Long before he first came to prominence and then to power, he wrote what in effect was a manual for leadership—The Edge of the Sword, a short book written originally as a series of lectures at the French War College and then published in 1932. It was not until after de Gaulle’s death that I discovered this book. But when I read it, I found that it was almost uncanny in the extent to which it described the characteristics and techniques that would later be exhibited by the de Gaulle I knew. It was clear that when the time eventually came for him to craft so meticulously the half-mythical “General de Gaulle” who would rally the nation and lead it, he followed the prescription he had laid down in this book, published when he was a forty-one-year-old army officer little known outside of a few military circles.
The Edge of the Sword thus provides more than a handy device for examining de Gaulle. It also provides an indispensable framework for understanding him.
In The Edge of the Sword, de Gaulle defined three crucial qualities that a leader must have: To chart the right path, he needs both intelligence and instinct; and in order to persuade people to follow that path, he needs authority.
Because they live in an academic world, political scientists understandably stress the intellectual component of leadership. But de Gaulle noted that leaders themselves have always understood the crucial importance of instinct. Alexander called it his “hope,” Caesar his “luck,” and Napoleon his “star.” When we speak of a leader as having “vision” or a “sense of reality,” we really are saying that he instinctively understands how things work. Instinct, de Gaulle wrote, enables the leader to “strike deeply into the order of things.”
As he put it, “Our intelligence can furnish us with the theoretic, general abstract knowledge of what is, but only instinct can give the practical, particular, and concrete feel of it.” It cuts through the complexity of the situation and seizes upon the essentials. Intellect then elaborates, shapes, and refines what he called the “raw material” of the intuitive insight.
Only when a leader achieves the right balance between intellect and instinct, he argued, will his decisions be marked by prescience.
• • •
Prescience—knowing which way to lead—lies at the heart of great leadership. The very word leader implies the ability to act as the guide, to see beyond the present in charting a course into the future. When I visited France in 1969, de Gaulle commented to me, “I make policies for the newspapers of the day after tomorrow.” Too many political leaders get caught up with the headlines of the day and the pressures of the moment, losing sight of the longer perspective as a result. De Gaulle, however, did not live for the moment: He used the moment.
Long before he became famous, de Gaulle showed a talent for seeing over the heads of his contemporaries. He stood virtually alone in arguing against the strategy of the Maginot Line, in defying the decision to capitulate to Hitler, and in opposing the jerry-built political system of the Fourth Republic. But in each of these cases events were to prove him right.
In 1934 de Gaulle outlined his theory on the nature of modern warfare in a book entitled The Army of the Future. He argued that strategies for set-piece battles had been made obsolete by a revolution in technology: the invention of the internal combustion engine. He wrote that “the machine controls our destiny.” Machines had transformed every sphere of life, and war could be no exception.
He proposed the formation of a 100,000-man force of elite troops that would operate six fully mechanized divisions. Mobility and offensive striking power, he continually stressed, would carry the day in the next war, just as numerical superiority and preponderant defensive firepower had in the previous one.
De Gaulle’s ideas were unwelcome in France. Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain dismissed the book as “witticisms.” General Maxime Weygand branded it “an evil criticism.”
The Army of the Future sold fewer than 1,500 copies. But two hundred of these went to Germany, where it was read closely. In 1934 French journalist Philippe Barres met with Adolf Hitler and General Adolf Huenhlin, the commander of the German motorized forces. In an exchange about mechanized warfare, Huenhlin asked Barres, “And what is my great French colleague doing to develop these techniques?” Barres, who had never heard of de Gaulle, looked perplexed. The German general then prompted, “I mean your great specialist on motorization, your Colonel de Gaulle.”
The Germans were impressed by his advice. The French were not. In a memorandum he wrote four months before the German invasion, de Gaulle proclaimed that no matter how well the government reinforced the Maginot Line, the enemy could destroy or circumvent it. If breached, he warned, the entire Maginot system would collapse, with Paris only six hours away by automobile. And as he had said in The Army of the Future, “Each time Paris was taken during the last century, French resistance crumbled within an hour.” On June 14, 1940, that hour came, and de Gaulle’s tragic prophecy came true.
While France was collapsing before the Germans, de Gaulle saw, as few other Frenchmen did, that the war was not over but had really just begun. He flew to Britain, determined to continue the resistance even if his government would not. “France has lost a battle,” he insisted, “but France has not lost the war.”
In his first radio appeal from London, de Gaulle declared that France was not alone, for the battle of France had ignited another world war. He said that the French could prevail in the end by continuing the war from their empire, supported by British domination of the seas and by the vast potential of American war production. That bit of prescience immortalized de Gaulle in the hearts of Frenchmen, enabling him, in that darkest hour, to become the keeper of the eternal flame of France’s soul.
• • •
After the war, de Gaulle’s hopes for France were smashed on the rocks of politics-as-usual. Though they had hailed de Gaulle as their savior, the French people turned their backs on his proposed constitutional reforms, enabling the politicians and parties of the prewar period to elbow him into retirement.
