REVOLT REPUDIATED--FOR NOW

IN a thousand legends and traditions, the French glory in a revolutionary past. Between bouts of rage, they are also a profoundly conservative people. Last week a decisive number of Frenchmen in Charles de Gaulle's Fifth Republic showed that they are not anxious to repeat their past right now. In elections for a new National Assembly, the French turned their backs on revolution, at least of the sort that France's young leftists and anarchists had in mind. Only a few short weeks ago, in early May, a revolt started among students at the Sorbonne and spread to workers across the country, plunging France into its most serious peacetime crisis in a century. Now, abruptly, that revolt was repudiated in the ballot boxes of Brittany and Cantal, of Lorraine and Provence. "The people have learned a lesson," declared Premier Georges Pompidou, who led the Gaullist campaign. "They want neither the red flag nor the black one"--neither Communism nor anarchy.

In a sweep that exceeded even the most optimistic Gaullist forecasts, the voters rallied to the party of Charle de Gaulle and his allies. Gaullist and Gaullist-lining forces won 43.7% of 22.5 million votes v. 37.7% in last year's National Assembly elections. In the first round of voting, their candidates won outright majorities in 142 constituencies and thus were elected to the Assembly without having to undergo a runoff round. By contrast, the major non-Gaullist parties all suffered setbacks. Receiving its worst drubbing in a decade, the French Left lost 1,250,000 votes to the Gaullists, watched its share of the vote decline from 45% in 1967 to 41%. If the Gaullist trend continued through the final round of balloting last weekend, De Gaulle would command some 280 seats in the 487 seat Assembly. In any case, he seemed assured of a comfortable majority.

Finish Them Off.

The very magnitude of their first-round success made the Gaullists worry that their supporters might grow complacent about the final round of balloting. In an effort to persuade them not to flit off to the country and the beaches on vacation instead of staying around to vote, the Gaullists kept up the pressure. "Do not relax! The battle is not yet won," exhorted Pompidou. "Finish them off; yes finish off those who are in the camp of revolution and negativism." At weeks end, in a final appeal for support Charles de Gaulle spoke to the French on television and radio. "My calling and my mandate command me to show you the road you must follow," he declared. "In our voting, we must provide ourselves with a Parliament able to pursue the necessary policies with a strong, continuing and coherent majority."

De Gaulle's opponents charged that he and Pompidou had waged a scare campaign, successfully terrorizing the voters into seeking sanctuary with Gaullism The Communists were especially bitter, since the Gaullists had singled them out as the scapegoats for the disorders, accusing them of conspiring to take over France and turn it into a Communist dictatorship; actually, the disorders ignited with little if any aid from the Communist Party. Cried Communist Party Leader Waldeck Rochet: "The Gaullists won by applying blackmail of fear against the French people."

As a superb politician, De Gaulle formulated the strategy that he thought would win--and it did. He sought to polarize the French electorate, forcing the moderate voters away from the left and into the Gaullist ranks. Toward that end, the Gaullists capitalized on the average Frenchman's fear of chaos by showing special films that depicted the rampaging mobs and wanton destruction in Paris' Left Bank riots. Much of what the Gaullists said and showed was true enough. France had indeed been on the verge of a breakdown, and if De Gaulle had stepped aside instead of asserting his authority in late May, the country might well have slipped over the brink into civil war. The warnings about more impending disorders struck a responsive chord in the French character.

Cartesian Logic.

The French are rarely consistent, but they are usually logical--in their fashion. From the lycee onward, millions of Frenchmen are exposed to the classic symmetrical syllogisms of cartesian logic; as a result, a Frenchman tends to dismiss whatever he disagrees with not because it is intrinsically wrong but because it seems wrongly reasoned. "C'est pas logique."--roughly, "No one in his right mind would think like that"--is a favorite saying. To the vast numbers of middle-aged who feared continued social upheavals, to the little old ladies in black who considered the old ways best, and to the coterie of rich young people, the jeunesse doree, who reveled in the Fifth Republic's riches --to all these, it seemed only logical that no one in his right mind would vote for chaos over De Gaulle.

De Gaulle's other traditional supporters felt much the same way. French women, who vote first and foremost for stability, again turned out in force to cast their ballots for the general's men. The conservatives who have something to conserve--big businessmen, the landowners, investors--remained true Gaullists. De Gaulle's forces picked up backlash support from farmers, small businessmen and the professional class, nearly all of whom reacted against the riots and strikes.

Most surprising, many workers, who only a few weeks ago had been flying red flags and shouting "A bas De Gaulle!" voted Gaullist. Having won big wage increases and other with concessions, they reasoned-- again with a certain logic--that De Gaulle was better prepared to defend their gains than the Communists, who, with no experience in running the country, might botch up the economy and nullify their improved status. In all, the Gaullists attracted 1,300,000 new voters to their cause.

Leftist Losses.

For the Communists, it was the worst showing since the 1958 elections, when De Gaulle first returned to power. Though remaining Frances second largest political party, the Communists lost 603,675 voters; their share of the total vote fell from 22.5% to 20%. The Communists' allies, the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left, dropped 23%. This setback seriously dented the prestige of the federation's leader, Franc,ois Mitterrand as a national political figure. The centrist coalition, led by Jacques Duhamel, dropped from 13% of the vote to 10%.

The party that suffered most of all was the Movement for Reform, a centrist splinter group that was hastily organized as a protest against Gaullism by De Gaulle's onetime Agriculture Minister, Edgar Pisani. It was wiped out on the first ballot. In fact, the only opposition group that made any gains was the small United Socialist Party, which almost doubled its voter strength --to 4% of the total. Even so, the party's chief, former Fourth Republic Premier Pierre Mendes-France, was by no means certain of retaining his Assembly seat in a runoff contest with a Gaullist in Grenoble.

Contradictory Goals.

The election victory did not solve De Gaulle's--or France's--problems. In some ways, it created new ones by further alienating the leftists and solidifying De Gaulle's opponents. It increased the pressures on De Gaulle for reform, since many of his new supporters voted for him in the expectation that he would live up to his promises to bring about sweeping changes in France's archaic institutions. Stricken by inflationary wage settlements, France's economy has been seriously weakened; and De Gaulle has been forced to resort to drastic measures to protect its ailing industries (see BUSINESS). The country has recently lost $1 billion in foreign exchange. Unemployment is rising, and some people in Paris are already saying "C,a va recommencer en octobre"--"The whole thing will begin again in October." They mean the barricades, the street fighting, the strikes--and perhaps even worse.

Whether that ominous prediction comes true depends largely on how well Charles de Gaulle can cope with the dual goals of reviving the economy while undertaking social and political reforms. In a television interview three weeks ago, De Gaulle declared that his reform plan would be a middle way between Communism and Capitalism. He called it "participation." Two of the main features are to give students more say in the universities and to expand the powers of the already established comites d'entreprise--the workers' councils--into areas of managerial responsibility in France's industries.

An inner circle of Cabinet ministers has already submitted one set of specific industrial reforms to De Gaulle. He bounced them, instructing his ministers to draw up another set that would go much further. Though he seems fully committed to far-reaching reform, De Gaulle may find that he is pursuing mutually exclusive goals. As he grants more power to workers, for example, he almost certainly will frighten away the investment capital that he needs to revitalize and modernize France's ailing economy. And by polarizing the French, he has tended to build higher and stronger the wall that separates his country into two hostile parts.

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