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DE GAULLE'S TRIP TO MOSCOW Sunday, June 19, 1966 Niagara Falls Garettt 7-fl By JOSEPH W. GRIGG PARIS (UPI)-Presidenf Charles de Gaulle of France flies to Moscow Mon- day as chief traveling, salesman for his ambitions to ease the United States out of Europe. He will carry no political treaties in his baggage. French officials insist he does not plan to switch alliances. But he sees the trip as a" vital stage In his long term program for whittling down and ultimately eliminating United > States influence in Europe. De Gaulle is paying a 10-day official Visit to the Soviet Union that will include wide ranging political talks with the top Soviet leaders, a round of public speech- es and appearances and a sightseeing tour, taking him 1,900 miles to the Siber- ian city of Novosibirsk—normally closed to foreigners—and to Leningrad, Kiev and Volgograd, the former Stalingrad. IN NOVOSIBIRSK De Gaulle will visit a factory and the Soviet Union's "science city," where many of its lead- ing research laboratories are located. In Leningrad he will visit the world famous art treasures of the Hermitage Museum and a cemetery where 900,000 victims of the World War II siege of the city lie buried. In Volgograd he will visit memorials commemorating the 1942 battle that marked the turning point of the war. But the main significance of the trip lies not in sightseeing but in the talks planned with the Soviet leaders and in the fact that De Gaulle, last of the great World War II leaders and the man who is taking France out of NATO, has chosen this moment to visit the Soviet Union. DE GAULLE IS THE FIRST French president to visit Russia since Raymond Poincare paid a state visit to Tsar Nich- olas n on the eve of the First World War. De Gaulle's own last vis\t to Moscow was in December, 1944, when he signed a 20-year alliance with the Soviets against Germany. The Russians denounced the alliance In 1955 when West Germany was admit- Paring Of U.S. Influence In Europe? PRESIDENT CHARLES DE GAULLE RESPONDS TO CHEERS AT RECENT APPEARANCE ted to NATO. French officials say there is no question of its being revived and the Russians say it no longer is applic- able to present day circumstances. BUT RUSSIAN OFFICIALS have hint- ed repeatedly they are willing to sign any political agreement De Gaulle wants. French officials do not entirely rule out such a possibility. They say there is always a chance that De Gaulle, under the emotionaL impact of his presence in Moscow and his talks with the top So- viet leaders, might change his mind. & i* -k & & & -fr ix ix But they say he has no present in- tention of signing any political agree- ments. But French officials say De Gaulle attaches the highest importance to his Moscow talks, whether or not any con- crete, results emerge. Like all his other recent moves, in- cluding pulling France out of the NATO military setup, De Gaulle's Russian trip constitutes a vital piece in the program which the 75-year-old French leader has set himself in the years still remaining to him. THIS MISSION, as he sees it, is to give France complete national "inde- pendence" backed by a nuclear deter- rent, to ease the United States out of Europe, to break down the cold war" iron curtain and bring about a gradual easing of East-West tensions in Europe and,to clear the way for-a greater Eur- ope extending from "the Atlantic to the Urals." / If De Gaulle plans to sign no politi- cal agreements, what does he, hope to get from the Soviet leaders? French officials say 'he attaches the highest importance to the political talks in the light of what he regards as his mission. The issue likely to transcend all others in these talks and the- one on which he is least in line with the So- viets is Germany. Alone of the Western leaders, De Gaulle has accepted the Oder-Neisse line as the permanent eastern frontier between Germany and Poland. BUT. DE GAULLE adamantly refuses to buy the Soviet claim that the exis- tence of two Germanys is a "fact" that must be accepted. De Gaulle, like other Western leaders, is committed to work- ing for ultimate reunification of Ger- many. He refused to budge on this when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko visited Paris in 1965. He is certain to refuse, again to yield on this. But De Gaulle recognizes that Ger- man reunification is something that can not be brought about next week or even in the next few years. He regards it as.a goal that can be reached only slowly and patiently as a result of gradual easing of tensions and improvement of relations between the Soviet bloc and the West. This is some- thing he has been working for in de- veloping contacts during the last two years. DE GAULLE ALSO BELIEVES grad- ual, dismantling of both NATO and the Communist Warsaw pacts will help in this process. But French and Soviet views are identical on the question of German nuclear rearmament. Both are opposed to giving Germany even a token sem- blance of nuclear sharing. French officials say this may be brought Out in a joint statement by De Gaulle and