ONCE MORE THE MYSTIQUE

CHARLES DE GAULLE has always laid claim to an extraordinary, almost mystical empathy with the French people. As France lay gripped by the worst economic paralysis in its peacetime history and cries for his resignation echoed in the streets of every major French city and town, that claim seemed destined, along with his once-proud Fifth Republic, for the dustbin of history. But last week, summoning all his genius for leadership, De Gaulle once more commanded the French people to heed his will for France. Astonishingly, once again they listened.

In five tumultuous days, France passed from the brink of civil war to an almost universal feeling of relief that the worst of the crisis seemed to be over. Reviled by France's students and rejected by its workers, De Gaulle saw his government crumbling beneath him, Paris hostile and ready to explode, and opposition politicians closing ranks to cut him down. A lesser man might have quit; so serious was the situation that De Gaulle in fact considered it. But like his countrymen at the Marne 54 years before, he decided to stand his ground and fight. France responded, and by sheer force of will--and with some help from the French army--De Gaulle triumphed in perhaps the greatest crisis in his long service to France.

The week began on a hopeful note that quickly turned ominous. Premier Georges Pompidou and union leaders, after all-night negotiations, agreed early Monday morning to huge and highly inflationary wage settlements in order to end the strike that had idled half of France's 16 million-man industrial work force. Then, at plant after plant, the workers rejected the settlements and called for creation of a popular-front government of Socialists and Communists. It was a shattering blow to De Gaulle. He had been operating on the assumption that he could buy off the workers, whose demands until then had been purely economic, and then cope with the rebellious students who had started the crisis in the first place. With the non from the workers, the faltering Gaullist government lost all momentum. Plainly confused and dispirited, Ministers trekked in and out of the Elysee; De Gaulle and Pompidou seemed to be at the mercy of events that they could no longer control.

Sensing that the moment had come to strike, Fran?ois Mitterrand, the leader of the non-Communist left, next day made an open bid for power. Summoning the press to a gilded salon in the Hotel Continental, he called for the establishment of a provisional government of the left to prepare for the election of a President to replace De Gaulle. He suggested former Premier Pierre Mendes-France be leader of the provisional regime--a proposal to which Mendes-France quickly agreedeand announced his own intention to run for the presidency in the elections. Other politicians took up the cry for the formation of "a government of public salvation." The Communists, who until then had refrained from making any overt attempt to replace De Gaulle, whose foreign policy has Moscow's hearty approval, began dickering with Mitterrand for portfolios in his cabinet.

Adieu, De Gaulle. One of the rituals of the Gaullist regime is the general's Cabinet meeting each Wednesday morning at 10. Incredibly, the agenda last week proposed, among other things, a discussion of the status of models in the French fashion industry. As Pompidou was preparing to leave his offices in the Hotel Matignon for the drive to the Elysee Palace, the telephone rang. It was De Gaulle. He had to get away, De Gaulle said. For two nights, he had not slept, and now, in De Gaulle's words, he "couldn't see clearly." Moments later, a news bulletin flashed across France: a reporter at the Elysee had seen the presidential Citroen bolt out of a seldom-used back gate. Before De Gaulle quit in 1946, he had retreated from Paris to his estate at Colombey-les-deux-Eglises in eastern France. Now some 250,000 demonstrators were parading through Paris in yet another anti-De Gaulle protest. On hearing the bulletin, they began to chant: "Adieu, De Gaulle; adieu, De Gaulle."

Secret Soundings. For once in his life, De Gaulle was unsure about his course of action. As he departed from the palace, he handed an aide, Bernard Tricot, two keys to a safe. In a gesture reminiscent of Cardinal Richelieu's leaving a posthumous message to the French people, De Gaulle had deposited a document, presumably his resignation, that on his telephoned signal was to be opened and read to the nation.

While rumors raced through Paris about De Gaulle's intentions, the old general was setting out to determine the mood of France's military leaders. From a Paris helipad, he flew to the force de frappe's headquarters at Taverny, on the city's northwestern outskirts. There he used the force's secret communications net to sound out senior officers. Then he climbed into the presidential Caravelle and jetted to Baden-Baden, the location of French army headquarters in Germany, for a face-to-face talk with two combat-division commanders.

Then he sped on to Mulhouse, near the German border, where his son-in-law, General Alain de Boissieu, commands the French army's 7th Division. During the meeting, at which twelve other generals were present--including Jacques Massu, the commander of French forces in Germany, who, ironically, led the army rebellion in Algeria that brought De Gaulle to power in 1958--De Gaulle asked how the army would react if there were a showdown with the French left. The generals first told him in no uncertain terms that the army would never fire on students or coerce striking workers into resuming production. But, they added, in the event that the Communists made a determined effort to overthrow the regime through street fighting and guerrilla warfare, the army was prepared to intervene with its elite tank and paratroop units. That was all De Gaulle needed to know.

"Vigor." Next morning, after spending the night at his hilltop estate in Colombey, De Gaulle returned to Paris in a fighting mood. Emerging from a quickly convened Cabinet meeting at the palace, his Ministers wore the grim visages of men preparing to enter combat. What had been De Gaulle's message? asked newsmen. "Vigor," replied a Minister. "Vigor." Inside, in clipped, angry phrases, De Gaulle was shouting into a tape recorder his speech to the nalion. Within a quarter-hour, his words were relayed throughout France.

