Pebbles in the Pond

FRANCE

(See Cover)

As a nation, France has seemed to be dying all through the 20th century. It was bled white of its young men in World War I, humiliatingly beaten and overrun by the Nazis in World War II, and spent the postwar years futilely trying to put down a succession of colonial revolts, while at home governments fell and Premiers came and went amid the clamor of scuffling Deputies in the National Assembly. Only fading memories remained of the ancient days when the lily banners of the French kings triumphed from one end of Europe to the other, or when the Revolutionary Tricolor struck terror on every continent.

As recently as five years ago, France seemed destined to become a second-class power. Yet last week the impossible had apparently come true, and France was once more a mover and shaker in world affairs. Backed by a surging economy, a rising birth rate and an unparalleled air of self-confidence, France has become the first power of Western Europe. It dominates the thriving six-nation Common Market and easily makes its whim become law, as was demonstrated last year when, arbitrarily and against the wishes of its co-partners, it refused Britain admission to the Common Market.

Matter of Seduction? With Europe secure, France has turned boldly to the other continents. It pours men and money into its former colonies in North and black Africa, restores and broadens the image of French culture throughout the Middle East. Warbling a persuasive siren song, French diplomacy stirs up old affections and new troubles in Asia, tempts Latin America with the prospect of being pro-Western, anti-Communist and anti-American all at once. As the two nuclear giants, the U.S. and Russia, hesitantly grope towards better understanding, France treads heavily on their toes. For months France has quietly been offering its "cordial cooperation" in uniting North and South Viet Nam under a neutralist government free of "foreign influence," meaning free of U.S. influence. French agents moved with proposals between Hanoi and Saigon until a jittery anti-neutralist general, Nguyen Khanh, last week staged a bloodless coup against the military junta ruling South Viet Nam on the grounds that its members were being seduced by French offers.

Undaunted, President Charles de Gaulle last week proclaimed his plans in even more intensive siren tones. He proposed the neutralization of all of Southeast Asia, declaring that "we see the world as it is." And to cap his nation's re-emergence as a world power, he recognized the Communist regime in Peking as the government of China, brushing aside protests from Washington that the move would seriously damage U.S. policy in Asia.

Reading the Cables. Behind the electric rejuvenation of France stands De Gaulle, that towering and granite-hard old man who is determined to fulfill his vow that, under him, France will "undertake great actions, assume great proportions, and greatly serve her own interest and that of the human race as well." The strategy is De Gaulle's, but he is fortunate in having at his side a nearly flawless technician in his coolly astute Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, 57, a diplomat with the surgically precise intellect and single-minded determination necessary to implement so ambitious a foreign policy.

Tall, thin, impeccably tailored Couve de Murville shapes his elegant diplomatic tactics in a white and gold office in the Foreign Ministry building on the

Left Bank of the Seine, which gets its popular name from its address: 37 Quai d'Orsay. On a grey, windy afternoon last week, as barges moved slowly upriver and traffic jams clogged the bridges and boulevards of Paris, Couve sat at his leather-topped, bronze-filigree desk. There had been 90 minutes of Gaullist oratory the day before, and now Couve was leafing through two pink paper folders, fat with world reaction and the interminable word traffic of modern diplomacy. A red slash across the corner of a paper meant an outgoing cable, a green slash an incoming one. From Washington, the French embassy reported the U.S.'s predictably cold rejection of neutralization for Southeast Asia. From The Hague came a negative Dutch reaction to De Gaulle's views on Europe. Rome commented on Italo-German talks, and from Geneva, where an empty chair marks France's boycott of the 17-nation Disarmament Conference, came advice from the nonparticipating French "observers."

Ironclad Rule. Surrounded by bosomy Gobelin tapestries depicting the life and love of Henri IV and his Italian queen, Marie de Medici, and warmed by the glow of a log fire, Couve kept at his workhorse job. For though the policy objectives of France are laid down in the presidential offices at the Elysee Palace, it is across the river at the Quai d'Orsay, and inside Couve's nimble and encyclopedic head, that the means for action are sorted out and applied.

