In between convulsions, France is one of the most conservative countries in Europe. The average Frenchman prizes stability and tranquility above all other political ideals and is prepared to lean over the edge of chaos in quest of them; but he enjoys the counterpoint of a good crisis, too, provided he can feel sure that it will not get out of hand and does not really mean anything.
For nearly two years the Fifth Republic served him well. Stability seemed assured by the mere presence in the presidential palace of General Charles de Gaulle. At the same time there was an almost continuous crisis: the perpetually bubbling caldron of the Algerian war, Soustelle’s resignation, trouble with the army, the “barricades” uprising in Algiers, the torture controversy, the seizure of opposition papers, the teachers’ campaign against the subsidization of Catholic Schools, Pinay’s departure, the revolt of the moderates against the General’s European and nuclear policies.
But as the Fifth Republic moved into its third year (the seventh year of the war in Algeria) the crisis began to look as if it might, after all, be getting out of hand. Some of the General’s most useful allies had publicly broken with him; many who remained faithful feared that his regime had not much longer to live. Paris theatergoers emerged from a French version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the Odéon haunted by the soothsayer’s warning. “It was uncanny,” a drama critic said later; “it was like watching a preview of the tragedy the Odeon will be putting on a hundred years from now entitled Charles de Gaulle.”
The fault was largely de Gaulle’s own. Brought to power by right-wing plotters and demagogues whose search for stability had led them along some of the same paths as Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar, he domesticated the more malleable of them (notably his Prime Minister Michel Debré) and tried to ignore the rest. But, considering himself the embodiment of the mystic will of an abstract France uninhabited by mortals, aloof from the snarling “packs” (his own insulting word) that sought to solve the nation’s problems on a less exalted level, he did not deign to take into his confidence the mass of ordinary citizens who had given him their support—après coup—in expectation of stable government and a satisfactory early settlement in Algeria. Worse, he allowed his psychological warriors to transform France’s state-owned radio, TV, and news agency monopoly into a crude propaganda instrument, with the result that public opinion was soon lulled into ignorance of and indifference to what was going on.
General de Gaulle is still supported, faute de mieux, by the majority of apolitical citizens; but theirs is not the eager, vigilant support that would be necessary to deter those of his 1958 campaigners who now wish to displace him. Conscious of his weakness and isolation, he has decided to hold a referendum on January 8 to seek approval of his plan for a provisional Algerian executive. The plan is itself an uneasy alternative to the peace talks with the FLN (the Algerian “National Liberation Front”) which French liberals and leftists—and a majority at the UN—now advocate, but which the French army is not yet ready to consider. President de Gaulle hopes that the referendum will give him a sufficient majority to warn off the army and ultras (the right-wing European settlers in Algeria and their political allies in France) and win him time, both at home and at the UN. He reasons, apparently, that if he is to be defied, the defiance must come before the referendum: afterward whoever defied him would, in theory, be opposing the will of the majority of the nation.
But the extreme right and extreme left announced weeks in advance their refusal to be impressed by this “plebiscite” (a deprecatory word in French political usage). Liberals and moderate leftists, too, have misgivings. M. Christian Pineau, a former foreign minister, writes:
For months, French public opinion has been stupefied and deceived and denied the facts on which judgment can alone be based. Few voters are now really capable of expressing a considered opinion. Many will vote oui out of respect for the Chief of State; others will vote non because they do not trust him. The result will have no objective value and no one will really take any notice of it.
Jacques Fauvet, of Le Monde, says bluntly: “It is now useless to consult the mass of Frenchmen on this subject.” And Roger Priouret, another leading commentator, observes: “The present regime is government by tranquilizer. The public is in a state of narcosis. Frenchmen are today subjects, not citizens. They thought they had found another Louis XIV but now they realize he is simply Cagliostro—so they are looking for another savior.”
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General de Gaulle first pronounced the phrase “Algerian republic” on November 4, 1960. A few days later Marshal Juin declared that in protest against de Gaulle’s “abandonment” of Algeria he would stay away from the official ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe on November 11. Rumors began swirling around like autumn leaves.
November 11 is a public holiday in France in celebration of the 1918 victory. Flags fly, troops parade, bands are out, anciens combattants get drunk, and the air resounds with nationalist speeches. What better cover for a coup? The government was sufficiently alarmed to have all gendarmes and CRS (security-police) standing by, and the riot squads on duty in the vicinity of the Arc de Triomphe received so persuasive a pep talk that they clubbed, kicked, and arrested as many bystanders and journalists as demonstrators.
Café crowds lingered over their apéritifs to hear the lunchtime news. “Parachute-troops,” the newscaster said solemnly, “have attempted a coup d’état—”
“Ça y est,” voices murmured.
“—in South Vietnam.”
