From the speaker's tribune in Paris' cavernous Luxembourg Palace one morning last week, France's Premier Michel Debre, a short, subdued man in a dark suit, unhappily told the French Senate: "Last week we almost witnessed the collapse of the state." Then he formally requested near-dictatorial powers for his boss, Charles de Gaulle. Shaken by his subordinates' fumbling vacillation in the face of the Algiers uprising, De Gaulle had bitterly concluded that if France was to have effective government he must provide it personally.
Aware that they had no real alternative, both the Assembly (441-75) and the Senate (226-39) quickly voted...
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