(See Cover) At No. 5 rue de Solférino, on Paris' Left Bank, there is a shabby old building, not far from the decayed elegance of the boulevard St. Germain and only a stone's throw from the grey stone pile of the National Assembly. Although three or four young bodyguards, who look like cyclists or soccer players, lounge at the entrance, there is nothing outside the building to identify it—no plaque, no flag, no Cross of Lorraine. No. 5 rue de Solférino is the headquarters of Charles de Gaulle's Rassemblement du Peuple Français, which he claims is not a party but a "movement."
There, six weeks ago, the executive committee of the R.P.F. held the most fateful meeting in its brief history. Most of the twelve men were smoking and the air was a thick blue haze. De Gaulle smokes like a chimney in moments of stress; so do his political theorist, Novelist Andre Malraux (Man's Fate, Man's Hope} , and his chief administrator, swarthy, bespectacled Jacques Soustelle. Charles de Gaulle said, "Messieurs, je vous écoute" (Gentlemen, I am listening).
The Man Who Was Right. The question: Should the R.P.F., which was not quite six months old, risk its prestige and its future by putting up candidates in the October municipal elections? Ten of the twelve spoke against it as premature. The movement, they said, was not sufficiently organized, candidates for all municipalities could not be found in time, a defeat at the polls would be fatal. Malraux proposed a compromise: an R.P.F. slate in two cities only, Paris and Algiers. Then the eleven lieutenants looked at the tall, slow-moving, impassive man who had galvanized and symbolized France's will to live through her wartime travail. He thanked them, flicked ashes from his blue suit, ended the meeting.
Next day De Gaulle announced his decision: the R.P.F. would put up a fight in all French towns of any size. With some misgivings but without demur his committee accepted the decision. Perhaps De Gaulle, who had been right so many times in the past, would be right again.
He was. Six million voted for the R.P.F. candidates. The Communists, who had been France's most heavily supported party, dropped from 5,500,000 to 4,700,000. Though Foreign Minister Georges Bidault's Popular Republicans lost most heavily, De Gaulle picked up votes from all parties, including at least a quarter-million from the Communists themselves.