The Uninvited

The time is 6:30 p.m., 88 years to the day after anti-Bonapartists raced through the streets of Paris proclaiming the end of Louis Napoleon's Second Empire and the birth of the Third French Republic. The scene: the Place de la Republique, in the heart of working-class Paris, where only four months ago a quarter of a million Parisians marched in protest against the death of the Fourth Republic and the return to power of Charles de Gaulle. The occasion: with full pomp and calculated circumstance, De Gaulle has come to the Place de la Republique to present officially to the French people the proposed new constitution that would make him the super-President of the Fifth Republic. The general stands on a crimson dais before a 150-ft. gilded "V" draped in the French Tricolor.

According to the script prepared with loving care by the men around De Gaulle, the drama unveiled last week in the Place de la Republique was to be a demonstration of popular affection for De Gaulle--a stirring show that would prompt Frenchmen everywhere to vote oui in the Sept. 28 referendum on the new constitution. But when the show finally opened, it flopped.

Anticipating trouble with the Communists, who mortally hate and fear De Gaulle and consider the Place de la Republique their own parade ground, the government took such zealous security measures that the ceremony was robbed of all spontaneity and enthusiasm. More than 4,000 police ringed the square; and only about 10,000 Gaullists with special invitations were permitted near the speakers' platform. Away back, behind an imposing network of steel barricades manned by police and young Gaullist strongmen, were less-favored citizens of Paris--some 70,000 of them.

Balloons & Boots. Before De Gaulle arrived, police and Communist militants were already fighting in the side streets. Unfazed, the general earnestly began to proclaim the virtues of the new constitution, which he declared is suited "to this century and to the people we are." His voice breaking with emotion, De Gaulle shouted: "With all my heart, in the name of France, I ask you to answer oui." But over De Gaulle's head as he spoke floated a cluster of red, white and blue balloons bearing the single word non.

At speech's end De Gaulle broke into the Marseillaise, and the crowd took up the anthem. Then, apparently troubled by his lack of contact with the audience, De Gaulle descended from the platform. To the consternation of the police protecting him, the general, lost without his glasses, lunged past barriers, mingled with the crowd, smiling and shaking hands. As the crowd headed home, stone-hurling Communists, shouting "Fascism Shall Not Pass," clashed with club-wielding police. Red-bereted ex-paratroopers, spoiling for a fight with the Reds who had helped spoil the Gaullist show, joined in. Angered by the jeers of leftist mobs, one group of Republican Guards in ceremonial tunics, climbed out of their bus and charged--boots clattering, sabers waving, horsetail plumes flying in the breeze.

Dreams v. Votes. Next day, while Paris counted up its casualties--ten demonstrators and 24 cops injured--intense, ex-Premier Pierre Mendes-France weighed in with his non to De Gaulle in a press conference jammed with 500 reporters and supporters. But even as Mendes-France was denouncing the proposed constitution as "dangerous to civil peace and democratic institutions," word reached Paris that Gaston Defferre, mayor of Marseilles and hitherto a leading figure in the Socialist opposition to De Gaulle, had decided to vote yes. With Defferre's announcement, chances that Mendes-France would realize his dream of organizing a powerful, non-Communist front against the De Gaulle constitution all but disappeared. Outmaneuvered though De Gaulle had been in the publicity battle of the Place de la Republique, he was well ahead--and gaining--in the battle for votes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.