The End of The Affair

CHARLES DE GAULLE'S lifelong romance with France seemed finally ended. And it was Marianne herself who broke off the affair. De Gaulle always knew that he was dealing with a woman both fickle and domineering. "The emotional side of me," he once wrote, "tends to imagine France, like the princess in the stories or the Madonna in the frescoes, as dedicated to an exalted and exceptional destiny."

France responded to this romantic view of herself in moments of national crisis; then it was comforting to have so impassioned a lover as De Gaulle ready and willing to serve. But eleven years of calls to greatness are too much for a nation, or a woman. De Gaulle had even been warned. During World War II, when France had been humiliatingly crushed in a six-week Nazi blitzkrieg, De Gaulle almost single-handed kept the idea of France alive. Whenever Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin tried to shape the war without due consideration of France, they were met with De Gaulle's fierce obduracy. At war's end De Gaulle headed the provisional government. But within two years, because of party squabbles, he resigned his post and, hurt but still in love, retired to his rural retreat in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.

There he waited twelve long years for France's next summons, and it came in 1958, when he was named Premier as France struggled in the frustration of the Algerian rebellion. In September of that year, De Gaulle's new constitution was approved by nearly 80% of French voters; it radically reshaped France's administration and gave the President vast new powers. He was elected President in the expectation that only he could find a peaceful solution in Algeria. He did, but in a way that outraged French settlers in Algeria and many Frenchmen at home: he offered freedom to the Algerians.

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De Gaulle has always seen visions--of France as the leader of a European third force that could be the arbiter between East and West; of himself as a barrier against the Communists and the "conspiracy"--to his mind equally malign--of the Anglo-Americans to dominate Europe. For a surprisingly long time, the Gaullist enterprises worked, at least well enough to keep France satisfied.

His country was indeed sick of the squabbling politicians who had preceded De Gaulle and whom he had witheringly described as the old hacks whose only concern is with "their own little soup pot on their own little fire in their own little corner." The French took a modest pride in De Gaulle's nuclear force de frappe, which presumably gave the nation a voice among the world powers. It even pleased the often xenophobic French that their gold reserves were sufficient to threaten the American dollar. At least the French man in the street relished De Gaulle's blocking of Britain's plaintive attempts to enter the Common Market.

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But the trouble with the grandiose is that it commonly neglects day-today housekeeping. Over the past year this has proved overwhelmingly true of De Gaulle's personal dominance of the state. While De Gaulle was off on a junket to Rumania French students last May burst into insurrection against the retrograde bureaucracy of the universities. The revolt gained ominous momentum when the labor unions, restive at static wages and rising prices, joined the students. It seemed, during those weeks of the barricades, that De Gaulle might be deposed while absent from the country. In settling the insurrection and the general strike, the government had to accept sizable wage increases; all of this had caused panic among the middle classes, and francs were speedily converted to gold or other currencies--most often West German marks. The fabled gold reserves were depleted in defending the franc.

When he was rejected last week by the France he loved, it looked to some like the case of Athens' Aristides the lust, who was ostracized because Athenians were sick and tired of hearing him called "the lust." To others, it was simply a case of a man who has outlived his usefulness.

De Gaulle acted in character as he took his leave. Like the divorce of a celebrated and long-established couple, the split between him and his country seemed almost unbelievable. Yet he kept his dignity: he neither accused the nation that rejected him nor accused others of causing the break. Undoubtedly, he would respond if France were ever to call him again. His love of France had always been mixed with a certain highhanded contempt--not only for the politicians but for the voters. Contradictory as always, France liked that high-handedness while at the same time resenting it. The voters who finally repaid him for his arrogance will nonetheless miss his grandeur. No leader of the foreseeable future--in France or elsewhere--will be able to match his stature, his steadfastness, his faith in his destiny, or his harshly demanding way of loving--and leading--a nation.

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