De Gaulle in 1969

...Leading Gaullists would like to see de Gaulle permitted to withdraw from public life without loss of face...

...If the other countries delay a new Bretton Woods meeting or balk at the proposals the French will make at such a conference, de Gaulle is bound to raise again the specter of a Popular Front in France...

...but as an old French proverb declares...

...What are the chances for such a development...

...Rueff argues that in the past 30 years American foreign trade alone has gone up from $5 billion to $55 billion a year, that is, 1 100 per cenl...

...Twice in one year they tried to shake off the towering giant who has imposed his will upon them for the past decade...

...Grenoble, Lyon, Nantes, and many other provincial cities...

...lift its veto against Britain's entry into the Common Market, a move they deem more necessary than ever as a counterweight against West Germany...

...In May...

...For the time being, the General still has a great deal going for him...

...The mere fact that severe exchange controls have been re-established will badly impede France's trade with its Common Market partners and the rest of the world...

...It was a beautiful sight, but many had the eerie feeling that the countdown behind that facade had already started...

...The manner in which he dismissed Georges Pompidou last summer—because the Premier had made his role as heir apparent a little too apparent—revealed how strongly the old leader still clings George W. Herald, a previous contributor here, is a veteran foreign correspondent now based in Paris...

...One man who intuitively grasped all this at once was President Johnson...

...Having gone through agonies similar to de Gaulle's last spring, he understood immediately that the French leader's place in history was at stake...

...Up to now, de Gaulle is said to have simply taken note of the Russian offer...

...But they know the General will not step down so long as the frailty of the franc threatens the country with chaos...

...But that does not detract in their eyes from the role he has played in earlier moments of their history...

...They are not sure what the future has in store for the country, or whether new violent upheavals can be avoided...

...The big labor syndicates have already started complaining that the new austerity measures hit the working class hardest...

...The November speculators were no more successful in upsetting the regime, because they too did not properly gauge de Gaulle's psychology and popular opinion...

...This has prompted the Paris business journal Les Echos to write: "We cannot at the same time want one thing and its opposite...

...The Bank of France still keeps $3 billion of gold in its vaults...

...They now showed that they had not really demonstrated for de Gaulle that day but for their pocketbooks...

...He realized that, two months before a change of administration in Washington, a "wild" devaluation of the franc would cause havoc without really helping France...

...When that time comes, he can be expected to broadcast discreet warnings to Nixon that a massive devaluation of the franc cannot be held off much longer unless a new International Monetary Conference is called at the earliest possible date...

...His self-image at 78 still forbids him to wear glasses and read from a prepared text in public...

...Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin, who recently paid him two visits in one week, has offered France huge new trade outlets in Russia...

...Regardless of their convictions, most of them want him to be allowed to retire as gracefully as a Churchill or an Adenauer...

...The Sorbonne is still closed, and not a day passes without incidents between students and teachers in Nanterre...

...But so did they before May...

...That is precisely the issue on which an opposition in de Gaulle's own ranks has begun to crystallize itself...

...The odds are heavy, therefore, that General de Gaulle will make his plea for a new Bretton Woods meeting as early as February or March 1969...

...Before the crisis, the French budget for 1969 anticipated an increase of the Gross National Product of 7 per cent...

...So far de Gaulle has flatly refused to give way on any of these points, which touch at his fundamental concepts, and no progress is expected in these fields as long as he stays at the helm of France...

...Both failed...

...But he knows that hard-nosed bankers want to see a fellow make at least an honest try to balance his budget before he comes to them with his troubles...

...Thus de Gaulle has preserved a valuable card in his game—a card he plans to play at a time of his own choice...

...Televiewers were simply shown the facade of the Elysee Palace, with all the windows brightly lit...

...He will warn that to prevent such a disaster, he will be obliged to cut the franc's value by a large percentage and may have to govern by decree "to save the Republic...

...If and when the new world money confab convenes, a prominent member of the French delegation will undoubtedly be the well-known financier and member of the French Academy Jacques Rueff, who has preached for years that the West's monetary ills cannot be cured without raising the price of gold from $35 to $50 or $70 an ounce, or even more...