Actually there is no black magic to the classic French diplomacy so artfully practiced by De Gaulle and his Foreign Minister. Some acid critics sniff that it is simply a matter of submerging broken promises in a torrent of new ones. In fact, it is founded on the time-tested belief that "the ironclad rule of states is to give nothing for nothing." The French have never confused diplomacy with a popularity contest, and this is a point the U.S. has been achingly slow to learn. While the U.S. is busy building up "reservoirs of good will" around the world, the French base their international relations on mutual interests, and when that is not convenient, on French interests alone.

Conniving Rascals. How it all works out in practice is best shown by example. When France vetoed Britain's entry into the Common Market, it was loudly denounced as the "black sheep" of the European family. The French scarcely bothered to reply, because they brilliantly understood one key fact--that no member of the Common Mar ket cared enough about Britain's admission to break up such a thriving concern. Across the world in Asia, the U.S. championed the independence of Cambodia from French imperialism. Now Cambodians view Americans as conniving rascals and France as a friend in need. Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk last week hailed France for the "incontestable prestige she has been able to recover in the course of the last few years," and burbled that France "is perhaps the only power able to throw a solid bridge between the Occident and Orient, separated by an abyss of incomprehension."

France has operated ingeniously in the Middle East as well. Paris has been Israel's chief source of armaments and joined with Israel in the assault on Nasser's Egypt in 1956. Yet France remains an important influence in the Arab world, with lycees, institutes and colleges scattered from Baghdad to Cairo.

The French are highly selective in contributing aid. They avoid scattershot programs and never offer aid without conditions. In terms of gross national product, France spends more than twice as much on foreign aid as the U.S., but it is largely poured into former colonies, from whom France gets clearly defined support in return. French taxpayers groan at the cost, but De Gaulle operates, as he grandly says, "from the viewpoint of France's higher interests, which is something quite different from the immediate advantage of the French people."

Inflicted Slights. It is especially mystifying that the U.S.--and Britain as well--is so often taken by surprise by France's actions. There is a clear and explicit blueprint in De Gaulle's own writings. He warns that any decision concerning Europe reached without consulting France is a "grave error," and adds that "any large-scale human edifice will be arbitrary and ephemeral if the seal of France is not affixed to it."

De Gaulle has also warned that he will retaliate by making life "unendurable to those inflicting" slights on France. He recounts with relish that when he felt the British, with U.S. backing, were elbowing France out of Lebanon and Syria, "the way the Anglo-American powers were behaving toward us justified our throwing a pebble into their diplomatic pond." The most recent pebble thrown by De Gaulle was brick-sized and caused quite a splash. He also believes France is better equipped to win support from small nations than either the U.S. or Russia, because "many states and world opinion instinctively shy away from giants." His greatest, and still unrealized, goal is to create a third force in the world, a power bloc rallying around France and capable of arbitrating East-West disputes by inclining its influence toward one side or the other.

From Latin to French. When De Gaulle first took office in 1944, he had some hard things to say about French diplomacy, noting that its personnel "concurred only remotely with the attitude I had adopted." What most annoyed De Gaulle was that French diplomats, keenly aware of France's weakness, were shamed and embarrassed at having to hand London and Washington even watered-down versions of De Gaulle's great-power prose.

Since De Gaulle's return to power in 1958, the diplomats have become humbly aware that he was right and they were wrong. And he has had little to complain of since Couve de Murville moved into the Quai d'Orsay to help dispense the classic diplomacy that is both the invention and one of the glories of France. The tone and tradition were set by Cardinal Richelieu in the 17th century, when he served as Foreign Minister (and, later, Chief Minister) to King Louis XIII, and was the first to formulate such diplomatic axioms as 1) the art of negotiation must be a permanent activity and not merely a hurried operation, 2) the national interest must be primary and eternal, excluding all sentimental, ideological and doctrinal preferences, and 3) no policy can succeed unless it is backed by national opinion.

Richelieu raised France to be the first nation of Europe; his agents were everywhere, and almost everything that happened on the Continent was ascribed to his malign influence. When Richelieu died, a British rival wrote, "He was the torment and the ornament of his age," and added that it was strange that Richelieu "is shut up dead in so small a space, whom, when living, the whole earth could not contain." Richelieu and his successor, Cardinal Mazarin, left Louis XIV so remarkable a diplomatic organization that French gradually displaced Latin as the diplomatic language of Europe.

