How does one take the measure of a statesman the size of Charles de Gaulle? The Frenchman was without doubt one of the giants of his time. He saved his country from eclipse in 1940 and from civil war in 1958 almost by force of personality. His political life was enveloped by a unique sense of national mystique. The quasimystical attitudes and feelings surrounding his mission – to restore France to a position of greatness – were an unalienable part of his larger-than-life political persona and of his political philosophy. To many he was the General, le Grand Charles, the man of June 18th, the miraculous reincarnation of Jeanne d’Arc, Georges Clemenceau, and Louis XIV: rarely ever just de Gaulle – a brigadier-general of the French army who, animated by an adamant loyalty to his country, turned into a remarkably effective and strong-willed political leader in times of extraordinary crisis.

Among Americans, too, de Gaulle's Olympian stature summoned a respect that devolved to few other foreign leaders. Walter Lippmann, America's foremost commentator on foreign affairs, confessed that, “having been one of his American admirers since June of 1940, when he raised his flag in Britain and summoned the French to go on with the war, I cannot pretend to write dispassionately about General de Gaulle.” Cyrus Sulzberger, a long-time European correspondent of the New York Times who often visited de Gaulle, thought of him as the “last of the giants” in an “age of mediocrity.” He was voted Time's man of the year in 1958. “He has given Frenchmen back their pride, swept away the miasma of self-contempt that has hung over France since its ignominious capitulation to Hitler in 1940,” the news weekly judged.

De Gaulle's popularity among Americans probably reached a peak in April 1960, during a state visit to the United States. The symbolic value of his rendezvous with President Dwight Eisenhower, his wartime companion, was easily recognized. The historic achievements of the French president and his efforts to extricate France from Algeria were dwelled upon in a spate of well-disposed press reports. Senators and congressmen regaled the visiting statesman with a standing ovation as he spoke, in an address to a joint session of Congress, of his country's dedication to the cause of liberty.