...These critics have no objections to the General's gold gambit...

...Yet it would be naive to credit the General's restraint to some sudden access of sympathy for the dollar...

...Francois Mitterand has lost his influence, Pierre Mendes-France has wasted much of his political credit in the crisis, and Guy Mollet no longer has any following outside the Socialist party...

...That is why they hope he will soon be bailed out by a monetary conference that puts the world's major currencies on a new basis...

...And another reason for President Johnson's cable to him, no doubt, was Washington's feeling of relief when he rejected the advice...

...But no one in Paris cares to predict what he will one day consider France's national interest...

...Such clashes would obviously make headlines in the international press, though, and could easily lead to another crisis for the franc...

...The French, who still admire Napoleon and are getting ready to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth with great pomp in 1969, are not going to chase their Liberator from office like a common politician...

...The May revolt collapsed because it offered no workable alternative and misjudged the mood of the French masses...

...But the syndicates have it in their power to jeopardize the austerity program whenever they see fit...

...He has ordered the French Army and Navy to resume to a certain extent their cooperation with nato in Central Europe and in Naples...

...Is France's grand old man going to suffer the same fate as his two contemporaries, Winston Churchill and Konrad Adenauer, who were eased out by their party friends...

...Quite evidently, there will never be enough gold liquidity to take care of world trade demands, and certain subsidiary arrangements will be needed," he says...

...Down deep in his heart, he does not see any good reason for putting his countrymen in an economic strait jacket while Americans, with a much bigger deficit than his own, seem engaged in a permanent spending spree...

...help create a European currency...

...Nevertheless, events in 1968 proved that the French are growing more and more restless under the General's rule...

...in November, by a frightened bourgeoisie to the Right...

...Most Frenchmen are in agreement today that the General has committed many errors in the past few years, mainly because he is an impatient old chief who sees time running out...

...Rueff does not want a return to an integral gold standard, as has often been alleged...

...Paris political experts predict that a third attempt to obtain the General's departure will soon be made, and that it will originate this time in his own ranks...

...But they don't believe that a rise in the gold price will be a panacea for all of France's ills...

...Most students have gone quietly back to work, and most faculties in the country are functioning normally...

...to power...

...As usual, of course, the General is expected to leave himself an escape hatch to the Left...

...The French try is not only honest but impressive...

...So far, no more than 15 per cent of the $3.5 billion that left the country in November has come back...

...If, on top of this, he was forced to lower the franc rate, that would have been, in the words of one of his aides, "the debacle of Gaullism and the end of de Gaulle...

...As usual, his outlook was eminently practical...

...After that, however, his entourage sees good prospects that Madame de Gaulle may finally persuade her Old Soldier to fade away into a well-deserved retreat in Lorraine...

...Austerity' and 'expansion' are contradictory terms...

...At any rate, the austerity rules are bound to hamper French expansion plans...

...Until now, they have ordered only a few token strikes, and French labor has a tradition of not engaging in long strike campaigns during the cold of the winter...

...They are now seriously wondering whether de Gaulle's personal foreign policy of the past few years, rather than strengthening France, as was its purpose, has not actually weakened it...

...Once the franc is saved, the General plans to hold a popular referendum on the reform of the Senate and the decentralization of France, two projects close to his heart...

...According to some stories, he also informed the General of Moscow's readiness to furnish him with all the gold he needs in a showdown with the dollar...

...Encouraged by these tokens of loyalty, de Gaulle is now playing an intricate game...

...Many of the people who frantically changed their francs into marks had marched up the Champs Elysees on May 23, waving Gaullist flags and singing patriotic songs...

...actions has altogether ceased...

...They claim that the 15 per cent pay rise they obtained last June is rapidly melting away under the impact of higher fares, taxes and prices...

...In their eyes, the country must also cut its enormous defense costs by rejoining a reformed nato...

