Letter From the Continent

There was the French government, with a very small majority, just squeaking through in Parliament and desperately relying on the presidential power to which the French have barely become used. Then the student rebellion, led by the German Daniel Cohn-Bendit, got under way, the very authority of the state was put in question, the workers saw an opportunity for blackmail and nearly wrecked the French economy on the very eve of the final realization of the Common Market which left France without protective tariff walls. The government, it will be recalled, called new elections which netted it the biggest majority in French history. Without the initiative of Daniel Cohn-Bendit this would never have happened.

One might imagine a grateful UDR (the Gaullist Union des Democrats pour la Republique) erecting a monument in front of the Sorbonne for the wily German, brilliant orator and hair stylist M. Cohn-Bendit. Unfortunately, though it is a beautiful theory, there is no substance to the story that he was in the pay of the Elysée Palace. Even so, President de Gaulle proved himself a first-rate Machiavellian, and it will be some time before the world learns to what extent he was driven and to what extent he really was the driver. It looks as if he brutally, cruelly and craftily made use of an evolution with revolutionary aspects, counting with a grin of satisfaction every burnt car, every dug-up pavement stone, every cracked rib, every smashed window, every empty pot in a worker’s kitchen. Clever, too, was his switch from plebiscite to election, since French constitutional law provides for much bigger majorities in the latter.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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There was the French government, with a very small majority, just squeaking through in Parliament and desperately relying on the presidential power to which the French have barely become used. Then the student rebellion, led by the German Daniel Cohn-Bendit, got under way, the very authority of the state was put in question, the workers saw an opportunity for blackmail and nearly wrecked the French economy on the very eve of the final realization of the Common Market which left France without protective tariff walls. The government, it will be recalled, called new elections which netted it the biggest majority in French history. Without the initiative of Daniel Cohn-Bendit this would never have happened.

One might imagine a grateful UDR (the Gaullist Union des Democrats pour la Republique) erecting a monument in front of the Sorbonne for the wily German, brilliant orator and hair stylist M. Cohn-Bendit. Unfortunately, though it is a beautiful theory, there is no substance to the story that he was in the pay of the Elysée Palace. Even so, President de Gaulle proved himself a first-rate Machiavellian, and it will be some time before the world learns to what extent he was driven and to what extent he really was the driver. It looks as if he brutally, cruelly and craftily made use of an evolution with revolutionary aspects, counting with a grin of satisfaction every burnt car, every dug-up pavement stone, every cracked rib, every smashed window, every empty pot in a worker’s kitchen. Clever, too, was his switch from plebiscite to election, since French constitutional law provides for much bigger majorities in the latter.