France: Pebbles in the Pond

FRANCE

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As a nation, France has seemed to be dying all through the 20th century. It was bled white of its young men in World War I, humiliatingly beaten and overrun by the Nazis in World War II, and spent the postwar years futilely trying to put down a succession of colonial revolts, while at home governments fell and Premiers came and went amid the clamor of scuffling Deputies in the National Assembly. Only fading memories remained of the ancient days when the lily banners of the French kings triumphed from one end of Europe to the other, or when the Revolutionary Tricolor struck terror on every continent.

As recently as five years ago, France seemed destined to become a second-class power. Yet last week the impossible had apparently come true, and France was once more a mover and shaker in world affairs. Backed by a surging economy, a rising birth rate and an unparalleled air of self-confidence, France has become the first power of Western Europe. It dominates the thriving six-nation Common Market and easily makes its whim become law, as was demonstrated last year when, arbitrarily and against the wishes of its co-partners, it refused Britain admission to the Common Market.

Matter of Seduction? With Europe secure, France has turned boldly to the other continents. It pours men and money into its former colonies in North and black Africa, restores and broadens the image of French culture throughout the Middle East. Warbling a persuasive siren song, French diplomacy stirs up old affections and new troubles in Asia, tempts Latin America with the prospect of being pro-Western, anti-Communist and anti-American all at once. As the two nuclear giants, the U.S. and Russia, hesitantly grope towards better understanding, France treads heavily on their toes. For months France has quietly been offering its "cordial cooperation" in uniting North and South Viet Nam under a neutralist government free of "foreign influence," meaning free of U.S. influence. French agents moved with proposals between Hanoi and Saigon until a jittery anti-neutralist general, Nguyen Khanh, last week staged a bloodless coup against the military junta ruling South Viet Nam on the grounds that its members were being seduced by French offers.

Undaunted, President Charles de Gaulle last week proclaimed his plans in even more intensive siren tones. He proposed the neutralization of all of Southeast Asia, declaring that "we see the world as it is." And to cap his nation's re-emergence as a world power, he recognized the Communist regime in Peking as the government of China, brushing aside protests from Washington that the move would seriously damage U.S. policy in Asia.

Reading the Cables. Behind the electric rejuvenation of France stands De Gaulle, that towering and granite-hard old man who is determined to fulfill his vow that, under him, France will "undertake great actions, assume great proportions, and greatly serve her own interest and that of the human race as well." The strategy is De Gaulle's, but he is fortunate in having at his side a nearly flawless technician in his coolly astute Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, 57, a diplomat with the surgically precise intellect and single-minded determination necessary to implement so ambitious a foreign policy.

Tall, thin, impeccably tailored Couve de