Full Stocking. France's monumental diplomatist of the 19th century was Talleyrand, who, said Mirabeau, would sell his soul for money, "and he would be right, for he would be exchanging dung for gold." Where Richelieu spoke for a powerful and united France, Talleyrand's 19th century role was most often like De Gaulle's: to make the world pay heed to a beaten, broken France. Superbly confident, cool under the worst conditions, Talleyrand once sat calmly through an hour-long tirade by Napoleon Bonaparte and heard himself called everything from a liar and a traitor to a coward and a thief. In a final paroxysm, Napoleon described him as a "silk stocking full of merde." Without turning a hair, Talleyrand left the room, remarking only, "What a pity a great man should be so ill-bred."

As Foreign Minister to the restored monarchy, Talleyrand played the great powers against each other so skillfully at the Congress of Vienna that he frustrated every attempt to form a coalition against France. Though personally corrupt, Talleyrand's diplomatic bond was rarely broken, and he rigorously obeyed the most important rule of successful negotiation: good faith.

The roll call of great French diplomats goes on into this century, with Theophile Delcasse, a small frowning man in a black alpaca coat who burned with an inner flame of patriotism and was the architect of the famous Entente Cordiale, the triple alliance between France, Britain and Czarist Russia that was supposed to halt further German expansion.

The next French apostle of collective security was Aristide Briand, ten times Premier of France, a spellbinding orator who heralded Germany's 1926 entry into the League of Nations with the optimistic prediction: "There will be no more war." Briand clung tenaciously to the Foreign Ministry, explaining: "If I leave, the rightists will get a minister of their choice who will return to a policy of force. This will make the fortune of the German nationalists." At tending a bullfight in Spain, Briand reacted like a polished diplomat, observing, "Suppress the matador, the picadors and the toreadors and let me go into the arena with a little bundle of hay, and you will see that I'll make peace with the bull."

Top of the Class. Couve de Murville is in the tradition of his famous predecessors. He shares with Richelieu a mastery of detail and an acute sense of the true political situation, and possesses much of the glacial calm and stiff self-control of Talleyrand. So far, he has been the nearly flawless tactician of De Gaulle's grand strategy with its goals of 1) primacy in Europe, 2) increasing independence from the U.S., and 3) emergence as leader of the world's third force.

Born in 1907 in Reims, where his father was a judge, Couve de Murville comes of a Protestant family in a Roman Catholic nation. Graduating from a Paris lycee, Couve (whose family dropped the aristocratic De Murville during the French Revolution, reassumed it later) obtained a degree in history and law at the University of Paris and graduated from the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, where he finished first in a class of 300; the second student was Herve Alphand, currently France's Ambassador to the U.S. He then studied for entrance into the corps of Inspecteurs des Finances, a superelite brain trust that admits only a handful of men to its ranks each year and produces some of France's top administrative talent. Its veterans form an old-boy network that makes Britain's Oxbridge clan seem about as selective as the crowd at Auteuil.

Back to Paris. In 1932 Couve married Jacqueline Schweisguth, the slim, brunette daughter of an Alsatian Protestant family related to the oil-rich Schlimbergers of Texas. Jacqueline's father was also an inspector of finances, but Couve protests it was "just a coincidence." Couve rose rapidly to become head of the external finance division of his ministry, but in 1943 he fled Vichy France and eventually joined De Gaulle in Algeria, where he became, in effect, the finance minister of the Free French. After serving on the Allied Consultative Council for Italy with Britian's Harold Macmillan and the U.S.'s Robert Murphy, Couve at war's end was made Ambassador to Rome. He subsequently held the same post in Egypt, NATO and the U.S., where Jacqueline Couve de Murville was admired for her elegance, and the family dachshund, Xenophon, became something of a local celebrity. Couve's next post was West Germany, and one afternoon in the spring of 1958, soon after De Gaulle returned to office, he was reached on a Cologne golf course with orders to rush back to France.

In Paris, lone-wolf Couve called at the suite of lone-wolf Charles de Gaulle in the small, elegant Hotel Laperousse near the Etoile. He laconically recalls: "We discussed foreign policy a little to see where we stood." Then De Gaulle shook hands with his new Foreign Minister. Of that first Gaullist Cabinet, Couve de Murville is the only man to have remained in the same spot, very likely because he firmly believes France should be run by brilliant technicians administering the policy of a great President and not by a host of wrangling, multiparty politicians.

