World: The Nation in Miniature

The small, cheerful town of Briare lies some hundred miles south of Paris on the Loire River. Briare boasts the largest and most modern pheasant farm in all France and a sprinkling of diverse industry: a tile factory, a plant making laboratory instruments, another producing furniture. Briare's real distinction, however, is invisible. In the past six national elections, the men and women of Briare have voted within a few percentage points of the entire French nation. To attempt to discover how Briare will vote in the April 27 referendum, TIME Correspondent John Blashill spent several days in the town and filed this report:

To most of Briare's 5,140 people, the referendum seems awfully remote. Hardly anyone except Mayor Henri Dabard, a brisk ex-World War I fighter pilot, talks about it in terms of regionalization or senate reform. Instead, Briare will be voting oui or non on De Gaulle, just as it has in the previous four referendums the general has staged since 1958.

Winning the Works. Down at the Café de l'Agriculture, on the corner of the Place de la République and the Rue de la Liberté, the talk turns easily to the mayor himself. The men around the bar call Dabard "our own little De Gaulle" and yarn about his imperious tactics. The new water works? Ah, well, Dabard knew that the town council disapproved, so he appointed an independent commission to "study" the plan. To no one's surprise, the commission thought the project was splendid, and Dabard signed a construction contract. The council protested, but the mayor was ready. "If you question my judgment," he told the councilmen, "it means I no longer have your confidence. Therefore, I will have to resign." The council backed down, as expected.

However authoritarian his methods, Dabard is fond of his fellow villagers. In the bargain, he knows their voting habits. "They are good people," he says, "and they represent the opinion of the country." As a rule, Briare has given a third of its vote to the left, two-thirds to De Gaulle. This time, the margin may be narrower. Dabard predicts 60% approval. Why? "We've lost our national spirit," he says. "France cannot be governed except by a strong authority. We have found the authority, but we don't like it any more." That is no small admission, coming from a pocket-size version of De Gaulle.