Battle for Survival

CHARLES DE GAULLE is no stranger to crisis and chaos. Other people's disorders have been his mandate for power, so much so that French Historian Herbert Luethy calls him "the politician of catastrophe." Seeing himself as the mystic, predestined savior of France, De Gaulle has twice ridden catastrophe into the Elysee Palace. He makes no secret of the fact that he regards his presence as France's head of state as the only real insurance against the basic inability of the French to govern themselves without lapsing into one of the frequent periods of violence that mark their history. "After me, the deluge," De Gaulle suggested to the French in one warning after another. Now, in spite of him, the deluge came. He could not blame it on the politicians of the past or on circumstances that were not of his making. This time the responsibility was his.

For ten years, the aspirations of France and the dictates of De Gaulle have appeared to be inseparable--a tribute to both his undeniable greatness and his penchant for saying it so often that people believed it. Last week the myth that France and De Gaulle are one lay shattered forever amid the garbage festering in the streets of Paris, the litter of uprooted paving stones, the splinters of chestnut trees hacked down to make barricades, the blood spilled on the capital's boulevards. France was a nation in angry rebellion --at times, it seemed, not far removed from civil war. It was a measure of De Gaulle's stature that he offered to submit his continued rule as President to the will of the French people. It was a measure of France's bitter new mood that this time he might be turned out.

Everywhere, France writhed in revolt and dishevelment. Half of the nation's 16 million workers were on strike, and most of the rest were idled by a massive transportation shutdown. The country's students barricaded themselves in their universities. Farmers defiantly parked their tractors across the nation's highways. Protesters surged through Paris streets by the thousands each night, battling police and riot troopers. With startling suddenness, the serenity of Gaullist France had been swept away in what the French are already calling "the Davs in May."

In France, as elsewhere, the explosion was detonated by the young, whose criticism of De Gaulle was untempered by any sense of debt. They did not know him as the leader of the Free French forces during World War II. Not many of them recalled the instability and economic weakness of the Fourth Republic that preceded De Gaulle's prosperous and stable Fifth. Instead, like the workers, who joined them soon enough, they had felt increasingly frustrated by a government on which normal public and political pressures had almost no effect. Underneath the obvious grievances, a spiritual antagonism had built up against De Gaulle during the long years of his autocracy (see box, p. 23).

Appeal for a Mandate. For nearly three weeks, as revolt spread throughout France, De Gaulle said nothing in public, true to his precept that "nothing enhances authority better than silence." Then he went on television, his image preceded and followed only by a test pattern, since the employees at the state-owned television studios had gone out on strike too. His sparse hair carefully combed over his pate, he looked rested and relaxed, a paragon of composure. "Everyone understands," he said, "the significance of the present events--in our universities and then in the social fields."

The universities have failed, he conceded. He promised that they would be overhauled.

But there was a bigger problem: "All the indications show the necessity of a mutation of our society." But, he warned, that mutation must be orderly. "Otherwise we will tumble through civil war to the most ruinous adventures and usurpations." For nearly 30 years, said De Gaulle, he had led France toward its destiny; "I am ready to do it again." But, he added, "this time, especially this time, I need--yes, I need--the French people to tell me that this is their wish." It was an extraordinary and almost touching admission from De Gaulle. Then he explained that he intended to submit some time in June a referendum to the voters in which he would spell out his proposals for modifying French life.

"I ask for a mandate for renewal," he said, but not just any mandate--it would have to be decisive. "Should your answer be no, it is self-evident that I shall not assume my functions for much longer." The strains of the Marseillaise sounded. But already, outside in the streets of Paris, the antiphonal words of the Internationale were echoing as, with heightened fury, the rioters hit the streets once more.

The First Death. "We don't give a damn about the general," chanted some 10,000 students as they marched through Paris toward the waiting cordons of helmeted riot police. The ensuing fighting was the worst by far in the three weeks of violence. Some students, singling out the Paris stock market as a symbol of capitalism, broke into the Bourse, ripped down quotation boards and built a fire inside the building. Others built barricades at the Place de la Bastille, a symbol dear to every revolutionary's heart. Getting tough, police fired tear gas, concussion grenades, slashed any head within range of their long, hard-rubber truncheons. In all, some 30 fierce battles erupted throughout Paris, and the city authorities sent out emergency calls for doctors to report to the Sorbonne medical school to treat hundreds of wounded rioters and police. All told, 130 policemen and 447 civilians were injured, 795 rioters were arrested. Fighting also broke out in other large French cities, including Lyon, where the first riot death occurred when a police commissioner was crushed in a mob of rampaging students.

