FRANCE: The Peace of the Brave

The small gilt-and-yellow ambassadors' lobby in the Hotel Matignon could not hold all the newsmen who had come. Some crowded into adjoining rooms; others stood in the courtyard outside, to which loudspeakers carried the cadenced voice. It was Charles de Gaulle's first press conference in five months, and vastly different from the last one, when he appeared surrounded by guards, and the streets of Paris were heavily policed against the threat of parachutists attempting a coup d'état.

This time De Gaulle spoke without notes; yet his thoughts were orderly, and his words...