Man in the Wings

FRANCE Man in the Wings When things get really bad, the French start talking again of General Charles de Gaulle. Last week was such a time. The franc was falling, the shaky middle-force government of Premier Edgar Faure was stumbling, and 40 million Frenchmen were distressed by the proposed German rearmament.

As if on cue, the towering, embittered man in the wings stepped out, in Paris' bicycle-racing stadium, to face 10,000 followers. Standing before a huge Cross of Lorraine, Charles de Gaulle raised his passionate voice against France's present government and its allies.

Holding no office and refusing to join any coalition except on his own severe terms, De Gaulle nevertheless controls the largest single bloc (118 seats) in the French National Assembly. Passionately patriotic and militantly antiCommunist, he believes in European cooperation but not in European federation. Result: his far-right Rally of the French People often finds itself in unhappy alliance with Communists on the far left, in their opposition to the European Army and Schuman plans. Their reasons are different, but their debilitating effect on French participation comes out the same in the votes.

"Things are so arranged," De Gaulle told his followers, "thanks to SHAPE, NATO, the committee of those who modestly call themselves the Wise Men, and so forth, that France no longer rules her own destiny." By supporting the European Army, France's coalition government is leading France into "bankruptcy and degradation. To escape Soviet domination some day, to escape becoming tomorrow nothing but an American protectorate until we pass under German domination, we must have an army which is our army."

He was scornful of Robert Schuman's warning that the U.S. might withdraw its aid if France holds back. "Isolationism no longer belongs to this era of atomic bombs, rockets, jet bombs and even propaganda," he said. "What would happen to the U.S. if Europe was lost to them, Africa closed to them as half of Asia is already, and they found themselves besieged . . . by a wholly totalitarian world? . . . With her splendid capabilities, America also commits errors which are on her own large scale"--the crowd applauded--"but big as she is, she will not commit suicide."

As a political power, De Gaulle and his party have weakened in the past year, but so has the scaffolding of coalition governments which France has thrown up since the war. In the long run, the fate of De Gaulle's stubborn siege for power may well depend on which goes to pieces first.

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