In response to De Gaulle's speech, Georges Seguy, chief of France's biggest union, the Communist-led General Confederation of Workers, told its 1,000,000 members: "Keep up the pressure." Complained former Socialist Premier Pierre Mendes-France: "I am staggered. Once more, power asks for a blank check." Charged Jean Lecanuet, leader of the opposition Democratic Center: "The speech does not respond to the times."

Spontaneous Reaction. France's travails began two weeks ago as a minor exercise in the politics of protest by Maoist, Marxist and Guevarist student militants. Hoping to provoke incidents of police brutality and dramatic confrontation that are the tools of today's TV revolutionary whether he operates in Berkeley, West Berlin or Prague, the students seized the Sorbonne. In a swirl of red flags, black anarchist flags, Cuban flags and Viet Cong flags, nonstop political talk-ins began in the Sorbonne's quadrangle. More or less revolutionary graffiti soon appeared on the sandstone walls: DON'T LOOK BACK NOW, GOD, BUT THE WORLD IS COLLAPSING BEHIND YOU! THE MORE I MAKE REVOLUTION THE MORE I WANT TO MAKE LOVE!

Shaken and scared, the university called in the police, and in the bloody fighting that followed, the students gained their rallying cause--and the overnight sympathy of much of France. Alarmed, Premier Georges Pompidou, acting as De Gaulle's regent while the general was off on an ill-timed state visit to Rumania, called off the police, let the students roam freely through the Latin Quarter. Then the lesson of the Left Bank dawned on the leadership of France's workers: that a few thousand students had forced the Gaullist regime to back down. Within hours, a spontaneous reaction swept all across France, as workers by the thousands occupied factories, shut down assembly lines and raised the red flag of revolt above plant gates. What a handful of students, led by a self-styled anarchist named Daniel Cohn-Bendit, 23, otherwise known as "Danny the Red," had begun was now a vast movement of civil and economic disobedience embracing some 10 million Frenchmen.

By the time the Caravelle bringing De Gaulle back from Rumania touched down at Orly, France was already well on the way toward the most severe economic paralysis in its peacetime history. He was greeted by a gaggle of nervous Ministers. Sensing their mood, De Gaulle told them that anyone who felt "sensitive" should resign at once. None did. Then, in a caravan of black Citroens escorted by motorcycle outriders, De Gaulle and his key Ministers sped to Paris to confer with his inner Cabinet.

Emerging from the 45-minute session, De Gaulle's Ministers were besieged by reporters who wanted to know what the President had said about the crisis. "Reforme, oui; chienlit, non" was the answer. Chienlit? Some reporters did not even know exactly what the phrase meant. It is by no means listed in all French dictionaries. French newsmen who had served in the army remembered it as a particularly foul bit of barracks jargon that most newspapers found so offensive they substituted euphemisms.*

Meaningless & Poignant. Inevitably, De Gaulle's political enemies sought to use the disorders as an excuse to bring down the government of his hand-picked Premier, Georges Pompidou, 56, who more and more was acting and speaking like a dauphin in the crisis. Both the Communists, France's second largest party after De Gaulle's own U.N.R., and the Federation of the Left, led by Francois Mitterrand, tabled a joint censure motion in the National Assembly.

In another rare descent from his studied aloofness, De Gaulle had a "perroquet," or direct-line amplifier, linked up from the National Assembly to his palace office so that he could hear the debate. It was worth hearing; so long impotent, the Deputies finally had a platform, and some used it well. One was Valery Giscard d'Estaing, former Gaullist Finance Minister and leader of the 43-member Independent Republicans, who are allied with the Gaullists. As he rose to speak, he glanced at the ornate skylight through which flooded the late-afternoon rays of the spring sun. "Never has the light that falls from that skylight seemed to me to illuminate such an unreal world," he said.