There was laughter. For a few days nobody mentioned the word “plot.” But the respite was brief. Spokesmen for the Algerian settlers warned that they would fight de Gaulle’s “Algerian Republic.” M. Jacques Soustelle, pacemaker and coordinator of the plots that brought de Gaulle to power, scurried around rallying influential right-wing politicians, officers, and intellectuals in support of “an emergency program to save French Algeria.” Another gravedigger of the Fourth Republic, General Raoul Salan, struck a pose reminiscent of de Gaulle’s attitude in 1958: sitting expectantly in the wings just over the Spanish border—“in readiness to serve the nation”—he issued a series of communiqués attacking the president’s Algerian policy. The government transferred scores of “doubtful” officers to Germany and rushed gendarmes and security police to Algeria: 5,000 were on duty in Algeria alone at the end of November.
As in May 1958, the regime’s enemies were more active than its supporters. But the political balance had changed. In 1958 the right (with the exception of the Poujadists) was united and arrogant, and able to cloak even its wilder backwoodsmen in the respectability of endorsement by de Gaulle. Now it was disunited—Premier Michel Debré, one of the most irresponsible agitators of the Fourth Republic, was firmly under de Gaulle’s thumb—and had only second-rate “strong men” in reserve: neither Juin nor Salan was of de Gaulle’s caliber. The left, on the other hand, overawed by de Gaulle in 1958 and racked by clan strife, had regained self-confidence and a measure of unity in 1960 by its campaign against Debré’s law providing government subsidies for Catholic schools; and, for the first time, its opposition to the war in Algeria was attracting the nation’s youth.
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Since 1946 young Frenchmen have been involved by their governments in a succession of “police actions” in Madagascar, Indochina, Tunisia, and Algeria. Conscientious objection to military service is not recognized here and pacifists who try to object are apt to be beaten up, jailed, and conscripted again on their release. In the last year more youngsters than ever before have taken the only other way out—desertion, usually with the aid of left-wing organizations which, sooner or later, put them in touch with the FLN. In the fall, sixteen deserters were given stiff sentences for aiding the FLN, and their trial assumed unexpected significance when 121 left-wing writers, teachers, film producers, and actors signed a manifesto upholding the right of young conscripts to refuse to take up arms against the Algerian people. One hundred eighty-five right-wing intellectuals and academicians promptly issued a counterblast, but the government assured the leftists of the sympathies of the universities—and of their fans among the general public—by banning them and their works from the radio and TV, the national theaters, and state-subsidized films. Detectives interrogated many of the signatories, and teachers and others who were on public payrolls were suspended.
In October the teachers’ and students’ unions issued a national appeal for peace in Algeria. In November they persuaded local leaders of both Socialist parties (Guy Mollet’s SFIO and the more vigorous PSU), the Communist party, the deep-pink Peace Movement, and the Socialist and Communist labor unions to join them in setting up committees in every département to campaign for an Algerian settlement. (Whatever the dangers to the Socialists of this cautious collaboration with the Communists, the popular front bogey it raised scared into de Gaulle’s camp many conservative politicians and officers who might otherwise have flirted with the ultras.) The campaign was helped by the publication of an unusually frank book on the Algerian war, La guerre d’Algérie, by an Algerian-born writer (and ex-colonel), Jules Roy. Here is an extract from it:
The French made their real entry into Toudja (a village of 2,331 inhabitants in 1959) in 1956 when . . . the army arrived with tanks and planes to carry out the repression. I am certain of the figures I give, which I worked out on the spot, and which no one asked me to keep secret. I thought I went beyond the limits of horror when I first suggested the figure of 500 dead or disappeared, but I knew the country. They shook their heads. “Too many?”—“No.”—“Eight hundred?”—“No.”—“A thousand?” There was silence. “Twelve hundred?”—“Approximately.”
The rebels also kill. They are accused of having committed sixteen murders over the past six years. Sixteen to twelve hundred.
Surprisingly, it was not banned. Ultras murmured that the government probably thought it might soften up French resistance to the “abandonment” of Algeria.
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Most government supporters are, of course, just as impatient as the teachers and students for peace in Algeria. The best-informed of them are convinced that unless the conflict ends soon the Chinese will make good their promise of substantial aid to the rebels; the Russians, hitherto fairly discreet, would be forced to outbid the Chinese, and then the Americans would join in the competition.1 Frenchmen of all the center and right-wing parties fear a Russo-American understanding, as at Suez, to impose a settlement.
General de Gaulle is believed to share this apprehension. As soon as possible after the January 8 referendum, he will go ahead with the establishment of autonomous Algerian institutions, administered by a French-supervised Moslem majority; then, after a short transitional period, a referendum in Algeria alone will decide the country’s status. Those who know him say he has come a long way since the day, two years ago, he peevishly withdrew French administrators—and even their office furniture—from Conakry and tried to plunge the infant republic of Guinea into chaos. He would be well content with an Algerian settlement similar to those obtained with Senegal and Madagascar, providing France with military bases and safeguarding her economic interests but maintaining only a light Commonwealth-type political link.
