoped that this would improve France's opportunity to assume the leadership of the new Europe.

Military Snickers. In De Gaulle's eyes, France's most effective lever on leadership will be its force de frappe, which he will brandish as proof of France's rightful place beside the U.S. and Britain in directing Western policy. Its private deterrent is an expensive luxury for France--$300 million a year--and will become costlier still. For its money, France next year will have an operational force of 50 short-range Mirage IV bombers, each carrying two relatively low-yield atom bombs. Snickering military experts point out that this will be equal to only one U.S. bomber wing. For Gallic egos, this does not matter. More important, it will no doubt increase France's influence. Already, its imminent reality has persuaded the U.S. to supply De Gaulle with air-to-air refueling tanker planes to increase the Mirages' effective range.

By contrast, the U.S. this month will ask France to create a mechanized army division (cost: $400 million) for use by NATO in the common defense of Europe.

Judging from past experience. De Gaulle's reply will be non; he has refused to return to NATO two divisions that he withdrew for use in the Algerian war, still keeps his fleet out of NATO's Mediterranean defense screen, and prohibits use of French bases for storage of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Prophet Without Honor. To many of his critics, France's towering, turbulent leader seems, as H. G. Wells once said, to be "an utterly sincere megalomaniac." Catholic Novelist Franc,ois Mauriac wrote with greater insight: "He appears as though delegated by historic France to living France, in order that it should remember what a great nation it has been." In fact, De Gaulle has had a lifelong conviction that his mission is to lead France to new greatness. Hauteur and intransigence have always been weapons in that fight. For much of his life, he has been either a prophet without honor in his own country or, in wartime London and Washington, a soldier armed only with honor. When his country was helpless, he repeatedly forced the world to take his inspired vision of France for the reality, to accept his own obduracy and obstruction as a show of national strength. Today, with real military strength, a robust economy, Europe's most productive agriculture, he feels that France has an even greater right to alienate allies and condescend to friends.

Reign Without Rule. De Gaulle has dealt even more sharply with the men and institutions that have blocked his path at home. Recalled to office in May 1958 at a time when the government was paralyzed by the threat of an army coup, he demanded and won "exceptional powers, for an exceptional task, at an exceptional time." In the past, the President had been largely a ceremonial figure who, in De Gaulle's scornful words, "reigned but did not rule." With his accession, the head of state was empowered for the first time to "determine and direct the policy of the nation," to appoint his own Cabinet and, if necessary, dissolve the Assembly.

To broaden its base and confer on the office the kind of prestige that he enjoys in his own right, De Gaulle last October sought and won the nation's support for his proposal that future heads of state be chosen by popular vote rather than by an electoral college of 81,000 local dignitaries. Balking at what his foes called a return to "personal rule" and "enlightened Bonapartism," the Assembly swiftly reacted by toppling Premier Georges Pompidou's government; De Gaulle retaliated by dissolving the Assembly, and intensified his crusade to annihilate the "rival and warring parties."

Nothing but Foam. Gaullists argue that France's President needs powers commensurate with those of his U.S. counterpart. In fact, the French constitution, the 15th since the Revolution, gives De Gaulle far more; it contains few of the checks and balances that safeguard U.S. freedoms. His power of dissolution is a mighty club over the legislature. France has no independent judiciary empowered to reject unconstitutional measures. Moreover, the President can bypass a balky Assembly at will by taking controversial issues to the people; he has already used the referendum seven times. While De Gaulle calls this process "direct democracy," constitutional lawyers object that the right to answer oui or non to a government's proposals is no substitute for democratic debate. De Gaulle shrugs aside such remonstrances. "Foam," he cries, "nothing but the foam of the wave. The depths of the popular wave are with me." The election results bore him out.

Cost of War. France did not vote for any specific philosophy or program labeled "Gaullism." Beyond the President's call to "national ambition, strength, influence," the party has no clear long-term goals--until De Gaulle himself proclaims them. De Gaulle's France has made impressive progress nonetheless. It has ended the ruinous Algerian war--though France is still pouring $2,000,000 a day into its former colony's economy and is spending even more for defense than it did at the height of war. France's 13 black African colonies have achieved orderly independence; all but Guinea still enjoy fruitful relations with each other and with Paris through the French Community. The rebellious army has been subdued and assuaged by the prospect of a new technological role, even if many officers complain that they did not choose a military career to become "technicians."

De Gaulle's most significant initiative --perhaps the one for which he himself would like most to be remembered--is France's close, new relationship with an old enemy, Germany. Himself a veteran of two wars against les Bodies, and the son of a soldier who was wounded in the war with Prussia, Charles de Gaulle went far beyond the dictates of conventional statesmanship to heal the ancient feud between Gaul and Teuton. On his state visit to West Germany, he went out of his way to wring Germans' hands and bid them Guten Tag. Few Germans who heard him could fail to be moved when De Gaulle cried: "Das deutsche Volk ist ein grosses Volk." A popular Christmas gift in West Germany last week was a recording of the speeches he made on that trip. Its name: De Gaulle in Germany, the Symbol of European Understanding.

The nation's most spectacular feat has been its economic and fiscal comeback. The phenomenal upsurge that has become known as the "French miracle" has in five years turned near bankruptcy to boom, made the once-fragile franc one of the world's sturdiest currencies. Soon after De Gaulle came to power in 1958, the nation's reserves were so close to exhaustion that he had no recourse but to devalue the franc. Offered two alternative proposals, the President, who is as innocent of economics as Konrad Adenauer or John Kennedy, gambled on a "strong plan." It wrung 17.5% from the franc's worth, and wiped out the black market in currency that was draining France's reserves.