De Gaulle opposed the return of the parliamentary system of the Third Republic because he blamed it for the unsound military policies that had led to defeat in 1940. There had been so many political parties that none could command a majority and devise a rational policy. The fractious assembly had come to resemble the Hobbesian state of nature: a war of all against all. De Gaulle warned that, if restored, parliamentary government could only result in a series of fragile, impotent coalition cabinets that would tumble at the slightest political tremor. As he said many years later, “Members of parliament can paralyze action; they cannot initiate it.”
De Gaulle understood that France was at heart a Latin country. Speaking of his own Latin heritage, Luis Muñoz Marin, a one-time governor of Puerto Rico, once told me, “I am proud of my Latin heritage. Our devotion to family and to the Church and our contributions in philosophy, music, and art are admirable. But we Latins are just not good at government. We find it difficult to strike the balance between order and freedom. We go to extremes—too much order and too little freedom or too much freedom and too little order.” De Gaulle’s genius was his ability to strike that delicate balance in France.
Because de Gaulle opposed the return of the “regime of parties” after World War II, many journalists and politicians on the left accused him of seeking to establish a dictatorship. They misjudged him. During and immediately after the liberation of France, a “sort of monarchy,” as de Gaulle called it, was necessary. But he moved without delay to allow the people to choose their government when conditions permitted. He never challenged the principle that sovereignty resides with the people. But he believed that consensus leadership was no leadership and that a President or Prime Minister must lead a parliament, not follow it.
By late 1945 de Gaulle realized that he had lost this argument. The constitution of the Fourth Republic created an all-powerful legislature that controlled a weak executive. He became convinced that he should resign from government and “withdraw from event
s before they withdrew from me.” He called a meeting of his cabinet, announced his decision to abandon his office, and strode abruptly out of the room and into retirement. He firmly believed that the time would come when France would call on him to lead, but on his own terms. Again de Gaulle was ahead of his time, but his time eventually came.
He had a sense of destiny and did not want to be the President of France simply for the sake of being President. He wanted to be President only when he felt that he was the only man who could give France the leadership the nation needed. What separates the men from the boys in politics is that the boys want high office in order to be somebody; the men want high office in order to do something. De Gaulle wanted power, not for what it could do for him, but for what he could do with it.
• • •
Less than a year and a half after giving up power, de Gaulle launched a vigorous drive to recapture it. He had tailored his personality to be the master of great events; now he contemptuously watched others fumble with small ones. Unable to wait any longer for France to call him back, he launched a political movement, the Rally of the French People (RPF), to bring him back.
In 1947 the thunderheads of the Cold War were forming on the horizon, and the French people suffered from acute shortages, low wages, and high prices. De Gaulle did not address their mundane concerns, saying that he had not liberated France “to worry about the macaroni ration.” Instead he spoke to the questions of global power and proclaimed the greatness of France.
In those troubled times the political stock of de Gaulle, whom the French people often called the “man of the storm,” rose dramatically. By 1951 the RPF had won more seats in Parliament than any other party. From the outset de Gaulle forbade his delegates to support any government, an order that had the strange effect of putting the RPF into a de facto alliance with the Communist party.
With unyielding opposition from the left and the right, centrist governments fell in quick succession. But almost despite themselves, they succeeded in improving domestic and international conditions by the early 1950s. In effect the politicians of the Fourth Republic had succeeded in stealing the thunder of the “man of the storm.” De Gaulle seemed to agree, for he despairingly told visitors, “The Republic governs France badly but defends itself well.”
By 1952 it was apparent that the RPF could not bring down the Fourth Republic. After de Gaulle ordered his delegates to reject an offer to try to form a government, party discipline broke down. Defections reduced the RPF to the status of a parliamentary splinter group by 1953. After a dismal showing in the next municipal elections, de Gaulle disassociated himself from the movement.
The long episode of the RPF proved that a leader can be wise without always being right. De Gaulle took the long view of the future, but sometimes the present fooled him. At times he seemed to have an awesome, instinctive feel for his people; at other times their temper escaped him. The failure of his political party was a case in point. His criticism of the parliamentary regime would prove prophetic. But the times were not yet right. As a result his efforts to bring about his prophecy were disastrous.
• • •
The crisis that returned de Gaulle to power had its origins in late 1954. Segments of the Algerian Muslim population formed the Front de Liberation Nationale and began to wage a guerrilla war against the French colonial administration. The war dragged on for years, the brutality of the French army growing with its frustration. The politicians of the Fourth Republic showed themselves incapable of ending the war one way or the other.
In 1958 the inability of the regime to come to grips with its problems in Algeria became a crisis in itself. The army, particularly after suffering the humiliation of defeat in Indochina in 1954, was determined to keep French Algeria French at all costs. The Gaullists, the right-wing politicians, and the French colonists in Algeria joined the army in a loose alliance against the French government. And they were ready to act, while the government was incapable of doing so.
