Oui to De Gaulle

Premier Charles de Gaulle asked France for a vote of confidence and this week got a thunderous shout of approval. An overwhelming 80% of French voters plumped for his version of the Fifth Republic. In De Gaulle's home village of Colombey-les-deux-Eglises, where the Premier was an early-morning voter at the town hall, 'the count on his referendum was oui, 195; non, 1. De Gaulle telephoned friends in Paris to assure them he was not the dissident voter.

The Gaullist sweep buried the opposition. De Gaulle won even in the virulently Red district of Communist Boss Maurice Thorez. In Louviers, whose mayor is bitterly anti-Gaullist Pierre Mendes-France, 69% of the ballots were marked oui.

The results in the overseas territories were as astonishing. Only French Guinea, in the control of tough anti-Gaullist Premier Sekou Toure, voted no. Senegal, Niger, even supposedly sullen Madagascar came through with thumping oui majorities.

In Algeria, where the French had feared the worst, the turnout was remarkable. French army jeeps had prowled the dusty streets of F.L.N.-haunted towns with loudspeakers urging: "Men and women! You must vote for the referendum today. Do not be afraid of the fellaghas. For your better future, for the happiness of your children, vote yes!"

The F.L.N. countered with a warning that if Moslems voted they were "committing suicide." From Cairo, headquarters of the new Algerian "government in exile," Premier Ferhat Abbas denounced the referendum as an "intolerable pressure" on the F.L.N.'s fight for independence. "Algeria is not France. The Algerian people are not French," he cried. A French troop convoy was ambushed 90 miles east of Oran and 19 soldiers killed; a portable polling booth was blown up near the Tunisian border; in Tlemcen, a crowd watching an election movie was sprayed with F.L.N. machine-gun fire.

But the outpouring of Moslem voters stunned the most optimistic Frenchmen. Even in the mountains of Kabylia, once an F.L.N. stronghold, Moslem women swathed in traditional robes waited patiently to cast the first vote of their lives. At Mostaganem, one pregnant Moslem woman defied doctor's orders to take her place in line and produced her baby right in the polling station. In impressive numbers, they voted for De Gaulle.

With the impetus of victory, De Gaulle plans to fly this week to Algeria, the riven land which destroyed the Fourth Republic and which, its division unresolved, is the Fifth's biggest problem.

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