...They have been shaken by the May events in France, the Russian invasion of Prague, the reinforcement of the Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean, and the arrival of Russian technicians at the Algerian naval base of Mer-sel-Kebir...

...Still, leading French economists from Raymond Aron to Valery Giscard d'Estaing have serious doubts that the new austerity program alone can restore the franc's health in the near future...

...In November, Washington was afraid that the General, in his dismay, might wreck the whole international monetary system by devaluating the franc as much as 30 per cent...

...They wish him luck, if only for the sake of all those Frenchmen who are keeping an estimated $6 billion of the stuff hoarded in their stockings and laundry baskets...

...Both are again participating in the maintenance of the shape alert system, and the French Navy has just played a major role at Allied fleet maneuvers in the Mediterranean...

...There cannot be many finance ministers like Francois Ortoli, who chopped an 11-billion-franc budget deficit down to 6 billion practically overnight...

...Minister of Interior Raymond Marcellin has pledged that his police forces will nip any major student disturbances in the bud...

...But most experts in France believe his gambit has an excellent chance to succeed...

...As his objectives become visible in the months ahead, they will probably exasperate many people, especially in America, and there will be cries of "blackmail...

...In the meantime, the General tries to do all the right things...

...Some of his closest collaborators, in fact, advised him to do so...

...There is never two without three...

...Old age is a shipwreck," the General himself said several years ago, adding that he would retire the moment he felt his memory was failing him...

...The non-Communist Left has been paralyzed ever since, and although it is now trying to regroup itself, it suffers from a shortage of trusted leaders...

...In an effort to assure a friendly reception of his plea, he has already made a number of concessions...

...the convulsion was caused by the students and workers on the Left...

...THE PROSPECTS FOR FRANCE De Gaulle in 1969 By George W. Herald Paris The night General de Gaulle explained to his countrymen why he did not devaluate the franc after all, his voice sounded hoarse and creaky...

...It took only a small group of activists to disrupt the whole teaching establishment...

...He could not very well do otherwise when Bonn and Washington have just contributed the larger part of a $2-billion credit to France...

...But many of his associates wonder whether that moment will ever come, or whether others will have to remind him of his statement...

...In contrast, global gold reserves have risen only from $26 billion to $55 billion, or 60 per cent...

...But they will never be more than subsidiaries, and one simply cannot undertake any serious monetary reform without a revaluation of gold...

...At the end of a harassing week, he talked only over the radio because he reportedly did not want to show his tired face on television and felt too worn out to memorize his speech...

...The latest French public polls since then have shown that 70 per cent of the people approve the decision not to devaluate...

...Moreover, the French public at large has its own code of behavior...

...Under these conditions, he considers an increase of the gold price overdue...

...That is the key reason why there actually was never the slightest chance that the General would concede a unilateral devaluation of the franc...

...The humiliation was particularly severe for a man who only one or two years ago liked to admonish others "to put their house in order...

...More and more prominent Gaullists would like to put an end once and for all to the ambiguities of French foreign policy...

...New cuts in housing, highway construction and telecommunications are liable to widen even further the gap between France and its major competitors...

...Now Ortoli himself says he will be happy with a 4 per cent increase, and even that figure is considered "optimistic...

...This was one of the main motives for his spectacular gesture of support for de Gaulle in the crisis week...

...As the June elections revealed, a large majority of Frenchmen are afraid of disorders and reject any deal with the Communists...

...It was already a hard enough blow to his ego and his notions of independence that the franc could only be sustained through loans from the United States and, of all countries, West Germany...

...At the same time, French diplomats have been busy improving the atmosphere between Paris and Washington, and French official criticism of U.S...

...On the university scene, the picture is not yet clear either...

...What they forgot in their calculations was that he would rather die than end his career on a note of failure...

...As one veteran Paris observer commented: "It was as if Bismarck had fired the young Kaiser...

...and actively promote a far-reaching political integration of Western Europe...

...He preferred to keep his options open by waiting until Richard Nixon is installed in the White House...

...In addition, the threat of new strikes and street disorders continues to hang over France...