The Fourth Republic was in its twenty-fourth cabinet crisis since de Gaulle’s resignation in 1946 and had been without a sitting government for almost a month when the problems in Algeria came to a head. A mob attacked the government building in Algiers as security forces calmly looked on. Under the pretext of reestablishing order, the generals overthrew the French government in Algeria. Less than two weeks later, troops on Corsica joined the rebel generals. The Algerian generals planned to go on within days to conquer metropolitan France, and the government was powerless to stop them.
Throughout the whole affair, de Gaulle showed remarkable political shrewdness. He refused either to condemn or to endorse the military coup publicly, although some of those involved were his supporters. His silence ensured that all were listening when he finally announced that he was “ready to take over the powers of the Republic.” He had watched the politicians of the Fourth Republic exhaust all their options, and when they finally turned to him, he was ready to dictate the terms of his cooperation.
Though he dictated his terms to the government, these did not include making him dictator. Nevertheless many Frenchmen continued to view him with suspicion. Biographer Brian Crozier wrote that after hearing de Gaulle’s conditions for returning to power, the chairman of the National Assembly, André le Trocquer, exclaimed to him, “All this is unconstitutional. I have known you pretty well since Algiers. You have the soul of a dictator. You’re too fond of personal power!” De Gaulle replied sternly, “It was I who restored the Republic, Monsieur Le Trocquer.”
By the time de Gaulle took over, the authority of the Fourth Republic had crumbled into so pitiable a state that it would be wrong to say that he came to power in a coup d’etat. He simply delivered the coup de grace to a fading regime.
De Gaulle demanded that the Fourth Republic grant him the power to propose constitutional reforms directly to the people in referenda, and by these means he enacted the constitution of the Fifth Republic. Its centerpiece is the presidency. The President is given the authority to create and execute policy without undue interference from the National Assembly, thus preventing the drift and paralysis that had brought the Fourth Republic to the verge of political, economic, and social collapse.
Some have criticized de Gaulle for giving the President so much power. But with the clarity of hindsight I believe that the political stability that the constitution gave France was de Gaulle’s greatest legacy, just as the Napoleonic Code was Napoleon’s.
During my vice presidency I always greeted visiting Prime Ministers at the airport, because, under the protocol of the time, President Eisenhower did so only for visiting heads of state. In the years before de Gaulle’s return to power, it seemed that on alternate months I would meet a new French Prime Minister and a new Italian Prime Minister. Italy still has not conquered the problem of instability; de Gaulle conquered it in France. Any astute student of constitutional law might have devised a similar governmental framework. But only de Gaulle had both the prescience to see the need for it and the authority to get it enacted.
• • •
In Greek mythology, Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy. But he then turned the gift into a curse by causing all who heard her warnings to disbelieve them. De Gaulle knew that prescience is not enough. A leader must not only decide correctly what should be done, but also persuade others and get them to do it. Every occupant of the White House has felt at one time or another the curse of Cassandra, confronted with the aggravating problem of seeing a correct course but being unable to move the bureaucracy, the Congress, or the public to go in that direction. In The Edge of the Sword, de Gaulle wrote that a leader “must be able to create a spirit of confidence in those under him. He must be able to assert his authority.”
Authority, de Gaulle argued, derives from prestige, and prestige “is largely a matter of feeling, suggestion, and impression, and it depends primarily on the possession of an elementary gift, a natural aptitude which defies analysis.” This gift is a rare one. H
e wrote that “certain men have, one might almost say from birth, the quality of exuding authority, as though it were a liquid, though it is impossible to say precisely of what it consists.”
This has lately gone by the fashionable term charisma. It remains a quality none can explain but all can recognize.
To this ineffable quality, de Gaulle wrote, a leader must add three concrete ones: mystery, character, and grandeur. “First and foremost,” he declared, “there can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt. All religions have their tabernacles, and no man is a hero to his valet.” In his plans and demeanor a leader must always have something “which others cannot altogether fathom, which puzzles them, stirs them, and rivets their attention.”
I vividly recall de Gaulle’s striking presence when he came to Washington for President Kennedy’s funeral in November 1963. Mrs. Nixon and I watched the funeral procession from a window of our suite in the Mayflower Hotel. The great and the near-great from all over the world were walking behind the casket. De Gaulle was a big man physically, but he seemed to tower over the rest in dignity, stature, and charisma as well as in height.
Whenever I met with de Gaulle, whether publicly or privately, he displayed an enormous, even stately dignity. His resolute bearing gave him a certain air of aloofness. Some interpreted this as stuffiness, but in de Gaulle’s case it was not. The essence of stuffiness is being unnatural. In de Gaulle’s case aloofness was natural. He had a certain ease of manner when dealing with another head of state, whom he considered an equal, but he was never informal, even with his close friends.
In this respect, de Gaulle was similar to all of the American Presidents I had known before taking office in 1969, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson. Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and even Harry Truman all had a very deep sense of privacy and did not like to be treated in too familiar a manner.
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