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Too Poor to Bow. In achieving all of this, De Gaulle has once again confounded his critics. Few statesmen of his time have been so consistently misunderstood. Joseph Stalin, in a moment of exceptional obtuseness, dismissed him as "not complicated." Franklin Roosevelt shared the view of him held by British Novelist H. G. Wells—"an utterly sincere megalomaniac." Others, misjudging him in two directions, have called him everything from a dictator-at-heart to an inept political thimblerigger.
The world at large first formed its impression of Charles de Gaulle in World War II, and it was not an endearing one. As leader of Free France, he was proud, touchy, intransigent. Winston Churchill felt that De Gaulle owed his continued existence to the British, and should be grateful and compliant. All parties concerned have since composed more graceful tribute to one another, but in those tense days feelings ran high. To Franklin Roosevelt, De Gaulle was an upstart playing Joan of Arc. "Yes," Churchill is reported to have rejoined, "but my bloody bishops won't let me burn him."
Recalling those bitter days of uphill struggle, De Gaulle himself has written: "I was starting from scratch. In France, no following and no reputation. Abroad, neither credit nor standing. But this very destitution showed me my line of conduct. It was by adopting without compromise the cause of the national recovery that I could acquire authority. At this moment, the worst in her history, it was for me to assume the burden of France." This attitude "was to dictate my bearing and to impose upon my personality an attitude I could never again change."
He refused himself the easier waiting role of a mere refugee movement in London; he refused to enlist French soldiers into British units to "fight a war no longer their own"; he "encased myself in ice" against those who opposed him. "I am too poor to be able to bow," he once told Churchill. At first considered an absurd figure, in the end he won grudging respect —and, more important, won his point.
The widely held suspicion of De Gaulle, more prevalent outside France than in, stems not from anything De Gaulle has done but from what he is. In an age that makes a cult of ordinariness, he is a democrat but not an egalitarian. In a world in which power suggests danger, he openly regards the wise exercise of power as the supreme function of man. Where most mid-20th century statesmen feel obliged to cloak their extraordinary qualities in a mantle of folksiness, he unabashedly regards himself as a historic figure and comports himself as a man of greatness.
The Old Soldier. At the somber, grey-walled Hotel Matignon, official residence of France's Premiers, the Republican Guards now wear dress uniform (white gloves, red epaulets) every day, and treat visitors with a new formality. Senior government officials no longer wander in whenever they feel like an informal chat, nor do they ring up the Premier on a direct line. De Gaulle, who regards the telephone as an intolerable impediment to concentration, has had the only one in his office disconnected.