The Personal Touch

As other Europeans railed against Charles de Gaulle's vision of a French-led Europe, many Frenchmen last week were uneasily contemplating De Gaulle's influence on their own society. Since the November election turned the National Assembly into a virtual annexe of the Elysee Palace, De Gaulle has ruled with little parliamentary criticism and with only muted rumblings from France's once rambunctious press.

It has become clear that Le grand Charles has established a personal regime in which, though it is not remotely so autocratic a government as that of Francisco Franco, almost any potential controversy is similarly quelled by the government lest it be interpreted abroad as a direct expression of national policies. With virtually unlimited powers under France's emergency laws, De Gaulle's government in recent months has:

> Canceled the showing of a TV documentary to mark the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad. Prepared by the state-owned TV network, the film included a tirade by Nikita Khrushchev that, in the government's words, was "violently hostile to West Germany and to the policy of Franco-German rapprochement.''' Same week, another documentary movie. Death in Madrid, consisting mostly of stock shots taken during the 1936 Spanish Civil War, was denied a license for exhibition in France or abroad--presumably for fear of offending Franco.

> Ordered the Paris Opera to cancel a performance by Rudolf Nureyev, a Russian ballet dancer who defected to the West in 1961. Though Nureyev has already danced in Paris, London and New York, the French government plainly felt that his appearance in Paris now would be an affront to Nikita Khrushchev.

>Confiscated nearly 75,000 copies of a novel, High Court, in which Right-Wing Author Alfred Fabre-Luce gives a fictional account of a future trial of De Gaulle as it might be conducted if he were impeached by the Senate. The government's object this time was to avoid offense to Charles de Gaulle himself.

Some of the government's repressions are explicable as international backscratching. De Gaulle's increasing amiability toward Spain has been rewarded by Franco's jailing of six top anti-Gaullist terrorists who were hiding out in Spain. Banning the Stalingrad show may just possibly have been repaid last week when German police failed to prevent mysterious French agents in Munich from kidnaping a top S.A.O. leader, Antoine Argoud (see below). But it seemed unlikely that Khrushchev would care greatly if Nureyev danced in Paris, or that Adenauer would object to being damned by Nikita on TV. On the other hand, when a government is not subject to censure or legal redress, who expects logic?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.