"I shall not withdraw," said De Gaulle. "I have a mandate from the people. I shall fulfill it." Ticking off his program, he refused to replace Premier Pompidou, who deserved "the tribute of all"--and had indeed been running the government virtually singlehanded for days. Because of the widespread disorders, De Gaulle was, however, postponing his referendum, scheduled for June 16, in which he had hoped to win a out for his proposed social and university reforms. Instead, he planned to dissolve the National Assembly and call new parliamentary elections.

"France is indeed threatened by dictatorship," cried De Gaulle. The "totalitarian Communists," he warned, were waiting to ride to power on France's despair. It must have been an acute embarrassment for him to admit that the same breed of politicians with whom he had been trying so hard to make friends in the Soviet Union and the East bloc now threatened the very existence of liberty in France. Alluding to his new alliance with the army, he warned that he would use force to crush any further insurrection. "The republic will not abdicate!" he shouted hoarsely. "The people will collect themselves. Progress, independence and peace will prevail along with liberty. Vive la France!"

Not-So-Silent Majority. The speech lasted a bare three minutes, but it galvanized France. A pro-Gaullist rally had been scheduled several days earlier for that evening in Paris, but what followed De Gaulle's speech no government in the world could have orchestrated. In an outpouring of emotion, some 600,000 to 1,000,000 Frenchmen marched from the Place de la Concorde up the Champs-Elysees in the biggest parade in the capital since Parisians triumphantly walked behind De Gaulle as he led liberating Free French troops into the city 24 years ago. Businessmen in impeccable grey suits linked arms with shopkeepers and clerks. Bejeweled jet-setters marched with dowdy old ladies. There were grizzled army veterans, their jackets bedecked with medals earned long ago. World War II Resistance fighters broke out tattered F.F.I, arm bands, and old parachutists wore their red berets. "We are the silent majority!" shouted the marchers. "Liberate the Sorbonne! Down with anarchy!" A banner said, I'M SICK OF RED FLAGS. SEND THE COMMUNISTS BACK TO MOSCOW, read another.

As the demonstration unfolded on the streets, the National Assembly met to hear itself dissolved. Things had moved so quickly that De Gaulle had not had time to have his letter to the President of the Senate typed by a secretary; the order was written in De Gaulle's own scrawl. Within five minutes, the ceremony was over, and as a finale, the two opposing factions--Gaul-lists and the Opposition--struck up the Marseillaise, each side trying to outsing the other. For a moment, the anthem's fratricidal phrases conjured up to many of the Deputies visions of what might happen again in France: To arms, citizens! / Form your battalions!

Back to Work. Those fears seemed to be ungrounded. Though De Gaulle moved a tank regiment into the vicinity of Paris and alerted a few reserve units, there was no fresh rush to the barricades by his opponents, the workers and the anarchical students led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Shoring up his government, De Gaulle fired eight Ministers, including just about everyone identified with his old social and labor policies, and switched two important portfolios: Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville went to the Treasury, while Finance Minister Michel Debre moved over to the Quai d'Orsay to take Couve's place. Aside from being an astute diplomat, Couve de Murville is an exceptionally effective administrator and an inspecteur des finances whose task will be to get France's shaken economy in order. Debre, always close to De Gaulle, can be expected to pick up on the general's foreign policy without missing a beat.

France, which had fallen apart with such appalling rapidity, now seemed to coalesce with the same amazing speed. Partly, it was the result of timing. By good luck or design, De Gaulle had chosen the proper moment to move: the striking workers were running out of money (the French unions have no strike funds), and the nation as a whole was tired of the inconveniences of living in an immobilized country. Partly, too, it was the response of a nation to a heroic leader. The turnabout illumined the dilemma of the majority in an age of instant communication, when extremists can command publicity that inflates their influence out of all proportion to their numbers. When De Gaulle took his stand, the ordinary middle-class people of France finally had an opportunity to stand up and be counted in the battle for France. Their choice was plain: order, not revolution.

A return to work began to develop. Union leaders started negotiating with the government and plant owners for an end to the strike on the basis of Pompidou's earlier concessions. Some government postal and telegraph workers went back to their posts. Production resumed at several Peugeot auto plants, and the company expected a full force on the assembly lines this week.

Election Guesses. France now faces a battle of ballots, not bullets. The opposition parties, from Communists to centrists, welcomed De Gaulle's call for parliamentary elections and immediately laid plans for campaigning. Most French political experts gave De Gaulle's party only a slight chance of regaining its slim working majority in the National Assemblv. It seemed likely, in fact, that there would be a standoff between Gaullists and leftists in the race for the National Assembly's 487 seats. In that event, there would undoubtedly ensue a period of intense maneuvering until one side won enough supporters from the independent center parties to try to form a government. In the less likely event of a severe loss at the polls by his party, Charles De Gaulle would most probably interpret the results as a repudiation of his rule and step down from the presidency. "The people must speak," De Gaulle told his Ministers, adding pointedly: "We must draw the consequences."

The consequences are likely to be far-reaching for France. Despite the present surcease from violence, the country faces a crucial time of testing as it wrestles with the problems of achieving a more responsive government in a society that needs a greater measure of self-determination than De Gaulle's decade of authoritarian rule has allowed.

It was a tribute both to De Gaulle's courageous leadership and to France's good sense that the country now had the opportunity to seek those solutions not at the barricades, but by democratic process in a climate of civil peace.

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