the Soviet leaders, perhaps in the communique at the end of the visit. There are other issues on which De Gaulle and the Russians are closely in line with each other. Both want to get rid of NATO. Both favor a negotiated settlement of the_ Viet Nam conflict. Both want to get the United States out of Europe and South East Asia. THE DIPLOMATIC BUILDUP for De Gaulle's Russian visit has been going on for nearly two years. On the Russian side it.was started by a succession of visits to Paris by former deputy Premier Konstantin Rudnev, present Soviet President Nikolai Pod- gorny and Alexei Adiubei, son-in-law of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrush* chev. 6n the French side there were visits to Moscow by former finance minister Valery Giscard D'Estaicg, and Gaston Palewski, at that time Ministers of Scientific Affairs and Research. On Oct. 30, 1964, France and Russia signed a five-year trade treaty step- ping up commercial exchanges between them by more than 70 per cent. In January last year Alain Peyrefitte, at that time French information minis- ter, flew to Moscow for successful nego- tiations on the French "SECAM" color television system. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin received Peyrefitte for a private talk during which he suggested imper- ious political discussions. This was followed by a one-week visit to Paris in April last year by Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and to Mos- cow in. October by French Foreign Min- ister Maurice Couve de MurviUe. The invitation to De Gaulle to visit Moscow was handed to him Jan. '\2 by Soviet Ambassador Zorin and accepted on the spot. FRENCH OFFICIALS insist that, de- spite the serious turn taken by De Gaul- le's flirtation with Moscow, he is not the man to go overboard. They say he will continue to play it cool and is merely testing the ground to see whether genuine political coopera- tion with Moscow is, in fact, possible. They deny he has any intention of ditching the Western alliance. But they say he does want to see if he can do business with the Russians. Nothing serious may come out oMt, they say. But he feels it's at least worth a try, He Still Likes 'Crowd Baths But Security IsAProblem By TOM A. CULLEN PARIS (NEA)—French farmers who do not~know their own blood type will tell you that President C h a r l e s de - Gaulle's blood group is O-rhesus positive. They remember this from the days of the OAS (Algerian Secret Army) terror- ism, when De Gaulle was constantly in danger of being assassinated. When De Gaulle visits • Moscow this month, no bottles of precious blood plas- ma will travel with him, as happened on his tours of the French provinces in the early 1960s^_He breathes easier these days, now that his mortal enemies are either scattered or in prison. The fact remains that in the early '60s De Gaulle was the target for no fewer than five Assassination plots, two of which came within an ace of succeeding. A faulty wire is all that saved De Gaulle and his wife Yvonne from being blown up in September, 1961, as they were being driven from Paris to their home in Colombey-. les - Deux - Eglises. Thanks to the defective wire, an 8-pound plastic bomb planted on the side of the road failed to go off. A year later De Gaulle's car was am- bushed, sprayed with-machine gun fire on the road to Villacoublay airport near Paris. The bullets came within inches of De Gaulle's head. THE MOST FANTASTIC PLOT of all involved the use of police dogs booby- trapped with 'explosives. The plot was nipped just in time by security police. It speaks well of the president's phy- sical courage that he allowed none of these outrages to stop him from mingling with his people. The provincial tdurs con- tinued as before, with De Gaulle grasp- ing all hands that were proferred to him, to the despair of his bodyguards. De Gaulle seems to draw strength from these "crowd baths." as he calls them. In Paris he is a different person. Here he shrinks from the crowds, preferring the solitude of the Elysee Palace, his residence. At the age of 75, De Gaulle has man- aged to conserve his energy remarkably. His eyesight however is failing. He has been operated on for cataract but avoids wearing glasses in public, presumably from vanity. DE GAULLE DISLIKES all unneces- sary noise. He will not tolerate a clock • or a radio in his 'bedroom, for example. The three telephones on his office desk are only for outgoing calls. "Nothing great was ever done in the midst of chat- ter," is one of his favorite maxims. The president and his quiet, gray-- eyed wife, Yvonne, occupy only a small apartment on the first floor of the buff- colored Elysee Palace, which King Louis XV built for his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Occasionally they entertain a few trusted friends, but never large groups. In such an intimate circle De Gaulle can be quite charming, and even witty, tell- ing jokes at his own expense. TOURING THE PROVINCES last year, he confided to his entourage, "I'm looking forward to Mass tomorrow—it's the only public place where I'm not ex- pected