FRANCE SIGNALS A LEFT TURN

...Such a united left would not, I believe, continue under Mitterand's banner...

...six per cent...

...That surprisingly high percentage was partly due to the fresh appeal on television of the youthful Lecanuet (who is in his mid-thirties), but mostly to his pro-Common Market, pro-united Europe stand...

...For his party, the "appropriate" nuclear role for Germany should never exceed that of a finger on the safety catch—not the trigger— of all atomic weapons on German soil...

...Read that a sleeping princess with de Gaulle as king, and the Gaullist image is complete...

...The democratic dialogue had been reestablished...

...And in the two weeks between the two ballots there was a foretaste of what will happen when de Gaulle finally departs the scene...

...He will continue to speak for France for seven more years or, perhaps more realistically, for the rest of his life (he is seventy-five...

...He is a former columnist for The New York Post and is now completing a book to be called "The Public Education of a Paris Correspondent...

...McNamara's turn...

...Should another anti-de Gaulle parliament be returned by the people, it could not be dissolved for a year—and de Gaulle would be in difficulty (or France would be, should de Gaulle take the dictatorial way out...

...Every one of the five men opposing de Gaulle opposed his force de frappe and together received fifty-six per cent of the vote...

...The next day was Mr...

...Nuclear arms or even participation by West Germany would rekindle the cold war with the Soviet Union, which holds veto power for a long time to come over German unity...

...At least six million Frenchmen proved they were not afraid to join their votes to the four million Communist electorate...

...He received many fewer far-right votes in the runoff than did left-backed Mitterand— such is the bitterness against de Gaulle of former partisans of Marshal Petain and French Algeria...

...From Paris, the view of America, in no matter what direction, East or West, Far East or Far West, is via Vietnam...

...The "unthinkable" had happened...

...But all this may be premature...

...And though Bonn's nuclear ambitions are more political than they are pro- or pre-war, they remain an explosive factor...

...The Chinese, he warned, could have medium-range ballistic missiles by 1967, and, he added, should that strike NATO as a local problem for SEATO, they might even have intercontinental missiles by 1975, which brings the problem into NATO's bailiwick...

...As for the 15.5 per cent vote for Lecanuet in the first balloting, de Gaulle picked up slightly more than half in the second round, though Lecanuet had urged his followers either to vote for Mitterand or "spoil" their ballots...

...A few days before the first election, even though de Gaulle's popularity had declined dramatically in the public opinion polls, Mitterand still thought a majority for de Gaulle so likely that he closed down his headquarters on the Champs Elysees...

...For de Gaulle, France may well be worth the burden of inflation...

...Erhard and his government, too, have toned down their demands, now that they are in a stronger position vis-a-vis the German "Gaullists...

...There is every sign that when the general goes, so will his nuclear force...

...In the meantime, across the Channel, the man who promised that if elected he would abandon the bomb, Prime Minister Harold Wilson, has decided to hold on to it, at least for a while...

...To Europeans, on the Vietnam issue, the American image has never appeared more shabby, and the notion of NATO uniting in the napalming of Vietnamese never further from their minds...

...The breakdown of thirty-two per cent for Mitterand, 15.5 per cent for Catholic-center Lecanuet, 1.7 per cent for conservative Marcilhacy, 5.1 per cent for far-right Tixier-Vignancour and 1.1 per cent for maverick candidate Barbu, left Mitterand the sole, Popular Front opponent of the incumbent President de Gaulle...

...it will disappear with de Gaulle...

...That, paradoxically, has been proved by the French elections...

...his five-man opposition, together, fiftyJOSEPH BARRY is European correspondent for The Progressive...

...In other words, Bonn should have the right to say no to annihilation, but never yes...

...Another question is how the diminished support for de Gaulle's domestic policies will affect his conduct of foreign affairs...

...Mitterand himself may have been the most surprised of Frenchmen at the outcome of the elections...

...Aware of this, de Gaulle has already begun to camouflage his own position, expressing a willingness to resume conversations with the other Five of the Common Market broken off last June...

...On December 19 de Gaulle won handily enough with fifty-five per cent to Mitterand's forty-five per cent...

...Everywhere in Europe the Vietnam war has poisoned whatever else has been positive in American policy...

...He is no longer so eager to convert it into an Atlantic Nuclear Force, as contrasted to the Multilateral Nuclear Force—both of which have sunk with scarcely a trace...

...But the greatest scandal for Britian has been Wilson's support, however weak, for the American position in Vietnam...

...In one sense, the pride of the lady of France was premature...

...If, in the end, de Gaulle was to take the Presidential seat, he was not, at least, to resume his old throne...

...On September 12, he confided to a few newspapermen at lunch, "If I can prove that joint political action with the Communists is possible, and if I succeed in winning twenty to thirty per cent of the votes, I will consider myself to have succeeded...

...Since a majority of NATO's members believe one way to intercept Chinese missiles might be to accept Red China into the community of nations, the warning fell on polite but deaf ears...

