In recent weeks, Charles de Gaulle, France's self-styled man of destiny, seemed to have lost his sure touch. The farmers who barricaded the highways earlier this summer were still seething with discontent; workers grumbled for higher wages. There was widespread despondency over the failure to win a settlement in Algeria. De Gaulle was blamed for the breakdown of talks with the F.L.N. nationalists in June, for the needless brutality of the French army at Bizerte. Through it all. De Gaulle stayed haughtily silent, apparently at a loss for a new idea.
Froth on the Surface. But last week, at long last, De Gaulle decided that it was time to rally the nation's support in his own inimitable way. Out went invitations to another of those majestic press conferences in the Elysée Palace. Some 600 journalists showed up in the glittering Salle des Fétes at the appointed hour. As the tall, haughty figure stepped from behind the red curtain to take his seat before them, photographers' flashbulbs popped and reporters' pencils were poised. For an hour, De Gaulle answered questions with his characteristic, measured and misty eloquence. But he dismissed his critics with a wave of his hand. "There have even been dissenters . . . [who] harbor old and new grudges," he rumbled. "But all that is nothing more than froth floating on the surface of deep waters."
France's reporters were livid with indignation. Next day, the stories reported a puffed-faced De Gaulle spouting empty answers, described him as "melancholy," "disillusioning," "worn," "tired."
But as so often happens when the press tries to cope with De Gaulle's rhetoric, the true significance of his statements became clear only later. His rolling periods contained two abrupt changes of policy.
The Giveaway. Almost casually, De Gaulle in effect indicated that he was willing to give Algeria to anyone willing to take it. ''In brief." rumbled De Gaulle, "we are not at all anxious to be the possessors and the keepers of this region." With that as preamble, he set aside the whole question of sovereignty over the oil-rich Sahara Desert region, which had been the sticking point in the last round of talks with Algeria's F.L.N. nationalists. "The realities are that there is not one Algerian—I know this—who does not believe that the Sahara should be a part of Algeria." It was a breathtaking concession which, as his critics grumbled, would probably have produced an armistice long ago, almost certainly would have forestalled the ouster last month of F.L.N. Boss Ferhat Abbas in favor of the more radical Benyoussef Benkhedda.
De Gaulle was still sticking to France's demand that French interests be allowed to exploit the Sahara's oil development, and that France be guaranteed travel routes through the desert to the new nations of black Africa that once comprised the French Community. But De Gaulle's acceptance of Algerian sovereignty in the Sahara might well reopen the bargaining with the F.L.N. almost immediately, and Benyoussef Benkhedda promptly expressed himself interested.