A Red Indian. Couve's castle, the Quai d'Orsay, is a massive pile begun in 1842 by King Louis Philippe for the Premiers of France and finished under

Napoleon III. The interior is extravagantly decorated in Empire style, full of gold, plush, tapestries and murals, one of which depicts the four continents--with the Americas, of course, represented by a red Indian. The rooms are choked with history: in the Salon de 1'Horloge, the Versailles Treaty was negotiated and the Kellogg-Briand Pact signed; in the Gallery de la Paix, the late President John Kennedy received guests on his 1961 visit; the Big Four held many of their postwar meetings in the Salon de Beauvais.

Except for his personal staff, Couve de Murville is alone in the huge palace. Upstairs are apartments for visiting dignitaries as well as smaller rooms where Couve dines lesser visitors and occasionally gathers a few staffers for bridge.

Less Paper. The 750 officials of the Quai d'Orsay are crowded into tiny offices in a large L-shaped building adjoining the Foreign Ministry. The service is competitive, as in the U.S., and most of its members are career men. A French diplomat is far less submerged in paper work than his U.S. counterpart. He is constantly urged to keep his cables brief and infrequent so that the total handle of cables at the Quai runs about 1,000 daily, less than half that of the U.S. State Department. The Quai's files are singularly bare of statistics. There are not even any biographical files on foreign dignitaries. "If we want to find out about a fellow," says a Quai officer, "we just wander down the hall looking for someone who knows him."

The Quai has the normal political, economic and administrative activities common to any foreign service. What is unusual is the cultural arm, which gets nearly half of the Quai's $220 million budget. France exports more than 32,000 teachers of French and offers scholarships, exchanges, art exhibits, theatrical and musical tours, films, TV tapes, and so on.

A man's ability to express himself with elegance and precision is highly prized at the Quai. Novelist Remain Gary and Playwright Jean Giraudoux were foreign service officers; Poet St. John Perse (actually Alexis Leger) rose to the No. 2 post at the Quai; and Stendhal wrote The Charterhouse of Parma while in the diplomatic corps. Richelieu once effortlessly composed a 500-line insert for Corneille's verse drama, Le Cid, to replace a passage of the author's that Richelieu thought in bad taste.

Despite the French love of protocol, a pleasant informality reigns at the Quai. Any officer, however junior, can barge unannounced into the office of any other--with the exception of the minister, his secretary-general and the chief of personnel. Individualism is the fashion: if he wants to, an officer can bring his dog to the Quai, and even Couve de Murville occasionally appears with Jason, the son of Xenophon.

There have been many characterizations of French diplomats, from Marcel

Proust's insufferably stuffy Marquis de Norpois to Lawrence Durrell's womanizing George Pombal. A former British diplomat gives the French high marks for intelligence and credits their exhaustive training with producing minds that "operate with a rapidity and lucidity that is the envy of their colleagues." In any major capital of the world, invitations to French embassy affairs are valued above all others, and the French display what may be their greatest diplomatic asset--supreme elegance. The Quai has, of course, failures as well as successes. Some embassies are shockingly bad, especially those heavily manned by former colonial officers who retain a colonial mentality.

Disenchanted Comments. Perhaps because Couve de Murville is so nearperfect as a diplomat, he is elusive as a man. Respected but not loved by his Quai associates, he has the ministry machinery under total and constant control. He takes no notes, commits what he needs to know--which is practically everything--to his prodigious memory. Said one dazed aide: "Couve's been to practically all the conferences since 1945, and he can remember what Gromyko said at this one, what the British position was on that, and so on."

Couve abruptly dismisses the nonessentials of an issue, saying, "That's a false problem." He has a Protestant distrust of the emotional and rhetorical.

"For a Frenchman," says one associate, "Couve is a very curious Frenchman. He is not Mediterranean, certainly." Yet his personality clearly appeals to De Gaulle. One French commentator noted that "with the general, Couve doesn't converse so much as exchange disenchanted comments. All his strength is in his skepticism."

Couve is sometimes ridiculed as bein? nothing but an extraordinarily sensitive piece of hi-fi equipment for reproducing De Gaulle's opinions. Actually Couve plays a much bigger role than meets the eye. He was totally Gaullist long before De Gaulle returned to power, and openly expressed his disgust at former French policy as merely a "trailer" hitched to Britain, with each French minister asking instinctively what the British were doing before making a decision.

