The Hundred Days
TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN
Princeton, N.1-1 am writing this at a moment when I have no news, except that the Old Lion has turned on his triumphant enemies from Col- ombey-les-Deux-Eglises as they thought they had driven him into his cave to die—politically if not physically. Perhaps they have; perhaps this last lashing-out may end the great career more ignominiously than a formal abdication Would have done. I don't know.
But since the French live by historical paral- lels (often bogus parallels; either bogus because based on bad history or bogus because based on a false analogy), it is possibly worth while speculating on what is the parallel. One can think of Charles de Gaulle, like the great Duke of Guise, saying, wrongly, 'they would not dare,' before the mignons of Henri III killed him in Blois. One could have seen him (I never quite could) going off in the equivalent of a cab as did Louis-Philippe or moving grandly into retirement as did the egregiously silly Charles X (a monarch so silly that it is equally difficult to realise that he was descended from Henri IV and nor descended from James VII (and II).
But it is more like, I think, an extremely brief move towards Elba, with a brisk return to action. As I think 'the Hundred Days' one of the greatest and most foolish crimes in French history, I am not suggesting that one should compare him with Buonaparte (as it was again fashionable to call the Emperor in 1814). Possibly, what we should be thinking of is Napoleon's 'campaign of France' of 1814. It was only after studying the campaign of France that Wellington realised what a great soldier he had defeated (with the aid of Blucher) in 1815. But, despite the brilliant victories and recoveries from defeats, there was no chance of survival once the allies had decided on no peace with Napoleon. (I once asked a Paris taxi driver to take me to an address in the Avenue Champaubert. He had no idea where it was or what the name meant. In vain I said it was a victory of Napoleon's in 1814: there are fewer Napoleon fans in France than in England.) Possibly, the coalition of the left is in the position of Castlereagh and Metternich in 1814 and the General's last campaign is doomed.
But let us suppose that he makes a come- back, that his orders are obeyed. Suppose that he calls the bluff of M Francois Mitterrand and the rest and wins. What then?
It can only be the Hundred Days, possibly
not followed by Waterloo but, in fact, meaning an end of Gaullism. He may defeat his enemies without winning a victory for himself. His modifications to his system of government can have no more long-term significance than the acte additionnel of 1815. The whole gamble may end in civil war for which de Gaulle will deserve some but not all of the blame, for the politicians who have jumped on the band- wagon have their own responsibilities. I can't look with much enthusiasm on a movement one of whose most verbal leaders is M Guy Mollet. I am a great admirer of M Mendes-France but he is not much younger than the General; he has been out of- office for twelve years; his young Turks of 1958 (who gave him very bad advice) are not so young now. And it may be that all the established order in France, which includes the Assembly plus a great part of 'the University,' Le Monde, the grandes ecoles, is being put in question by a totally new phenome- non in France, a youthful nation. When I saw a picture of M Jean-Paul Sartre, myopically trying to get 'with it' with the young, pursuing that alliance of the intellectuals and the workers that he has pursued in vain for nearly a genera- tion now, I reflected that perhaps France is changing, leaving the General, M Sartre, M Pompidou, les grands commis and the rest, stranded.
Although I was totally surprised at the collapse of authority, I was not surprised at the alienation of the ever-more numerous young. For I have thought for a long time that the generation gap is worse in France (and I suspect in Germany) than in Britain and the United States. The gaps in generations caused by war are much greater in these countries than in Britain or the United States. (They must be equally great in Russia in which, for the moment, order reigns—as in the Warsaw of 1831.)
Should we welcome this? I think we should. But what alarms me (all I know is what I read in the papers) is the revival of the ghost of the Front Populaire. I remember how alarmed I was at a lunch in New College in 1936 when M Bougie held forth on the wonders of the cultural policy of the Front Populaire. 'It is not only the science of Berthelot but the science of Renan that is being fostered.' I had nothing against either, but the immediate and, indeed, the not so immediate needs of the -French educational system, were not more money for the grandes ecoles or for the Institut, but for better primary schools, more easy access to secondary schools, a modernisa- tion of the curriculum, a total reorganisation of the official structure of science in France, a far more intelligent and modern economic policy, and so on. Instead of that, the unfor- tunate government of Ldon Blum, under pres- sure like that before which the Gaullist govern- ment collapsed, enacted the forty-hour week, failed to devalue in time, nationalised the rail- ways, tried to ignore Hitler, and floundered into the France of 1939. Of course, the French right, the French haute banque, was equally to blame. It may be that the Gaullist attempt (begun with a good deal of success under the Fourth
Republic) to modernise France will fail, that
the various pressure groups pushing through open doors, exiled pieds noirs from Algeria, elderly peasants from the dying departments like the Creuse and the Ariege, industries, like the ship-builders of Saint-Nazaire who want subsidies to compete with Japan in building tankers, are all to be given their 'rights' or claims. This is what the General detested and detests, 'la facilite.' Maybe 'la facilire' is better than technocracy but Pierre-Paul Schweitzer seems to me what France needs more than his cousin Jean-Paul Sartre if the French workers want cars, television sets, holi- days on the Costa Brava, more and better food and drink than the English worker expects or possibly wants. The reluctance of the Com- munist party to take the initiative was prudent, not only because the government might react savagely and successfully but because the more intelligent leaders know enough of the facts of life to know that French workers cannot simply vote themselves a better living, any more than British workers can.
The technocratic dream may be a vulgar one. 1 am continually told this by rural characters, living in centrally heated 'cottages' with TV, modern plumbing, a car and all the simple delights of the peasant life. The revolt of the young against the world hitherto open to them is natural. The world open to many, many thousands of students in revolt is going to be a lot more unattractive than they think now. I remember, only too well, the euphoria of 1936 when of all the left-wing leaders holding forth. only M Mendes-France and M Georges Bori,,, seemed to have any idea what they, the leaders. the New States General, etc, were talking about.
One recipe for France's troubles is dead for the moment. The mass of the French young and even of their elders have not accepted the sermon of M Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in Le Defi americain. I had doubts (which 1 expressed) about the viability of a left coalition including the communists which would defeat the American take-over by imitating the great American 'trusts,' going to learn at the Harvard Business School or suffer the integration of European industry by the silent but highly efficient new Romans of New York, Detroit. Washington. I didn't see M Francois Mitterrand showing the superhuman talents needed to unite M Waldeck-Rochet and the new techno- crats in a common effort and a common cause. After all, what would have been the common cause? To make France richer in a capitalist sense? To destroy its traditional values, le bonheur de Barbezieux? Or to opt out of 'Europe' and to return to the Malthusianisrn of the Third Republic? That is too late. The birth rate since 1945 has stopped that hole. (In one way, M Mitterrand is 'with' the new problems more than M Sartre, M Mendes-France, er, for that matter, General de Gaulle. He is one of ten children.
Obviously, France has not lost her power to surprise, but what form the surprise will take I do not know. How the bien pensants in Fran& must envy a country with a Labour party! Who knows what would happen to the equivalents of the Prime Minister and Mrs Castle if a left-wing government in France tried to save the franc as we are saving the pound! At the moment I think that France could do with a Labour party and we, perhaps, with some of the insurgent spirit of the French young.
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