Edgar Pisani, De Gaulle's onetime Agriculture Minister (1961-66), defected from the Gaullist U.N.R. Party in order to support the censure. In a highly emotional speech, he damned the Gaullists for letting the situation "pourrir" (go to pot). "Your government," he cried, "had all the forces, all the chances that French governments have always lacked. It took credit for peace, for monetary stability, for increasing investments, for institutions adapted to the modern world. But this government was not able to foresee, to cope. It was preoccupied with lasting rather than governing." Socialist Mitterrand boldly proposed to take over: "We are ready to take on the responsibilities of power." Crowed Communist Leader Wai-deck Rochet, who earlier had proposed a popular-front government with Red participation: "The Gaullist government has had its day."

He was wrong, at least for that day. Picking up eight votes from Jacques Duhamel's Centrist independents, the government of Premier Pompidou survived with eleven votes to spare. Socialist Guy Mollet discounted the results. "Outside this Assembly," he cried, "the censure has already been voted." In a way, Pompidou almost agreed. "Things will never be exactly the same again," he conceded.

Then came the first hopeful development in the revolt. During the debate, Pompidou had gently urged that the labor leaders sit down with him to talk about a settlement. Seguy sent a message that he was ready to bargain; the leaders of the two other big unions expressed similar sentiments. The unions also formulated their demands: a 50% minimum-wage hike, a 40-hour week (v. 45 to 48 hours at present), improved medical benefits, retirement at 60 (v. 65). Such bargaining might yet lead France back into a rational, if highly inflationary, world.

Praise from Sartre. The workers' bread-and-butter attitude contrasted sharply with the flight into fantasy by the student rebels. The New Left students in France could take credit for being the first of their genre to start a revolt of such great proportions, but like New Left students elsewhere, they proved to be far better at criticism than construction.

Aiming for nothing less than the abolition of capitalist society, they had no reasonable secondary goal to fall back to. Instead, at sit-ins in the historic Odeon Theater and the Sorbonne amphitheater, they prattled endlessly about how rotten the world is. Some professors and left-wing intellectuals joined in the discussion. Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre dropped by the Sorbonne. To Danny the Red, Sartre said: "Something has come forth from you that is astonishing and overwhelming. It denies everything that our society, as it is today, has done. It is what I will call the extension of the limits of the possible. Do not renounce it."

Despite Sartre's praise, the decisive role in the revolt was played by the workers, who plainly preferred to avoid any direct ties with the young radicals. Soccer players occupied the headquarters of the soccer association, forced the cancellation of all matches. Leggy strippers occupied the Folies Bergere, locking out the customers. Sewage workers staged a sewerside sit-in. Buses, trains, taxis and all French commercial aircraft came to a halt. At first, French automobilistes created huge traffic snarls as they tried to go about in their cars; then, as gas supplies gave out, the streets became uncommonly deserted. In Paris and other cities, garbage accumulated in huge, fetid piles. Prices of some food items doubled and tripled in most cities. Even so, French housewives indulged in panic buying, not knowing how long the economic paralysis might last.

True to Type. All over Paris, there were scenes reminiscent of the street battles of the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. On the Boulevard St. Germain, a workman dressed in blue overalls attacked the pavement with a heavy, pointed bar in an attempt to free the first paving stone, which would liberate the others. As soon as he had succeeded, a grandmotherly woman took her place in a line of Parisians that quickly formed to pass the stones to others who were building a barricade. On the Boulevard St. Michel, a student sat atop the barricade, casually ignoring the danger. Police lobbed grenades. Another student dropped in pain. Still another was hit in the face. On the Left Bank, a medical student in blood-smeared white coat pleaded with the demonstrators. "For God's sake, stop it. You'll all be massacred. The hospitals can't take any more."

Using their own cars, emblazoned with newly painted red and green crosses, the students ran an improvised ambulance service for wounded demonstrators. Careening through the crowded streets, their horns blaring, the cars were as much a menace as an aid to the demonstrators. On the Boulevard St. Germain, one bearded student tried to clear a lane for the cars by shouting: "If you get your head busted by an ambulance, it's not a political act."

