The Students Again

It was partly a springtime lark, partly a new upwelling of the ras le bol (fed up) spirit that turned French campuses into battlefields in the anarchic days of May 1968. With a spontaneity and speed that startled even their left-wing organizers, high school students all over France poured out of their classrooms last week to vent their rage against a new draft law. In Paris, where all but five of the city's 60 lycees were shut down, some 80,000 teen-age boys and girls defied a government ban to gather on the Left Bank for a protest march that was to end up at the Defense Ministry. Squads of tough riot police made sure that the demonstrators never got anywhere near their objective, but there were some sharp skirmishes that left bloodied heads and at least a whiff of the tear gas that had drifted in clouds over the city five years earlier.

Back then, the cry was, "De Gaulle to the museum!" This time the target, like the crowds, was much smaller. "Debre salaud, on aura ta peau!" (Debre, you bastard, we'll have your hide). Gaullist Defense Minister Michel Debre, a perennial villain of the French left, was under fire for sponsoring the new draft law.

No one objects to the fact that the law shortens the term of compulsory army service from 18 to twelve months. The controversy is over the fact that it makes students eligible for deferments only up to the age of 21, instead of 25 as before. When the law was formulated by the Gaullists three years ago, many left-wing politicians supported it. They charged that deferments meant that working-class youths had to provide a disproportionate share of the 300,000 Frenchmen drafted every year.

Now, partly because they are eager to seize on any issue to harry the Gaullists in the wake of their recent election success, union leaders and left-wing politicians are backing the students. The student demands are not uniform, but most seem to want all youths to be able to choose any year between 18 and 25 for their military service.

There is no sign as yet that French workingmen are ready to join the students in the streets as they did in 1968. But the students may yet make good on the forecast that they chanted through Paris last week: "Chaud, chaud, chaud, le printemps sera chaud!" (It's going to be a long, hot spring).

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