Roland's Last Blast

By Keith R. Johnson

MEMOIRS OF HOPE: RENEWAL AND ENDEAVOR by CHARLES DE GAULLE translated by TERENCE KILMARTIN 392 pages. Simon & Schuster. $10.

Charles de Gaulle, leader and symbol of victorious Free France, visited Russia in 1944, and his hosts took him to visit the battlefield at Stalingrad. De Gaulle pensively surveyed the terrain, then turned to the Russians and said: "A great people--[pause] the Germans." The story, perhaps apocryphal, tells much about the man: his frosty independence, his detached historical perspective, his ability to deliver the calculated shock.

Those qualities made De Gaulle essential to France twice in its recent history, but along with them he possessed a kind of stony stolidity that leaves the final volume of his memoirs bloodless and disappointing.

One French critic wryly called the first volume of De Gaulle's war memoirs, which appeared in 1954, "The Song of Roland written by Roland himself, with all that suggests of simplification and even of changing the facts." In Memoirs of Hope, written between De Gaulle's abdication in 1969 and his death 18 months later, the simplification and the changing of facts persist, but the blasts from Roland's horn have grown feebler.

That is a pity, for this last volume covers the tumultuous period beginning with De Gaulle's return to power in 1958; when he died, he had carried the narrative into 1963. In that time, De Gaulle brought his country from the brink of civil war to political and economic stability. Without putting a foot wrong, he ended the fratricidal crisis over whether Algeria should be granted independence. It was an extraordinary achievement, something only he could have done.

Brilliant Stroke. But De Gaulle's recollections of Algeria are astoundingly flat. There is a workmanlike, almost brusque review of events, the continuing nationalist guerrilla war, the increasing rage and frustration of the French army. De Gaulle cites his famous, ambiguous cry to the restive French in Algiers: "I have understood you!" They thought he meant to support them against the rebels--which he did not. De Gaulle explains: "I tossed them the words, seemingly spontaneous but in reality carefully calculated, which I hoped would fire their enthusiasm without committing me further than I was willing to go." It was a brilliant stroke, and his account reveals how meticulously and disdainfully he planned his stage effects. But for the most part, the general's account of France's anguish over Algeria sounds as passionless as a newspaper bulletin about a Metro strike. One wonders: Is this all?

Of his fellow statesmen, De Gaulle found few more than passable. Adenauer wins his praise. So does Nixon -- as a "steady personality" -- in a passage obviously informed by hindsight. Eisenhower appears almost as timid and bumbling as Britain's Macmillan during the 1960 summit confrontation with Khrushchev; to hear De Gaulle tell it, only his own resolution prevent ed the Allies from acceding to Soviet demands on Berlin.

Rare Wit. Occasionally the magisterial tone is broken by a welcome personal note. There is a disarming comment on his television speeches: "This septuagenarian, sitting alone behind a table under relentless lights, had to appear animated and spontaneous enough to seize and hold attention without compromising himself by excessive gestures and misplaced grimaces." There are also rare, redeeming touches of dry wit -- as when he writes of his 1958 economic reforms that "virtue is some times rewarded even in France."

Too often, however, the majestic alexandrine sonorities of De Gaulle's written French sound awkward and even unintelligible in Terence Kilmartin's translation. The American publishers have also neglected to alter Anglicisms that will baffle many U.S. readers -- for example, "council flats" for public housing. Most of all, though, De Gaulle has simply not done himself justice. He writes: "Beyond all the or deals and obstacles, and perhaps be yond the grave, that which is legitimate may one day be legalized, that which is rightful may in the end be proved right." Events have already proved De Gaulle right about many things, but he has put too little of himself, right or wrong, into the final volume of his memoirs.

. Keith R. Johnson

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