Waiting for Ike

It would be Ike's first trip to Europe in two years, his first to England in seven years, and everywhere the best linen sheets were being brought out and the silver polished. In Britain the President would go on TV with Harold Macmillan and rest a night as the Queen's guest on the Scottish hills of Balmoral. In Bonn some 150,000 school children provided with paper flags would get the day off to line the streets and cheer Ike's arrival. German officials scurried around for a limousine large enough to squeeze an interpreter as well as a secret policeman in alongside Ike and Chancellor Adenauer, so that on the 45-minute trip from the airport the two statesmen would not have to sit in silence because neither speaks the other's language. Charles de Gaulle planned to meet the presidential jet at Le Bourget and escort Ike up the Champs-Elysees. Meticulously checking all the arrangements himself, De Gaulle scribbled beside one scheduled event, "Not good enough."

France Isolated. By far the most important stop on the President's itinerary, because of the nature of the problems to be resolved, was France. De Gaulle, in seclusion last week at his home in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, was planning long hours of talk alone with Eisenhower. Not since De Gaulle came to power 15 months ago, to almost universal cheers inside and outside France, had he found himself so isolated. France had either antagonized or felt itself wronged by all its neighbors and allies. U.S. jets have had to abandon their French NATO bases for new, and tactically less valuable, fields in West Germany because of French harassments, born of France's stubborn insistence on atomic equality and a bigger say in affairs of the Western alliance. Britain, angry about French pretensions as well as resentful of the growing friendship between Germany and France that might reduce British influence on the Continent, was reacting with childish spite in its popular press (see PRESS).

Even De Gaulle's new friends, the Germans, were upset at what they considered France's upstage attitude. An influential group of Christian Democrats in Bonn wired Konrad Adenauer--vacationing in northern Italy--a plea to intervene in Paris. Warned the influential Die Welt: "Let us hope that De Gaulle's policies will never force us to choose between France and the U.S., for in that case we would have to say goodbye to France. We would say so with a bleeding heart. But goodbye it would be."

Africa, too, was complaining about the French. Tunisia last week canceled its customs union with France. The Premier of the new Sudanese Republic threatened to break up France's African community if the French exploded their promised

A-bomb in the Sahara. Largely because of France's own attitude, it found itself surrounded by hostility.

Modest Optimism. The experts had predicted rough going for Ike in Paris, a stormy session with De Gaulle. "It may be fourth down and time to punt," as one gloomy U.S. diplomat put it. But last week a modest and tentative optimism began to spread from those sources privy to the councils of the remote and touchy De Gaulle. It was now hinted authoritatively that when De Gaulle met his old friend Ike he would neither lay down harsh demands nor deliver wholesale attacks on U.S. policy. He would argue--as he has for months--for inclusion of France in global policymaking, and insist that closer French ties with Germany are aimed at strengthening the Western alliance, not at squeezing Britain out of Europe.

But above all, De Gaulle would want to talk Algeria. Another Algerian debate in the U.N. was only a few weeks away. France's latest military sweep against the rebels, "Operation Binoculars," has been enough to disperse the rebels but not to overcome them. Driving up from Colom-bey-les-Deux-Eglises to attend a Cabinet meeting fortnight ago, De Gaulle listened impatiently to Premier Michel Debre's rambling Algerian report, snorting, "Concluez! Concluez!" When Debre mentioned the army's requests for reinforcements, De Gaulle complained: "They already have 100,000 more men than Napoleon needed to conquer all of Europe." Bluntly, De Gaulle listed three alternatives in Algeria: to continue the fighting, to give Algeria independence, or to find a new approach which would halt the war but would fall short of independence. "The problem is how to avoid an adverse vote in the U.N.," said De Gaulle, as he ordered each minister to write out the alternative he favored least and why, and to submit it to him before the next Cabinet meeting.

Before Ike arrives in Paris, De Gaulle will have made a quick trip to Algeria, primarily to see the army. Paris was abuzz with rumors that De Gaulle, without waiting for his ministers' memos, had prepared a dramatic new plan for Algeria, and wanted the concurrence of the army, even if he could not hope to satisfy Algerian settlers. No hint of the plan accompanied its rumors, but the word was that it would first be heard by Eisenhower, who would not be asked to commit himself, but who might be sufficiently encouraged by it to assure U.S. support for French policies in Algeria. In the last U.N. vote on Algeria, which the French won by one vote, the U.S. abstained. Up to now, French demands for U.S. support foundered on the fact that the U.S. has no clear idea what French Algerian policy is. Neither has anyone else.

Could De Gaulle find a scheme that the F.L.N. rebels would not reject, that the French army would be satisfied with, and the French Algerian settlers at least willing to accept? The best guess is that De Gaulle would renew his cease-fire offer ("the peace of the brave") to the rebels, shorn of some of the previous details they had found humiliating and rejected. F.L.N. Leader Ferhat Abbas, who turned up last week in Barcelona, then disappeared, was sounding like a man prepared to be reasonable if encouraged.

Some sign that legitimate Moslem aspirations would be taken into account would be necessary to interest Ike.

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