The Nation in Miniature

The small, cheerful town of Briare lies some hundred miles south of Paris on the Loire River. Briare boasts the largest and most modern pheasant farm in all France and a sprinkling of diverse industry: a tile factory, a plant making laboratory instruments, another producing furniture. Briare's real distinction, however, is invisible. In the past six national elections, the men and women of Briare have voted within a few percentage points of the entire French nation. To attempt to discover how Briare will vote in the April 27 referendum, TIME Correspondent John Blashill spent several days in the town and filed this report:

To most of Briare's 5,140 people, the referendum seems awfully remote. Hardly anyone except Mayor Henri Dabard, a brisk ex-World War I fighter pilot, talks about it in terms of regionalization or senate reform. Instead, Briare will be voting oui or non on De Gaulle, just as it has in the previous four referendums the general has staged since 1958.

Winning the Works. Down at the Cafe de l'Agriculture, on the corner of the Place de la Republique and the Rue de la Liberte, the talk turns easily to the mayor himself. The men around the bar call Dabard "our own little De Gaulle" and yarn about his imperious tactics. The new water works? Ah, well, Dabard knew that the town council disapproved, so he appointed an independent commission to "study" the plan. To no one's surprise, the commission thought the project was splendid, and Dabard signed a construction contract. The council protested, but the mayor was ready. "If you question my judgment," he told the councilmen, "it means I no longer have your confidence. Therefore, I will have to resign." The council backed down, as expected.

However authoritarian his methods, Dabard is fond of his fellow villagers. In the bargain, he knows their voting habits. "They are good people," he says, "and they represent the opinion of the country." As a rule, Briare has given a third of its vote to the left, two-thirds to De Gaulle. This time, the margin may be narrower. Dabard predicts 60% approval. Why? "We've lost our national spirit," he says. "France cannot be governed except by a strong authority. We have found the authority, but we don't like it any more." That is no small admission, coming from a pocket-size version of De Gaulle.

Taxing Life. There is little doubt of voter unhappiness with the general. The shopkeepers of Briare claim that they are being taxed out of existence. Pierre , Renaud, who runs a combination pharmacy and tobacco shop, must pay five different kinds of taxes and fill out separate forms for each. "Those forms," he says, "make for many nights of insomnia." His uncle, Maurice Renaud, who runs an appliance shop down the street, must fill out only three sets of forms but is much more outspoken. "De Gaulle is a liar," he says. "He's too expensive, he has delusions of grandeur. I'm ready to kick him out. I'm going to vote no, and it will be the first time." A Briare attorney, a Gaullist, plans to vote against the referendum because he believes "it would be better for De Gaulle to leave now, while everything is relatively quiet, so there can be an orderly transition. If he dies in office, God only knows what will happen." The farmers who live near Briare seem more indifferent than the villagers. Maurice Vanjan, who keeps 50 cows on 50 hectares, says his ballot will be blank. "The referendum," he says, "tries to put too many things together. It's too complicated for yes or no." Briare's local Communists--Dabard puts their total vote at 421 or 422--are fond of their autocratic mayor. "He's done a lot for the town, for the workers," says Lucien Delsartre, a Communist labor leader employed by the Otis elevator factory at nearby Gien. But Delsartre and his fellow Communists will vote against De Gaulle's proposals. "I have nothing against him," Delsartre says. "It's his policies we despise. They're antisocial, an-tiworker, antipeople. They serve only the interests of big capitalism."

If Frenchmen voted the same way they talked, the impression is that Briare will reject the referendum's proposals. I found only two people, the mayor and an insurance man, who said they would vote yes. Everyone else--workers, farmers, shopkeepers and professional men--said they would either vote no or cast a blank ballot. But Frenchmen have a way of confounding opinion seekers. Pierre Renaud, Briare's pharmacist-tobacconist, perhaps expressed it best. "The French are a funny people. They always complain a lot but usually vote oui." In France, it is the mind that does the talking but the heart that does the voting.

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