Couve seems to have more freedom of action than most foreign ministers. This was vividly demonstrated last December during the marathon Brussels conference to determine agricultural policy for the Common Market. When the Hallstein Commission at last produced its 14-point package compromise plan at 3 a.m., it was so complex that the Dutch had to go home and call a Cabinet meeting before they could accept it. As the others prepared to depart for similar homework, Couve leafed through the pages, calmly said, "I accept for France." One delegate recalled, "It was quite a moment. He is the only minister I know of able to think ahead when confronted by something like that, to see what all the parts mean, and how they relate."

Soirees at Versailles. Yet the direction of foreign policy is exclusively De Gaulle's, which, of course, is as it should be, since a government in tow of its Foreign Minister is by definition a weak one. De Gaulle works hard at home on personal diplomacy. Since 1958, he has received 107 visits from assorted kings, princes and potentates, while leaving France for foreign soil only 15 times, and six of the trips were to Germany. Important visitors to Paris get heady treatment, from airport receptions and official dinners at the Elysee Palace to gala nights at the opera and soirees at Versailles.

The tempo of travel and official visits is to be even more intensive in 1964.

Canada's Lester B. Pearson has already been to Paris, and he will be swiftly followed by Germany's Ludwig Erhard and Italy's Antonio Segni. The list goes on and on, ranging from King Savang Vatthana of Laos and King Hussein of Jordan to Israel's Golda Meir and the King and Queen of Denmark. In March, De Gaulle will visit Mexico and the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and next fall will make a triumphal tour of Latin America. It is thought likely that De Gaulle will go to "eternal Russia" within the next two years if he can get assurance that he will be able to travel widely and talk directly to the Russian people.

Lonely Frenchman. But while De Gaulle planned gracious receptions and triumphant travels, Americans and Britons wondered how things became so unstuck in the West. Gaullist officials bluntly put the blame on the U.S., and insist with ardor and some accuracy that every U.S. President from Roosevelt to Kennedy has deliberately affronted De Gaulle. Especially galling were Washington's refusals to 1) allow him equal voice with Britain and the U.S. in Western policymaking, and 2) help him produce a nuclear weapon. Ever since, he has sought to promote French influence by other means.

The present French contribution to NATO is token at best, and it is even more minuscule in SEATO--at the last military maneuvers in Southeast Asia, France was represented by a single observer. France refuses to take a seat in the Geneva disarmament talks and will not share the U.N.'s Congo costs. De Gaulle has been contemptuous of the U.N. since its birth, both because it has the common failing of all assemblies, which "beneath their fine speeches are ruled by the fear of action," and because its members are nations, "that is, the least impartial and the most partisan bodies in the world."

Where De Gaulle may be doing a service to the U.S. is in forcing it to make clearer just what its internationalism means. At any rate, it is certain that De Gaulle does not recognize Red

China or do anything else merely to stick his thumb in Washington's eye. His moves may be foolish or dangerous, but they are never so infantile. De Gaulle is convinced that in the long run he is doing the West and the U.S. a service.

A Budapest Hilton? De Gaulle's freewheeling maneuvers are essentially the result of the growing break in the 18-year logjam of the cold war. Washington and Moscow have been moving cautiously toward detente ever since the confrontation of Cuba (where De Gaulle promptly pledged allegiance to the U.S.), encouraging greater independence not only by France in the West but by the Communist countries of Eastern Europe, which are asserting an astonishing independence of Russia. Communist Hungary even boasts it will soon have a Budapest Hilton.

This stirring supports De Gaulle's long-held view that national ambitions invariably prevail over ideologies. "No ordeal changes the nature of man," De Gaulle puts it, "and no crisis changes the nature of states." He argues that the interests of the Czechs, Poles, Bulgarians, and even the Russians, are essentially European and therefore common with France. A top Gaullist insists, "When the time for a real detente comes, it is not America that can speak to Eastern Europe. Western Europe can. Look at the Poles! They're still frightened to death of the Germans. But which of the major powers in Europe have recognized the Oder-Neisse Line? Only the Russians--and the French!"

