Revolution and Reaction in France

On the surface at least, the Gaullist régime in France now looks substantially stronger than before the May crisis. The June elections gave General de Gaulle and his then Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, a massive parliamentary majority that for the next five years seemingly insures M. Pompidou's successor, former Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, against every normal political hazard-except, perhaps, the eventual loss of his master's confidence. What is probably even more important, the deep national consensus indicated by the scale and circumstances of the Gaullist electoral victory has clearly restored the General's momentarily shaken faith in his own thaumaturgic powers. If a new confrontation between the state and the revolutionary students and workers develops during the next few months, as it may, General de Gaulle can no doubt count this time on a prompt reawakening of the "national instinct" that responded so sluggishly to his leadership last spring. The loyalty of the police, which wavered for a few dangerous days in May after Pompidou's apparent surrender to the students, has been consolidated by appropriate administrative measures during the summer months; the loyalty of the army, which had to be won over at the crucial moment by the amnesty promised General Raoul Salan and other former rebels or conspirators against de Gaulle's Algerian policies, is thought to be fully dependable today. The split between the orthodox Communists and the revolutionaries of the New Left, which probably helped more than either General de Gaulle's charisma or General Massu's armored force-in-being to save the bourgeois republic in its hour of peril, seems to have become even more bitter and unbridgeable since the elections. There is no direct and overt threat to the General's authority from the Right. The personal rivalries and ideological tensions that unquestionably exist within the majority do not seem incoercible. The economic and financial problems that confront the Government are serious, but not, as far as one can judge, unmanageable.