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First Since Dagobert. But when the votes were in last week, De Gaulle's U.N.R. had almost annihilated the parties of France's far right wing, badly mauled the moderate left, dashed the Communists' hopes of dramatic gains. As it turned out, the Reds did gain slightly, ending up with 41 seats in the Assembly; this was a far cry from the 150 seats they won as recently as 1956. "Our country," declared De Gaulle, "has voted for itself." Of course, the country voted overwhelmingly for Charles de Gaulle. Week after week, the man who sees himself as "the guide of France'' waged a relentless vendetta against the "outmoded parties" and their vieux schnoucks, the old hacks whose only concern, in his words, is with "their own little soup pot, on their own little fire, in their own little corner." He made trip after trip to the remotest corners of France, comporting himself with the benevolent grandeur of a Louis XIV inspecting the royal domains. At crossroads, children waved paper flags, and plump farm wives wept with emotion at the sight of their President in the flesh.
Often he reached remote villages never before visited by a French chief of state; at one town hall, the mayor proudly declared that De Gaulle was the first chief of state to visit those parts since Dagobert, King of the Franks, in A.D. 623.
In the electronic age. le grand Charles could also use le petit écran—the TV screen—which nowadays reaches every corner of France's hexagon. (Griped one defeated politician: "How could we win with De Gaulle talking against us in every household?") De Gaulle shrewdly plied his audiences with the usual campaign promises: higher farm prices, better schools, new roads. But always he returned to the one theme that never failed to stir the French—their nation's "eminent and exalted destiny."
Dismayed Eurocrats. As De Gaulle endlessly urged, the voters swept out of office dozens of leaders of the "parties of yesteryear." Unhappily, many of these were among France's staunchest and most influential advocates of a strong Western alliance and European unity. Their loss would be immediately felt by Britain, whose negotiations for Common Market membership have been deadlocked for weeks by France's refusal to lower the price of admission. The reason for the trouble, insist the British, is Charles de Gaulle's determination to keep them out of Europe. But the high priests at Common Market headquarters in Brussels think this charge is unfair. They point out that France, backed invariably by impartial Eurocrats, is simply insisting that Britain must accept the terms of membership as laid down by the Treaty of Rome; to relax them, say the French, would be to slow the headlong momentum of Europe's economic integration.