Once More, Sans Feeling

For the twelfth and last time in his first seven-year term of office now drawing to a close, the President of France last week held his own Sun King version of Meet the Press. Naturally, the question uppermost in the minds of 1,000 newsmen assembled in the Elysee was whether De Gaulle will stand for re-election Dec. 5 and a second septennat in office. Just as naturally, De Gaulle refused to answer it. "You will know with certainty in less than two months," he said helpfully.

Still, the ritual provides that every semiannual press conference have its characteristically Gaullist piece de resistance, whether it be resistance to British entry into the Common Market (January 1963) or to the hegemony of the dollar (February 1965). This time, after rudely squelching any European hopes for an early end to the Common Market's current crisis of his own contrivance (see WORLD BUSINESS), the piece was that old favorite, NATO. "In 1969 at the latest," De Gaulle intoned, "will cease for us the subordination termed 'integration' which is provided for by NATO and which puts our fate in the hands of foreigners." It was a nice-ringing nationalistic sentence, but it didn't have much sting. De Gaulle's dislike of the French army's participation in NATO's integrated command structure is well known. But also, as everybody knows, France would stand to lose far more than NATO by pulling out. NATO chiefly relies on France for its supply routes and depots and the site of SHAPE headquarters, whereas both the French army and De Gaulle's proud force de frappe depend on NATO's air defense shield for their ultimate protection.

To old Elysee hands, De Gaulle himself looked sunken-eyed and tired, and atypically muffed some of the lines in his carefully memorized discourse. But as usual, le grand Charles contrived to have the last laugh. "Personal power?" he asked at conference's end, challenging critics who charge that he rules singlehandedly. Why, he said, he was constantly in touch from the top of the government right down to the grass roots, having seen "with his own eyes at least 15 million Frenchmen" in the past seven years. And besides, great men are sometimes too busy for everyday commingling. "Whoever believed," said General de Gaulle, that General de Gaulle, "once called to the helm, would content himself with inaugurating chrysanthemum shows?"

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