Golden Sea. At last week's press conference at the Elysee Palace, le grand Charles seemed intent on proving that he could dampen fires as well as ignite them. More than 1,000 newsmen, diplomats and officials were perched anxiously on a sea of spindly gold chairs when at the stroke of 3 p.m. the raspberry-red curtains parted and De Gaulle lumbered to the podium, wearing a sober charcoal-grey suit and a dark striped tie. He gave the familiar wave to the crowd, heard the same gaggle of questions--some planted and some not--and then exercised his same royal prerogative of picking out only those he wanted to answer--just four in number.

China was saved for the last. China was very big, very old, very abused, said De Gaulle. He spoke warmly of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, who "tried to channel the flood" after World War II but failed "when the Americans withdrew the direct support of their forces." That, presumably, was for the benefit of the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese. Next was Russia's turn: "The Kremlin counted on keeping China in its power and, by this, dominating Asia. But such illusions were dissipated" as a conflict arose between "Russia, which holds and which keeps, and China, which needs to grow and to take."

France, said De Gaulle, had recognized Red China because in Asia there is no political reality "that does not concern or touch China." But recognition, he added, as have so many regimes that recognized Peking, "implied no sort of approbation for the regime that dominates China."

The U.S. tried to mousetrap De Gaulle by urging Nationalist China not to break relations with France immedi ately, in the hope of embarrassing De Gaulle by tagging him with a "two-China" label acceptable to neither Peking nor Taipei. This effort failed when a top French spokesman said flatly, "This is not a two-China policy--we recognize Taipei as the government of

Formosa and Peking as the government of China."

A far more serious situation must be faced this fall when the United Nations again determines whether to seat the Nationalists or the Reds in China's seat. Last year Peking got 57 votes, 17 short of the necessary two-thirds of the General Assembly. France's recognition of Peking will undoubtedly bring further support with it, perhaps including several of the French African states.

When he heard the news of France's recognition while on tour in Africa, Red China's Foreign Minister Chou En-lai broke into rapturous French. "Bonjour, bonjour, comment allez-vous!" he cried to France's ambassador in the Sudan. "That's great. I am very happy." He also recalled that he and Foreign Minister Chen Yi "were both students together in Paris many years ago.

We learned about life and Marxism in Paris. We loved Paris. I hope to see Paris some day soon." If Chou was angling for a visit, De Gaulle turned a deaf ear, for no invitation came his way. At big moments, le grand Charles likes to be alone onstage.

Outcasts Together. In the wake of De Gaulle's words, there were many doubts, many hesitations. For Red China, there was the uncertainty whether it was using France or being used by De Gaulle. For Russia, there was the uneasy knowledge that the nuclear outcast of the Orient had now joined hands with the nuclear outcast of the West.

For Britain, there was the choice of severing its bond with the U.S. and becoming more European, as De Gaulle requires, or of never joining the Common Market. And for France's broth er nations in the Common Market itself, there was again a time of self-examination about precisely what kind of unified Europe it is that Charles de Gaulle intends--or hopes--to create.

The U.S. has the most difficult problem of all, since Washington's never very clearly defined policy of internationalism is clearly in disarray. Washington has repeatedly begged Europe to accept more responsibility in world affairs, but now that De Gaulle is doing precisely that, the formulation has become suspect.

In any case, Washington badly needs to restore its battered ties with Paris.

The State Department greatly regrets that De Gaulle and President Kennedy did not talk again after their Paris meeting in 1961, and hopes for a solution, or at least a nearer understanding, if De Gaulle soon has a face-to-face encounter with Lyndon Johnson. It might work. But the fact remains that De Gaulle has had close personal conferences with four successive U.S.

Presidents, and neither the eloquence of Franklin Roosevelt, the bluntness of Harry Truman, the camaraderie of Dwight Eisenhower nor the crisp rationalism of John Kennedy had much effect. Will a Texas drawl succeed where so many others failed?

To men in both Moscow and Washington last week, the times seemed out of joint. As the other, weaker powers became optimistically convinced that there would be no major war, they eagerly pursued their normal national interests. It was a time for new initiatives, a time to see what gains could be won for as little as possible; and certainly no nation, large or small, was performing this natural function of nations with more profit or more style than De Gaulle's France. With a population of only 48 million, a land mass smaller than Texas', an economy that is booming but still no match for West Germany's, and a nuclear device too cumbersome to get airborne, France has, by the judicious use of diplomacy in the classic sense, become a power that the world must reckon with.

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