...Here, for de Gaulle, was confirmation of the danger of a tightly integrated NATO led into expanded wars by a dominant America—and that image was conveniently brought before the French voter by an American...

...In another sense, her pride was timely...

...Until recent weeks, at least, President Johnson has made General de Gaulle look like a world statesman...

...What this means before the 1967 parliamentary elections is a question still unanswered, but a united left for the first time since the split in the Twenties between the Socialists and Communists is a strong, if not probable, possibility...

...Constitutionally de Gaulle could dissolve an anti-de Gaulle parliament, declare new elections, and in the interim rule by decree...

...He was a convenient, expendable front-runner belonging to neither the Socialist nor the Communist party...

...Inside Germany, fortunately, a few more rational voices have been lifted...

...If need be (and if possible), he might constitute himself a one-man popular front, grandly granting wage increases, and generally easing up on his unpopular Finance Minister Giscard d'Estaing's stabilization plan...

...Less, one might quickly reply, than Washington would like...

...No one expects him to abandon his hostility to majority decisions, but no one knows to what extent he will temper his other political objections just sufficiently to win over the millions of pro-Common Market Frenchmen he lost to Lecanuet and to Mitterand, who had Jean Monnet's support in the final confrontation with de Gaulle...

...It was one of their strongest and most effective stands...

...The substitution of Peking for the Kremlin as the specter uniting NATO will have to wait for another time, but news of it in the French press helped de Gaulle's "peace" (anti-American) campaign...

...As it is, he conserved possibly a million working-class votes normally falling in the Communist column—and shrewdly resisted conducting an anti-Communist campaign that would certainly have alienated them...

...Out of twenty-four million voting (abstentions were a record-breaking low of fifteen per cent) General de Gaulle had received about forty-four per cent...

...All my life," he begins, "I have thought of France in a certain way . . . like the princess in the fairy tales...

...His mass following may already be in search of a new leader...

...It was Lecanuet's 15.5 per cent which forced de Gaulle into the humiliating showdown with Mitterand...

...De Gaulle would have to face a run-off election two weeks later with his leading opponent, Socialist - Communist - and - otherwise-left-backed Francois Mitterand...

...The way to that goal is still reconciliation with Russia and East Europe...

...Indeed, Washington might congratulate itself on its role in de Gaulle's victory...

...Among them is that of Fritz Erler, the Social Democratic spokesman for foreign affairs...

...The election was not the expected apathetic plebiscite for an elective monarch, but a disputed Presidential campaign...

...That prestigious weight removed, the battle will be between a left including the Communist Party (worth twenty per cent of the popular vote) and a new conservative right led not by de Gaulle's chosen successor but by non-Gaullist, pro-Atlantic alliance, pro-united Europe Jean Lecanuet, or someone similar...

...Now alerted to trouble on the domestic front, the French general knows it must be secured if he is to continue forays in foreign fields—his favorite terrain...

...Indeed, he is even talking of deploying British Polaris submarines East of Eden, despite the scandalized reaction of his own left wing in the Labor Party...

...It stirred a memory in me and later I turned to de Gaulle's Memoirs...

...It has reduced to nil everything but our military leadership and made nonsense of our claims to moral law and international order...

...Rusk appealed for at least token support in Vietnam...

...Into the final campaign grace-lessly trotted Secretaries Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, in Paris for the annual NATO get-together...

...The United States, it is felt, is continuing to play nuclear politics in promising West Germany, as it did during Chancellor Erhard's Washington visit, an "appropriate part in nuclear defense," so as to offset the future withdrawal of de Gaulle's France...

...This test could be critical...

...What concerns Europeans more than Vietnam or Communist China is nearby West Germany, though it is almost as tiresome to repeat this concern as to face it...

...It was Monday, December 6. The official results were in from the previous day's Presidential elections...

...However, Mitterand reached thirty-two per cent on December 5 ("the men and women of the left were happy to find themselves together again," he said the following day), and forty-five per cent on December 19...

...Gaullism, it has now been proved, has no grass roots...

...And once again de Gaulle benefited inside France by the spectacle of America reviving German nationalism, though he himself provides the chief provocation by his example...

...Today there is no visible successor to de Gaulle who favors an independent nuclear force...

...West Germany, however, still has a long way to go before recognizing that the real choice is between the illusion of being a nuclear power (the illusion of France) and the possibility of reunification and becoming a greater Germany...

...France's own fledgling nuclear force, it is now appropriate to point out, will not be with us forever...

...The proud French lady, watching television on the night of the run-off elections (by nine it was certain de Gaulle had been reelected), remarked, "The French people have gone to sleep again...

...The next test will be in the parliamentary elections of the spring or fall of 1967—a fairly distant date, but one for which the professionals are already preparing...

...De Gaulle will remain de Gaulle— anti-NATO, anti-united Europe and, under the new camouflage, anti-Common Market...

...Thus the French Communist Party has emerged from its isolation, which was the major objective of its decision to back Mitterand...

...To fellow ministers, who could not have been less concerned, Mr...