Battle veterans developed a kind of immunity to tear gas. In the Latin Quarter, students tossed rocks at police as tear-gas grenades exploded all around them. That same tear gas was choking newsmen watching far down the street. Along the Boulevard St. Michel, riot police caught students and mercilessly clubbed them; the students made not one sound, as if the blows had suddenly made them dropouts from life, from feeling.

No Provocation. Banging their clubs in rhythm, the riot police moved through the Latin Quarter. One of them tossed a gas grenade into a cafe and shouted "Salut!" At a Left Bank emergency-aid center, police tossed in five tear-gas grenades, then clubbed the doctors, nurses and patients as they came out for air.

Protesters shouted: "Ten years, that's enough!" "De Gaulle to the museum." At the Rue du Louvre, two columns of demonstrators--perhaps 5,000 in all--suddenly converged. A flushed young girl directed them. "Hurry, hurry," she screamed, "but remember, no provocation." Her animation seemed to confirm a French sociologist's wry diagnosis that violence has become the orgasm of the young.

The other Paris--one of May, chestnut trees, festive crowds on the Champs Elysees--managed somehow to coexist alongside the one of violence. Sleek Parisians in tight pants and leather jackets flitted about in Porsches and Jags in the nonbattle zones, picked their way among the mounds of garbage. When there were lulls in the fighting, chic youngsters, parading and gossiping as if it were St. Tropez in August, flocked back to the Left Bank coffeehouses. Other Parisians and foreign tourists took pictures of the burned-out autos and battered barricades. Many gawkers even ventured into the battle zones during the height of the fighting. Revolution-watching, it seemed, was becoming Paris' favorite sport.

Economic Effects. In many Western capitals the initial reaction to le grand Charles's discomfiture was that he had it coming to him, after his arrogant treatment of the rest of the world. But as the depth of France's travail became clear, the initial Schadenfreude (glee at someone else's misfortune) among Western statesmen turned to an attitude of deep and watchful concern. An unstable France could be a far greater menace to the West than one of Gaullist grandeur. For France, the economic consequences were severe. Because of the nationwide shutdown, French industry was losing an estimated $450 million a day in output. As a result, the franc retreated on the world's money exchanges, touching the lowest point since its devaluation nine years ago.

France's neighbors were almost immediately affected. British autos and cases of Scotch piled up at English ports, unable to make the crossing to Britain's second biggest customer. West Germany feared that its brisk economic recovery might be imperiled by the French upheavals. The Scandinavian countries, as well as the other Common Market members, braced for the sharp jolt of reduced trade with France.

Threat of Fires. But the greatest immediate concern was political. Two of the main problems that turned France upside down--student unrest and inflation--are endemic to most of Europe. Indeed, until three weeks ago, European students elsewhere had been far more ferocious than the French ones. Now, in an ominous emulation, Belgian students last week seized the university in Brussels, and New Left students in England placed the black flag of anarchy atop the London School of Economics. Warned the West German weekly Rheinischer Merkur: "France does not stand outside the political streams and conflicts of the Western world. The call for reform in Paris is just as loud as we hear it in Bonn, in Rome or in Madrid. Flash fires threat en every country."

Get-Tough Policy. In the referendum that De Gaulle hopes to submit to French voters, probably on June 16, he will in all likelihood spell out some of the reforms that he intends to accomplish. Though his ultimate goal obviously must be to loosen up France's rigid and exclusive social structure, he will probably stick to relatively concrete proposals. For the workers, he is likely to offer some form of effective participation in the management of the plant, perhaps through strengthened worker-proprietor councils. For the students, he almost certainly will offer a far greater voice in university affairs, plus such reforms as a full-scale modernization of the curriculums; easier entry for children of lower middle-class and working-class parents (presently only about 10% of the university population); an exam system that seems less designed to eliminate large numbers of students. For France's farmers, he will most likely propose some type of commodity support--even though the Common Market agreements frown on such practices.

The price for such concessions will come high, particularly for meeting the wage demands of the workers. At week's end the union leaders, meeting with Pompidou and employer representatives, had already won the promise of a 20% increase in France's minimum wage. The bill for that, and the subsequent rounds of inflation that a massive increase in purchasing power is bound to touch off, will almost certainly erode the value of the franc, might even lead ultimately to its devaluation.

