Life Without Heores

Americans were both bemused and bewildered by Charles de Gaulle. He was often one of the most infuriating allies this nation has ever had. Like Kremlinologists, a priesthood of State Department experts devoted years to trying to penetrate his mind on NATO and other issues. For a time during the '60s, many exasperated American laymen simply gave up French wines and trips to Paris. But nearly all of that irritation had vanished before De Gaulle died last week at Colombey-les-Deux- Eglises (see THE WORLD).

De Gaulle still remained something of a mystery to Americans. He claimed a grandeur, a synecdoche of self and nation ("La France, c'est moi"), which in another man would have seemed monstrously totalitarian, or at least extremely eccentric. America's last comparable hero was Dwight Eisenhower, as Kansan as De Gaulle was Cartesian, and it may be that Ike was the last man who could have said with any safety: "I am America!" Richard Nixon would not dare to try the formulanor would Georges Pompidou, for that matter. The U.S. has accommodated itself to a life without national heroes. De Gaulle was splendidly archaic, and in any case, as Hawthorne said, "A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world."

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