He is now the only Frenchman capable of saving that much from the Algerian imbroglio—and capable of persuading his compatriots to approve the concessions that must be made in order to save that much. It is less the fact that France must ultimately relinquish Algeria than the manner of her going that preoccupies him. But he has little freedom of maneuver. He has incurred the mistrust of the FLN, of pro-Western African leaders such as Tunisia’s President Habib Bourguiba, and of the most articulate sections of left-wing and moderate opinion inside France; he must be content with the open hostility of the Algerian settlers; and in order to keep the army in line he has been obliged to assure the chiefs of staff that he will approve no settlement which might be interpreted as implying a French defeat, military or political.
It is because they know de Gaulle gave the army this assurance—last January, when several hundred armed settlers raised barricades in the center of Algiers—that the FLN, Bourguiba, and the French left mistrust him. In justifying their continued mistrust they cite his “sabotage” of the exploratory talks between French and FLN representatives at Melun last summer (French officials admit that their side was responsible for the breakdown of the talks) and the appointment at the end of November of M. Jean Morin, a notorious ultra, as head of the civil administration in Algeria; and they quote the ambiguous formulae his spokesmen still use in Algeria. In the last few weeks, in the course of official visits to Algeria, Premier Debré has declared that the rebels cannot be consulted on the country’s future until they have agreed to a cease-fire, and M. Messmer, minister for the armed forces, has used the settler slogan Algérie française and told French officers that there can be no question of allowing Algeria to be taken over by the FLN: both stressed that the army would stay on in Algeria. Even government supporters winced when, in November, Colonel Gardes, former head of the army’s psychological warfare department in Algiers, revealed that official directives he received from Paris in the fall of 1959 assured him that de Gaulle’s pledge of “self-determination” for Algeria was a tactical move intended to influence the U.N.
Right-wingers have still greater cause for discontent. The president’s successive retreats on Algeria have annoyed them, of course; but it is the impression of being “cocu “—their realization that, quite cynically and with brilliant generalship, he made use of them in order to climb to power and then turned his back on them—that really hurts and infuriates. Bitterly, they recall that in order to make way for him they swept out of office cautious men like Bourgès-Maunoury, Gaillard, and Pflimlin who would never have dared pronounce the hideous words “self-determination” and “Algerian Republic.” “De Gaulle an poteau” (“de Gaulle to the gallows”) has now replaced “Mendès au poteau” as the favorite chant of right-wing demonstrators; on city walls one even sees: “De Gaulle-Mendes-Juif.2
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Some of those who helped the Gaullists overthrow the Fourth Republic were brought to trial before a military court in November on charges connected with last January’s “barricade” riots in Algiers. M. Alain de Sérigny, owner of the Echo d’ Alger, told the court how in the spring of 1958 he had helped swing Algiers opinion toward de Gaulle and contributed $25,000 to de Gaulle’s political fund. (When de Gaulle came to power M. de S6rigny was repaid from a government secret fund—that is, with the taxpayer’s money!) De Sérigny said he had asked Soustelle and Debré, separately, for an assurance that de Gaulle would work for the preservation of French sovereignty over Algeria, and both had replied: “How can you possibly doubt the General?” After consulting de Gaulle, Soustelle had written: “[De Gaulle] approves the efforts of those who defend French territory and is definitely opposed to secession”—that is, to Algerian independence. M. de Sérigny recalled speeches in Algiers and Mostaganem in the summer of 1958 in which de Gaulle used the integrationist slogans Algérie frangaise and Français à part entiére (“100 per cent Frenchmen”) in describing Algeria and its inhabitants; and he reminded the court that M. Debré, in his first policy speech as Prime Minister, promised that Algeria would remain “under French sovereignty.” As if in recognition of the legitimacy of the defendants’ grievances, their military judges released them from detention in the early stages of the trial. “Vive l’armée!” cried the audience. “The army is with us,” said the defendants’ friends. By chance or design, the military prosecutor included in his selection of subversive texts circulated by the defendants this incitement to revolt:
The abandonment of French sovereignty in Algeria would be an illegitimate act; it would put those who committed it beyond the pale of the law; and those who resisted it—whatever the means they might employ—would be in a legitimate state of defense.
Its author turned out to be Premier Michel Debré (in his now defunct weekly, Le Courrier de la Colère, issue dated November 28, 1957).
