Support from the U.S.

In northern Italy, emerging from the dark battleground sepulcher. General Charles de Gaulle fortnight ago was seen to sway a little and then steady himself against the stone portal. A photograph shot at that moment was the most commented-upon picture in the Parisian press last week. When so much hangs on one man, a whole nation anxiously watches him. At 68, Charles de Gaulle's eyesight is failing; without his thick-lensed glasses, he often fails to recognize people who shake his hand, and he suffers momentary blindness when he steps from shadow into sunlight. The old soldier maintains a killing pace: a vast correspondence, reams of official reading matter and constant travel (this week he is on another trip to Madagascar) that would exhaust many a younger man.

So far Frenchmen were showing a lively curiosity about their leader's health but no alarm (the Elysee Palace issues no bulletins on the President's fitness). He is a man under strain, a man who deliberately isolates himself, unhesitantly separating himself from his supporters as from his enemies. In foreign affairs he has been determined to demand a greater say for France in Western councils. If often annoyed, Washington (like France) believes that a difficult De Gaulle is preferable to a France with no De Gaulle.

Last week, with this in mind, the U.S. decided to give him the kind of public backing it has hitherto withheld. To Paris flew U.S. Information Agency Chief George V. Allen to address the 50th anniversary session of the Comite France-Amerique. Said Allen: "We believe General de Gaulle epitomizes much of the greatness, the strength of purpose and the high dignity of France. We are immensely heartened by the restored political stability and economic equilibrium of France." He praised "your initiative in creating another community, that of the eleven African states and Madagascar with France, which has also aroused widespread acclaim in the U.S."

Then George Allen went beyond the expected, polite tributes as he moved to the delicate subject of Algeria (De Gaulle was angered by U.S. abstention on the Algerian question in the U.N. last winter). "We recognize that France faces a problem of greater difficulty and complexity than that which burdens any other free nation," he said. "We welcomed the Constantine Plan* as a major step forward. We welcomed your affirmation of the reality of an 'Algerian personality,' " adding, "We sincerely hope that an equitable and liberal solution--one that will maintain French ties to Algeria --will be found. In his efforts to achieve this solution. President de Gaulle has the wholehearted support of the U.S."

Though Allen insisted afterwards (as diplomats will) that he had said nothing new, and that the U.S. had long backed French efforts for a liberal solution in Algeria, the Parisian press bannered his words across their front pages and took them as an augury of U.S. support in the next Algeria debate in the U.N. come September.

* Proposed by De Gaulle last October, to put $4.8 billion of investment capital into Algeria by 1964, providing new housing for a million people and expanded schooling to cover two-thirds of school-age children.

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