FRANCE: The Beautiful Road

An instant before 8 o'clock one night last week the radio and TV sets of France momentarily fell silent. Then, over hundreds of thousands of loudspeakers, a solemn voice boomed: ''French unity was breaking. Civil war was about to start. In the eyes of the world France appeared on the point of dissolution. It was then that I assumed the task of governing our country."

In the six minutes that followed, 67-year-old Charles de Gaulle, who knows how to make an effective short speech, briskly ticked off the awesome array of problems that bedevil France—rebellion in Algeria, strained relations with Tunisia, impending economic catastrophe, an unworkable system of government. In a burst of eloquence, he concluded: " 'Is not all this too much for us?' murmur those who. because they believe nothing can succeed, end up by wanting nothing to succeed . . . No, it is not too much for France, for this marvelous country that despite its past trials and the disorder of its affairs has in hand all the elements of an extraordinary renewal . . . The road is hard, but it is beautiful. The goal is difficult, but it is great. Let us go. The starting signal has been given."

Principle v. Tactics. This was stirring stuff, bui whether it would stir any vast number of Frenchmen up that hard but beautiful road was still to be seen. After the first wave of gratitude at a firm hand. French politicians were already beginning to like the thought of the politics that would be resumed when De Gaulle relinquishes his temporary mandate. On the far left, tubby Communist Boss Jacques busily trying party as the voice of "the republican masses," opened a drive for a popular front to defeat De Gaulle's proposed constitutional reforms. (After a long, nervous and undecided silence. Moscow's Pravda las: week published a Duclos interview labeling De Gaulle's government ''the embodiment of the blackest reaction." ) At the other end of the political spectrum, fascist-inclined Pierre Poujade dissolved his 31 -man bloc in the National Assembly, said it was time to re sume ''the anti-parliamentary campaign." Nowhere was the after-De Gaulle maneuvering more conspicuous than in the shell-shocked Socialist Party. One of its wings, led by ex-Premier Guy Mollet, had joined forces with De Gaulle, making his return to power possible, in the conviction that only thus could civil war be avoided. The other — and larger — wing fought De Gaulle's investiture, and it continued to oppose him last week in the belief that only this would permit the Socialists, and not the Communists, to lead an eventual left-wing reaction against De Gaulle.

In Brussels, at a meeting of the Socialist International, leaders of most of Western Europe's Socialist parties last week made it clear that they believed principle to be on the side of the anti-Gaullists. De Gaulle, argued Britain's Hugh Gaitskell sternly, had come to power by "a fundamentally undemocratic procedure." The International, insisted West Germany's Erich Ollenhauer, "must take a position against De Gaulle." "We cannot be silent," echoed Aneurin Bevan.