to make a speech;" De GaUlle rules France from a gilt desk topped with red leather in a first floor office overlooking the palace gar- dens. Opposite him is a tapestry depict- ing "Don Quixote cured of his madness by wisdom." Near at hand is a globeof the world. The president sees Georges Pompi- dou, his prime minister, privately about three or four times a week. Long ago De Gaulle decided that diplomacy was much too serious to be entrusted to diplomats, so he keeps foreign policy firmly in his own hands, although Maurice Couve de Murville is nominally French foreign minister. * DE GAULLE STOPS measuring his height and his distance from other mor- tals only when he and his wife get away for the weekend to their home at Colom- bey-les-Deux Eglises. Only then can they completely relax. Here Madame De Gaulle, who is af- ' fectionately known as "Aunt Yvonne," busies herself with her favorite chari- ties, including a hospital for mentally retarded children. De Gaulle's daughter, Anne, who died in 1948 at the age of 20, was one of these unfortunates, w h i c h only made her dearer to ber parents. During the war De Gaulle could not bear to be parted from Anne, but took her with him even to Algiers. She is buried in the cemetery of Colombey. Sundays President Charles de Gaulle likes to attend Mass in the ancient Col- ombey church. He especially likes to sit in a corner pew where the sun streams down upon him through a stained glass window of St. Joan of Arc. Aggressive Thrust of Ideologies Has Plagued U.S. This Century SMITH By HOWARD K. SMITH DISSENTING from Walter Lippman is risky business. Judged by probabili- ties based on past performances, he is likely to be right. But if one honors him by imitation and applies rigorously disciplined reason to relevant facts, it seems to me that his main theme on Viet Nam is wrong. In effect the theme is this: We are moving in a rut dug in our minds in the late 1830s; we are treating Viet Nam as World War Two and Ho Chi Minh as Hitler. We are like a man trying to move about Chicago with a street-map of New York; so naturally the farther we go in error, the worse off we are. The mistake.of moving in old ruts and applying the solution of the last crisis to the new but different crisis is a frequent one. Our own record shows lots of cases. BUT IS THIS WHAT is happening now? We refused all talks with Hitler and would agree only to unconditional surrender and our occupation, of his country. However, the President in Baltimore offered Ho a very good deal and clearly hopes to sustain his regime as a future buffer. The map metaphor would be less neat but more accurate if it pictured us trying to find our way around a new primitive city by applying conscientious- ly and with imagination all we know about how past cities have been formed. Though making many errors, we are also making headway. Militarily we have stopped and may soon break all General Giap's hope of progressing—which is very different from the situation one year ago. We are bound to suffer some reverses, but they are likely to become less and less frequent. * Politically,' if Ky can re-establish order and then be persuaded to cede power to a coalition, all the recent dis- sensions will fall into place as the grop- ings of a hitherto apathetic people to break out of apathy and realize a new and welcome will to participate in gov- erning themselves. Internationally, it is American re- sistance in Viet Nam that has encour- aged Indonesian anti-Communists to halt Sukarno's blind rush into a destructive form of communism and to end the dis- rupting war with Malaysia. IT IS CERTAINLY TRUE that Viet Nam is related to past troubles — but here is the way I see the parallel: Since Darwin and Freud and the spread of understanding began eroding religion with all its assurances, poor and desperate people have been seeking the same assurances in ideology. Ideology resembles religion insofar as it promise^ the holders of the truth that they shalK be the chosen people and will inherit the^ earth. And it has the added attraction of always claiming to be scientifically based. Ideologies, being rather rigid, and in- evitably inadequate, systems of thought, do not stand up well in societies with thecivic freedom to question and dis- sent: the mind is still primitive and not nearly sophisticated enough to system- atize all knowledge. So a free nation like America may have, a hddge podge of notions; but it does not have an ideology —a succession of ideas progressing, rather like a popular drama, to a happy climax. THE KAISER STIMULATED the Ger- mans almost to win World War One with an ideology of extreme nationalism based on the inflammatory hisjtories of Treitschke and the rigid philosophy of Hegel which made Prussia the climax of human development. Hitler added the "Science of-Race" to make the Nordic or Aryan peoples the pre-destined rulers. Stalin's inspiration was also German- Marxist economics which promised the representatives of the workers sway of the world. Mao's and Ho's ideology is an adaptation of Marxism to the peas- ants—since experience