Bottled Frustrations. Can De Gaulle win his referendum? If it were to take place at once, TIME'S Paris bureau guesses, despite the wave of protests against him, that there might be enough conservative Frenchmen to give him a fifty-fifty chance. The unanswerable question is how the mood of France will develop in the next few weeks. The passage of time may work in De Gaulle's favor; the general strike can hardly continue for three more weeks until the referendum. If a semblance of order returns, so may the basic realization that however the Gaullist regime has failed France, no other government in the visible future is likely to do much better.

On the other hand, a narrow victory might not be enough to re-establish his authority. And anti-De Gaulle feelings, now largely the province of the liberal, the youthful, and the workingman, could spread in startling ways. The angry days of May have probably loosed all the diverse special interests and political frustrations bottled up for a decade. Unions, now that they have learned their strength, are likely to go on wresting both managerial prerogatives and higher pay from the patronat--the owners--whose power has remained fairly unchallenged under Gaullism. But there is also likely to be a backlash from the conservative elements in the population --the petits bourgeois, the landlords, the little businessmen--against the radical forces that demand swift changes. In this confrontation, the radical students themselves are likely to be targets of a sharp reaction, perhaps even from the more moderate elements in the student body that would prefer to study rather than riot.

Politically, the competition ahead in France's multiparty political arena may well bring back memories of the crisis-laden Fourth Republic. As a result of the revolt, most French political experts feel that the Gaullist party will never again place enough members in the National Assembly to form a working majority. If the present Assembly were dissolved at any time soon, the feeling at the moment among most French politicians is that the so-called combined left--Communists plus Mitterrand's assortment of Socialists-would command a solid majority in which the Communist ratio would be higher than it is now. At present, it is 73 Reds v. 121 Socialists. As a result, Communist leverage in a regime of the left would be considerable. In the event of popular-front government, Mitterrand looms as the most likely candidate for Premier.

The catch, of course, is that the Premier is appointed by the President. There is a widespread conviction in France that De Gaulle will never select anyone but a Gaullist to serve as head of government. If De Gaulle should resign and new presidential elections were held, the situation would be completely different. As a result, speculation about France's political future inevitably centers on who might win the presidency apres De Gaulle. Mitterrand, while effective with other politicians, has a slightly tarnished "old pol" image among French voters. Similarly, the candidates from the right--Pompidou, Giscard d'Estaing--for the moment, at least, seem to have little appeal to French voters. The man that some politicians in Paris were mentioning last week as a possible successor to De Gaulle is a vintage statesman who served well in some of the most dif ficult moments of the Fourth Republic: Pierre Mendes-France, now 61.

Private Tragedy. Whatever the outcome, the present widespread rejection of De Gaulle amounted to a private tragedy for a man who, at 77, is in the twilight of his service to France. All his life, De Gaulle conceived of France, in his words, as "the princess in the fairy stories or the Madonna in the frescoes." He was convinced that "the in terest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service, and that I would have the occasion to do so."

Twice De Gaulle has heard France call. The first time was in 1940, when, an unknown brigadier general, he climbed into a Royal Air Force plane near Bordeaux and escaped to England, where he organized the Free French forces that ultimately helped free his occupied homeland. The second was in 1958, when the colons and paratroopers in Algeria rose in revolt. But now, a decade after his second call to service, France is caught up in almost as much chaos as--and perhaps more than--when De Gaulle came to power in 1958. The question is, Can De Gaulle once again save France--this time from himself?

-Chienlit is derived from a three-word phrase, chie en lit, which means literally "crap in bed." As a compound word, however, the term has acquired a somewhat more generalized and sanitary connotation. When preceded by the feminine article la, the term connotes messing about or stirring up a carnival. But when used with the masculine article le, the term is more vulgar, denoting one who soils his bed or goes about with a dirty shirttail hanging out. By omitting the article, De Gaulle left his meaning purposefully ambiguous. As a rejoinder to the general, rebellious students and workers have coined a new chant: "La chienlit, c'est lui!" (The one making the mess is he).

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