For all the excited headlines. S.A.O. terrorism was hardly Charles de Gaulle's main concern last week. Far graver was the challenge to his authority posed by France's economy. It took the form of a spreading labor strike led by 188,000 stubborn miners concentrated in the grim coal districts of northern France. Three rival unions (Roman Catholic, Socialist, Communist) were out of the pits in a joint demand for a 12% pay boost to compensate for the creeping inflation that has wiped out much of their purchasing power in the past three years.
De Gaulle's reply was in the authoritarian tradition of an...
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