has shown the workers to have become pillars rather than wreckers of society.. All these ideologies involve aggres- sion, for the world is to be the reward of the true believer. Our central prob- lem in the 20th Century has been to break the aggressive thrust of the ideol- ogies—one after another. If there is anything uniform in the American ef- fort it is reluctance and self-criticism rather than arrogance. It may also be uniform that we always stumble ridiculously until we im- provise the right response. I suspect we shall stumble some more. We may even fail. But I suspect that we shall prevail. AP WEEK IN REVIEW U.S. Reveals Pullout Of Some Troops From France IT WASNT HARD to remember the day the Americans arrived—June 6, 1944, at Normandy. This week the Americans were ordered out; President Charles de Gaulle no longer wanted them on French Soil. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced some 12,700 U.S. military and" civilians, mostly air force, would be moved to England within the next few months. The remaining 17,000 are slated to go too, as soon as nego- tations are completed. With them will go thousands of dependent*, and the jobs of thousands of French civilians, and millions of American dollars. De Gaulle no longer wants NATO forces on French soil. The Americans will be redeployed, to England, other parts of Europe, to the United States and elsewhere. A funda- mental military shift in Europe was under way. On the political front, a West German leader made a startling proposal—later disavowed by the Bonn government. Dr. Rainer Darzel, a leading candidate to succeed Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, sug- gested that in return for reunification of Germany Soviet troops be allowed to stay in East Germany while West Ger- many guaranteed East Germany's debts to the Soviet Union. Washington and the Free World were somewhat aghast, but interested. The Communist world was angered by the implication that the Communist regime in East Germany was moribund. De Gaulle was due to go to Moscow soon with some proposals of his own for German unification^ and there were re- ports that German politicians were vying with one another for new ideas on this old and explosive subject In any event, the whole question of German reunification seemed up for reairing. ON A BRIGHT SUNNY afternoon in lower New York Harbor, within sight of the Empire State Building, two tankers collided. One, gushing naptha from a hole in her side, burst into flames. Heavy black smoke covered the area and a disaster alert was issued. Tugs, fire- boats and helicopters raced to the area, plucking tankcrmen from the flaming water, pulling the tankers apart, fight- ing fire on the ships. Within hours the fires were under control, one tanker was beached and the other towed to an an- chorage off Brooklyn. At least 20 men were dead, 40 injured and 12 missing. What caused the British tanker Alva Cape and the American tanker Texaco Massachusetts to collide? Apparently a mix-up in signals. OPERATION HAWTHORNE, opera- tion El Paso, operation Sgt. Howard. The first two were planned and official, the last one quite the opposite. Haw- thorne wound up Monday, in the hills north of Kontum. It was, for Viet Nam, a big operation, and it cost the 24th North Vietnamese Regiment at least 400 dead. For the time being, at least, elements of the U.S. 101st Airborne and the First Cavalry Division, had smashed or dispersed the North Vietnamese regu- lars above Kontum. El Paso, 50 miles northwest of Sai- gon, killed 100 or more Viet Cong as American and South Vietnamese units cleared out a guerrilla area. On Wed- nesday night, Staff Sgt. Jimmie Howard, 36, of San Diego, Calif., led one of those classic stands the Marines are famous for. His 17-man platoon was holding Hill 488, some 35 miles northwest of Chu Lai, when hundreds of Viet Cong swarmed up the slopes in assault. By dawn Thursday five Marines were dead, 11 wounded, including Howard, but the Marines still held the hill. They, had only a dozen rounds of ammunition left. On the slopes were the bodies of 43 Viet Cong, and signs that many more bodies had been dragged away. Howard said the enemy yelled at his'men hv English, "Marines, you die in an hour." The Marines yelled back: You bastards ain't got us yet." Said Howard of his men: "They were 17 of the greatest men God ever put on this earth." MAYBE IT WAS SPRING, maybe It was the provos (self-styled young pro- vocateurs), maybe it was police vio- lence. Whatever caused them, riots flared night after night in Amsterdam, a city of nearly one million. Some blamed the heat, some blamed the welfare state, tabor Party Leader Gerard Nedcrhost declared:: "This is terror. It has noth- ing to do with protest. Nihilists reign over the streets." One night the riot leaders claimed they were protesting the war in Viet Nam, the next night it was police brutality, the next night It was no particular reason. There was no doubt about the results—one dead and at least 100 injured. Thomas M. Tryniski 309 South 4th Street Fulton New York 13069 www.fultonhistory.com
