Call Me Georges

Not since 1959 had a French Premier paid a call to No. 10 Downing Street. Even so, Georges Pompidou and Britain's Harold Wilson found in three days of talks last week in London that their meeting was somewhat premature. On the big issues of NATO, the Common Market and Viet Nam, the best that the Yorkshireman and the Auvergnat could do was agree to disagree. However, the two leaders did decide to go ahead with the historic, $560 million channel tunnel to link Dover and Calais, and Wilson's wine cellar proved admirably equal to the premier occasion: one luncheon carte included a 1934 Chateau Margaux and an 1878 Grand Fin Bois.

The visit was a useful introduction for Wilson to the Gaullist most likely to succeed De Gaulle--if Gaullism sur vives its progenitor. Already Pompidou is le general's undisputed domestic-policy manager, and the only man in his Cabinet that De Gaulle calls by his first name. Though the burly, bushy-browed professor turned banker turned politician had made visits to Japan, India and Denmark for the Fifth Republic, London was actually his major diplomatic debut.*

That Georges is still on the road at all is something of a surprise. He was the campaign manager for De Gaulle's re-election last December, in which De Gaulle was forced into a humiliating runoff, and even then managed only 55% of the vote against Socialist Franc,ois Mitterrand. Afterward, De Gaulle brought back into his Cabinet his first Premier, Michel Debre, a hint to some that Pompidou was on the way down. Not so. As Finance Minister, Debre has had to take orders from Pompidou--and take the blame for the government's tough wages-and-price policy.

Pompidou meanwhile has been given the task of leading the U.N.R. in the next French elections for parliament in March of 1967. In preparation, Pompidou has skipped his usual summer with the bikini set at Saint-Tropez this year, is already skimming the country in helicopters, cigarette plastered to his lower lip, campaigning. He has his work cut out for him. Public-opinion surveys show that the Gaullists are still France's leading political party, with some 30% of the voters' support. In parliamentary elections, that could well translate into as few as 150 seats out of the National Assembly's 487--and the necessity of a coalition government that would severely cramp De Gaulle's lordly unilateral style.

* Next stop: Washington, where he is due to visit Lyndon Johnson.

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