Two Decades

"Paris! Paris ravaged! Paris crushed! Paris martyred! But Paris free!"

It was Charles de Gaulle speaking--lean, his face scarcely lined--at the Hotel de Ville. That moment of triumph, 20 years ago, was surrounded by a good deal of squabbling. General Jacques Leclerc's French 2nd Armored Division, which had received reluctant approval from the Allied high command to advance on Paris, had got bogged down but reached the city ahead of the Americans anyway, making the Liberation, at least in appearance, a feat of French arms. Right behind the troops came De Gaulle, whose chief concern was to prevent a takeover by the Communists, who had widely infiltrated the Resistance movement. By showing himself to Paris, by his supreme coolness when fired on by snipers, and by bluntly ordering the Resistance forces disarmed, De Gaulle undid the Communists and took command swiftly and surely.

Even then, though it was obviously the Allies who had really freed his country, De Gaulle insisted: "France is a world power. She has a right to be heard in all four corners of the world." Last week he stood at the Hotel de Ville again, two additional decades of life and history aggravating his face, and again spoke of France as a world power--this time with far more reason.

No R.S.V.P.s. A crowd of 200,000 turned out happily on the Place de la Concorde to dance in the street, watch fireworks, and cheer Fernandel, Juliette Greco, the cancan line of the Moulin Rouge. Some of the old squabbles were revived: the Communists and Socialists boycotted many of the ceremonies. But once again De Gaulle rose above all that. In his Hotel de Ville speech, he sounded the suitable notes of glory, but he also dared to chill his listeners with a reference to how and why France had fallen in the first place.

Said De Gaulle: "It is our duty to look directly at the origin of the unhappiness that turned the capital over to the suffering and outrage of the occupation. For invasion, capitulation, oppression, were nothing more than the outcome of political, military and moral collapse, and they in turn were the result of the long weakness of our public authorities, of the grave shortcomings of our resources, and of the many uncertainties and divisions of our country."

De Gaulle could censure the France of 20 years ago in these terms because the France of today resembles it so little.

Now the Feast. Then Paris was drab, hungry and humiliated, poisoned by haphazard action against collaborationists, corrupted by the black market, weakened by class hatreds and inflation. Now its buildings are resplendent as the result of cleaning and restoration; the Parisian feasts at the most majestic table in the world, and all around him are the signs of his country's prestige. The swift Caravelle jet carries the name of France through the skies, and the world's longest liner, the France, carries it across the seas. French military power, so often frustrated, can take at least symbolic pride in its minuscule atomic strike force. The nation's population, which had been shrinking before the war, has grown from 40 to 48 million, and the gross national product from $31 billion to $72 billion. Class feeling is being diminished by the embourgeoisement of the workers, more and more of whom reach a level of prosperity where a four-week vacation and a small car are the norm--although inflation and wretched housing still bedevil them.

The French have thrown off the shame of being a defeated, compromised nation. Largely soothed are the rankling humiliations that led to self destructive politics at home, futile colonial ventures abroad, and a snarling attitude toward foreigners. Not all of this is necessarily real; much of it is the reflection of De Gaulle's sheer will, and when he is gone, France may again be gravely threatened by those "uncertainties and divisions." And for France's allies, De Gaulle's independent foreign policy can be a trial. But, in sum, the strong France of today represents a tremendous net gain for the West compared with the country of 20 or even ten years ago.

Frenchmen, though they are never likely to lose their skepticism, believed De Gaulle last week when he said: "The past must certainly never be repeated. Whatever the conditions under which our future will be unveiled, in a world still filled with perils let us be sure from this moment on that we have the elementary guarantees of a firm government, a modern defense and a united nation." For the length of his rule at least, the country has come close to achieving these guarantees and perhaps to satisfying De Gaulle's own axiom: "France cannot be France without greatness."

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