Helped by government planners who "concert" all segments of the economy, the G.N.P. has been growing in recent years at a steady 5.5% (v. 2.5% in the U.S.); exports take a fat 16% of France's production. Gold and dollar reserves have almost trebled in four years (to $3.6 billion). Some of France's most efficient industries, from the Renault auto firm to railroads that run on time, are owned or controlled by the state, which under De Gaulle in 1945 nationalized much of France's productive capacity.

Modernizing Napoleon. A side of Charles de Gaulle seldom glimpsed from abroad is his concern for the human condition of France. The government must tackle a vast backlog of "renovation," in a favorite Gaullist phrase, before the nation can hope for new housing, adequate schools, modern highways. Half the houses in France do not have running water. For France's 6,200,000 cars there are only 125 miles of divided parkway, one main north-south artery and, seemingly, not a single vacant parking space in Paris. Urgently needed school modernization programs are bogged down in age-old religious squabbles. Potentially productive farm land is unused for lack of regional development schemes such as dams. A medieval distributive system raises the price of a peach 1,150% between farmer and housewife, infuriating both.

Sensing the Frenchman's mounting impatience with inconvenience and inertia, Gaullists have ambitious schemes for rural development ("gardening the national territory"), urban improvement, school construction to redeem what one minister calls "our terrible rendezvous with youth." The nation's administrative structure, which has wheezed along with little change since Napoleon's time, will be modernized. Gaullist technicians are already planning to overhaul Paris. Though 18% of the entire population is concentrated in the capital and growing by 100,000 a year, officialdom seems more concerned with preserving old houses than providing new ones. Says one minister: "We're going to take Paris out of the age of the fiacre."

Frontier-on-Seine. If some of Charles de Gaulle's dreams of European leadership seem at times more suited to the age of Charlemagne, he has nevertheless surrounded himself with imaginative, superbly trained ministers whose eyes are fixed firmly on the future. Seasoned civil servants of intellect, shrewdness and long acquaintance, notably Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville and Louis Joxe, who handles Algeria, still hold the most exposed and sensitive jobs in his government.

And in place of professional politicians (before De Gaulle, all ministers had to have seats in the Assembly) De Gaulle has brought into his Cabinet a new covey of experts, many of them young (five are 40 or under), whose versatility and expertise constitute a Seine-side New Frontier. Many have survived the rigorous 28-month course at the Ecole Nationale d' Administration (ENA), a blue-chip finishing school for civil service comers that was founded by De Gaulle in 1945 to supply the government with resourceful, apolitical technocrats. Others are lawyers, economists, businessmen, bankers.

No. 2 in De Gaulle's administration is Banker-Professor Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou, 51, a bushy-browed bear of a man who grows roses and has written books on French writers from Racine to Cabinet Colleague Andre Malraux. Premier in the Cabinet that was overthrown in October, and now Premier-designate, Pompidou is probably closer to the President than any other minister. He was a schoolteacher and Resistance fighter before joining De Gaulle as a consultant on education in 1944, later became director of the Rothschild bank. De Gaulle, who does not relax easily, is soothed by Pompidou's roguish self-assurance, and even permitted him to help edit his Memoirs. A middle-road liberal, Pompidou is the likeliest choice to head the Gaullist party after De Gaulle leaves the scene.

Republic of Engineers. Another close confidant of De Gaulle is Olivier Guichard, 42, who was Pompidou's administrative assistant before he caught the President's eye. A baron who maintains informal liaison with the left wing, Guichard is De Gaulle's traveling companion, troubleshooter and one-man intelligence network.

The new Cabinet, to be announced when Parliament reconvenes this week, will include most of the top, trusted Gaullists who were ministers in the last government.

Among them:

> Valery Giscard d'Estaing, 36, wealthy, elegant archintellectual, who was the youngest Finance Minister in a century when he got the job in 1959. Originally a right-wing Independent and strong "European," he brought a party bloc into the Gaullist camp.

> Christian Fouchet, 50, a skilled parliamentarian who was a courageous administrator in Algeria. As Information Minister and boss of the state-owned TV-radio system, he was the most influential campaigner of all, earlier distinguished himself by quashing rebellious pieds-noirs in Algeria. Fouchets' probable next post: Minister of Education.

> Roger Frey, 49, a right-wing Gaullist since wartime Free French service, helped found the U.N.R. and occupies the hottest seat in French politics: Minister of the Interior, in charge of 100,000 police, his own intelligence service and political internment camps.

The party's parliamentary star is Jacques Chaban-Delmas. 47, a triple-threat politician who concurrently has been mayor of Bordeaux (since 1947), held down several ministries in Paris, and since 1958 has been President of the National Assembly. A brigadier general in the Free French army, Chaban later created 4,000 jobs in two years in depressed Bordeaux, where he is unbeatable.

Last week's electoral landslide brought to Paris a crop of new National Assembly Deputies who, in their way, are also distinctively Gaullist. Younger than the average Deputy, half are new to Parliament; they include more men from the managerial class than the other parties. All had been carefully screened before "investiture" as U.N.R. candidates, had to argue convincingly for De Gaulle's policies. Bragged Jacques Baumel, U.N.R. deputy secretary-general: "We've got men from the practical world, men with feet on the ground. The Republic of Dignitaries has become the Republic of Engineers." At every level of this practical world, there was a new sense of accomplishment.

There were even pollsters on the payroll of the U.N.R. For the first time, a systematic effort was made to find out what France's voters were thinking--and, above all, what they wanted. As it turned out, all the samples and surveys only confirmed what Charles de Gaulle had been saying all these years: France deserves to be well governed.

But after De Gaulle, what? If the Gaullists have their way, the answer will be Gaullism--a permanent political philosophy that will translate the vision of the General into specific policies. The nation dreads a return to the era of political chaos. In time, it may even find what Charles de Gaulle calls France's "vocation for grandeur."

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