FRANCE: De Gaulle Under Attack

President Charles de Gaulle, for whom everything seemed turning up roses scarcely a year ago, is feeling a few thorns.

At home, the man who was installed to end the Algerian war, is being attacked because he remains indecisive about it. From right and left last week, manifestoes were flung across France demanding solutions for Algeria, and Paris witnessed its first anti-De Gaulle riot when a mob of 3,000 young right-wingers shouting “Algeria is French!” tried to march on the presidential palace and were bloodily dispersed by club-swinging cops.

De Gaulle’s onetime Tunisian supporter, President Habib Bourguiba, has now turned against him. Long eager to mediate between De Gaulle and the Algerian rebels, Bourguiba was outraged when De Gaulle refused to even see the Tunisian ambassador in Paris, Bourguiba’s own son. Bourguiba ordered him recalled. As for Algeria, Bourguiba’s patience seemed to have run out. Said he: “We will accept all action, all aid, all intervention. Whether it is under Russian or Chinese pressure, through American intervention, or finally by direct negotiations, any means is good to put an end to the war in Algeria.”

At week’s end De Gaulle heard more unpleasant news from his good friend, west Germany’s Chancellor Adenauer. French Premier Michel Debré had flown to Bonn to try to explain De Gaulle’s plans for building up the six-nation European Community at NATO’s expense and for establishing his own, $1.3 billion nuclear defense force independent of NATO. Adenauer wants no part of plans that would weaken NATO, and he produced a powerful argument: a private letter from President Dwight Eisenhower warning that any change in the structure of NATO might lead the U.S. to reconsider its commitment to keep U.S. troops stationed in Western Europe.

As if he had not heard a word of what his critics said, De Gaulle was not only undeterred but ready to add a new demand for a veto on practically all Western defense plans. Addressing a crowd at Grenoble during a swing through eastern France, De Gaulle said: “France intends that if, by misfortune, atomic bombs were to be dropped on the world, none should be dropped by the free world’s side unless she should have accepted it, and that, from her soi , no atomic bomb should be launched unless she herself should have decided it.” He was still a man who did not seem to mind a lonely eminence.