World: The Nation in Miniature

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Taxing Life. There is little doubt of voter unhappiness with the general. The shopkeepers of Briare claim that they are being taxed out of existence. Pierre , Renaud, who runs a combination pharmacy and tobacco shop, must pay five different kinds of taxes and fill out separate forms for each. "Those forms," he says, "make for many nights of insomnia." His uncle, Maurice Renaud, who runs an appliance shop down the street, must fill out only three sets of forms but is much more outspoken. "De Gaulle is a liar," he says. "He's too expensive, he has delusions of grandeur. I'm ready to kick him out. I'm going to vote no, and it will be the first time." A Briare attorney, a Gaullist, plans to vote against the referendum because he believes "it would be better for De Gaulle to leave now, while everything is relatively quiet, so there can be an orderly transition. If he dies in office, God only knows what will happen." The farmers who live near Briare seem more indifferent than the villagers. Maurice Vanjan, who keeps 50 cows on 50 hectares, says his ballot will be blank. "The referendum," he says, "tries to put too many things together. It's too complicated for yes or no." Briare's local Communists—Dabard puts their total vote at 421 or 422—are fond of their autocratic mayor. "He's done a lot for the town, for the workers," says Lucien Delsartre, a Communist labor leader employed by the Otis elevator factory at nearby Gien. But Delsartre and his fellow Communists will vote against De Gaulle's proposals. "I have nothing against him," Delsartre says. "It's his policies we despise. They're antisocial, an-tiworker, antipeople. They serve only the interests of big capitalism."

If Frenchmen voted the same way they talked, the impression is that Briare will reject the referendum's proposals. I found only two people, the mayor and an insurance man, who said they would vote yes. Everyone else—workers, farmers, shopkeepers and professional men—said they would either vote no or cast a blank ballot. But Frenchmen have a way of confounding opinion seekers. Pierre Renaud, Briare's pharmacist-tobacconist, perhaps expressed it best. "The French are a funny people. They always complain a lot but usually vote oui." In France, it is the mind that does the talking but the heart that does the voting.