Charlie's Challenge

France spoke her piece to the Big Three last week. What she had to say did not suit the power-thinkers of Yalta and Dumbarton Oaks. But, considering General Charles de Gaulle's recent choler, the French attitude was surprisingly good-tempered--and too cogent to be ignored.

Definition of Security. Drastic changes in the Big Three proposals for a world peace organization were recommended by the French well in advance of the San Francisco security conference.* Their proposals:

P: Above all, leave France, Russia and any other powers allied in regional treaties against postwar Germany free to act without awaiting the approval of the world organization.

P: Abolish the right of veto now reserved to each of the Security Council's big-power members (including France).

P: Give the world organization's parliament of nations, the General Assembly, some authority over the Security Council, which the Big Three would put completely beyond the Assembly's control.

These amendments seemed to amount to a bald declaration of "no confidence" in the Big Three design for peace. French Information Minister Henri Teitgen heightened this impression when he said: "France is in favor of collective security, but does not believe the Dumbarton Oaks plan, as changed at Yalta, comes up to France's requirements. . . . France's definition of collective security is the construction of a real international democracy,with an international government with authority to decide disputes and enforce decisions. France does not think Dumbarton Oaks-Yalta meets such conditions."

France also had a complaint against Big Three manners. Foreign Minister Georges Bidault's Paris newspaper L'Aube had recently said: "Let us be perfectly frank: we want assurances that there will be no further Big Three conferences . . . without France." The French, in short, doubted that the Big Three were big enough to run Europe and the world.

But General de Gaulle did not want the Big Three to think that he would insist on wrecking Dumbarton Oaks if nothing better were offered. He apparently realized that he had gone too far in some of his recent displays of anger and defiance, took this opportunity to make graceful amends. Said a temperate, challenging statement which le Grand Charlie personally edited:

"France believes that a durable peace calls for an international organization as extensive and as strong as possible, which provides for the establishment of an international authority and an international justice superior to those of the various states. She would be ready on her part to go even farther than Dumbarton Oaks and consent to greater limitation on her sovereignty in exchange for a more effective international organization than that proposed by this plan. But France admits that in the period which follows this war the keeping of peace will depend mainly on agreement between the great powers. Thus, France will, take care to make no proposals that could in any way compromise such an agreement."

* Formal name, announced last week by the State Department: "The United Nations Conference on International Organization."

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