The Prophet Heard From

A De Gaulle press conference has been described as a series of answers to which reporters are supposed to think up the questions. Even when the presidential monologue fails to offer any new "answers," the world has learned to listen. De Gaulle's latest appearance before the assembled press at the Elysee Palace, his first in six months, was as usual full of imperious generalities, lofty self-justification, and barbs for friend and foe. Since De Gaulle wears history well, and knows it, the occasion also offered some fairly startling historical silhouettes.

sbU.S. ROLE. World War II, said De-Gaulle, had produced two superpowers, the U.S. and Russia. But America's sole conduct of Western policy was now a thing of the past, for, with economic and military reconstruction, "Europe emerges as an entity capable of living its own life." Naturally, he went on, "it must preserve an alliance with America. But the reasons which made Europe less an ally than a subordinate are dis appearing one after another." Europe must now assume its share of responsibility; this should only please the U.S., for, the implication was clear, things were just getting too much for the Americans. "Whatever America's wealth, its power, its good intentions, the multiplicity and complexity of the problems are such that henceforth they outstrip, perhaps dangerously, its means and capacity."

sbEUROPE. With the two superpowers no longer so super, Europe "should have an independent policy . . . Gauls, Germans, Latins, many of them cry: 'Let us create Europe.' But which Europe? For us French, the Europe should be a European Europe." That tautologous definition turned out to be a label for De Gaulle's familiar vision of a loose assemblage of nationalist states. Sarcastically he dismissed the more ambitious hopes of European federalists for a European executive and parliament. Then De Gaulle fixed an accusing eye on West Germany because it "does not yet believe that Europe's policy should be European and independent"--meaning that Chancellor Ludwig Erhard is tied too tightly to U.S. apron strings.

sbDETERRENT. De Gaulle was happy to bring the world up to date on the state of France's fledgling atomic air force: "The first unit will be operational this year. In 1966 we will have sufficient Mirage IV planes and refueling aircraft to be able to transport over several thousand kilometers projectiles whose total explosive power is greater than 150 Hiroshima bombs." He did not add that all this would be impossible without airborne refueling tankers that are to be supplied by the U.S., nor that, as an air force staff colonel disclosed last week, the primitive French bomb will crowd the Mirage considerably: it is more than half as long as the plane's fuselage.

sbVIET NAM. De Gaulle was at his most annoying on the subject of Southeast Asia, for which he once again proposed neutralization. He reviewed some background in particularly acid terms. When the French left Indo-China in 1954, "the Americans arrived with their aid, their policy. At that time the Americans were offering themselves everywhere in the world, considering themselves invested with the burden of defense against Communism. I believe that one can add, without hurting our American friends, that their sense of vocation, and also their aversion to all colonial activity which was not theirs, led them to take the place of France in Indo-China."

De Gaulle made it sound as if Americans had wanted to move into the Indo-Chinese mess--and not, as was really the case, that the U.S. entered the scene with great reluctance to salvage something from the mess left behind by the disastrously defeated French. In any case, "it does not appear there can be a military solution in South Viet Nam," declared De Gaulle, and the best thing the U.S. could do would be to sit down with France, Red China and Russia, and work out a political deal for the whole area.

President Johnson promptly and firmly rejected the notion: "We do not believe in a conference called to ratify terror." A few days before, a Saigon crowd had anticipated that answer. A mob of angry students invaded the French embassy in Saigon, smashing furniture and ripping the official seal from the entrance. "Down with France! Down with De Gaulle! Down with neutralism!" they shouted. Then they hanged De Gaulle in effigy, alongside a figure representing North Viet Nam's Ho Chi Minh.

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