The ultras are now making a lot of this argument, and their leaflets warn de Gaulle that if he allows Algeria to secede he will be guilty of high treason. The president’s legal position is, to say the least, embarrassing. Article 5 of the constitution of the Fifth Republic charges the President of the Republic with responsibility for insuring that the constitution is respected and for preserving “the integrity of [French] territory,” defined as including Algeria. Article 80 of the penal code declares guilty of endangering the state, and punishable accordingly, “any Frenchman who undertakes any action liable to imperil the integrity of French territory or to result in the withdrawal of the authority of France from any part of her territory.” Article 477 of the penal code, confirmed by de Gaulle in December 1958, specifies that the code covers Algeria and the Sahara as well as metropolitan France. Article 89 of the constitution bars any revision of constitutional texts affecting the integrity of French territory.
M. Soustelle and others have hinted that if General de Gaulle sets up an autonomous Algerian administration, they will declare it illegal, recommend the population of Algiers to boycott it, and establish a rival “administration of French Algeria” committed to maintain the union with France. Some of the General’s supporters believe that such a development would not dismay him—even if it led to a partition of Algeria between a “Gaullist” administration, destined to be taken over by the Moslems, and an ultra enclave limited, most probably, to the coastal plain between Algiers and Oran. No such enclave would be viable without metropolitan aid: it would be forced to come to terms with Paris ultimately—and in the meantime de Gaulle would have an opportunity of straightening out France’s relations with the Moslems and the ultras of reflecting on the futility of their slogans. But liberals fear, and right-wingers hope, that senior army officers would insist on standing by the settlers—even to the point of forcing de Gaulle to resign.
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Fortunately for de Gaulle, the army is divided. Generals Jouhaud, Valluy, Lecoq, Zeller, Massu, Miquel, and Crépin (“hand-picked” by de Gaulle for his present post of commander-in-chief in Algeria) are all, like Marshal Juin and General Salan, overtly critical of de Gaulle’s Algerian policy; Generals Lecomte and Lavaud are critical but cautious; the influential General Ely is described as “not critical but anxious.” Each has his coterie, but none has any substantial following; and they trust one another about as much as MRP politicians. The colonels who so terrified the leaders of the Fourth Republic formed a bigger and more nearly homogeneous bloc, but most of them have been transferred to garrison duties in France and Germany, and two or three have gone into politics. Their dispersion has weakened them—and disseminated their ideas. “Military socialism,” “national communism,” and other formulae hatched out by frustrated army propagandists in Algeria between 1956 and 1958 crop up now in quiet gatherings in Paris, Lyons, Toulouse, and Bordeaux. Since November 1958 an organized movement—the Jeunesses Socialistes Patriotes—has existed for the purpose of bringing to power a “military government” that would nationalize banks, control big business, limit commercial profits, “inculcate in the nation the military virtues,” and keep Algeria French: it claims the support of four thousand serving army officers and many “reservists, young technicians, senior technocrats, and disillusioned Gaullists.” Other officers are attracted by neo-fascist groups like Patrie et Progrès, Jeune Nation, and Georges Sauge’s politicomystic “National Catholicism”; many are royalists. The right offers a wide selection of labels for its brand of stability—something for every age and mental state.
Most French officers are vulnerable to chauvinistic propaganda—the complexes born of 1940, Dienbienphu, and Suez are still vigorous—and most want to keep Algeria French, both for nationalistic reasons and for the substantial advantages they derive from the Algerian situation in terms of promotion, pay, and special allowances. (As a result of the Indochinese and Algerian wars, the French army has more officers per thousand men than any other army in the world. Officers are paid about 40 per cent more in Algeria than in France and many have their wives with them or have acquired Algerian-born wives: a posting back to France is often very bad news.) But few are eager to pick a quarrel with their paymaster. And while it is true that de Gaulle has never been as popular in the army as with the civil population—in the eyes of many junior and middle-grade officers he is a fussy 19th-century figure: “an old man obsessed with the fear of death who spends his days in prayer”3—it is also true that no other personality is more popular.
There is a strong current of opinion in the French army in Algeria in favor of going along with de Gaulle in establishing an autonomous Algerian administration—but for the purpose of “capturing” it. In the name of security the army would be able to veto the appointment of Moslems in whom local commanders lack confidence. On the surface de Gaulle’s “Algerian Algeria” would come into being; beneath the surface power would remain in military hands. Many officers are strongly critical of the pieds noirs—the European settlers—whom they blame for the alienation of the Moslems; but there is enough common ground between army and settlers for an attempt to be made to construct an “Algerian Algeria” vastly different from the one liberals have in mind. If the Ides of March pass off without a coup, and the ultras refrain from establishing an “administration for French Algeria” when de Gaulle sets up his Algerian executive, it may be because they and their military friends have decided that discretion is the better part of conservatism and agreed to embrace the principle of self-determination in order to try to stifle it.
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Ten years ago, confident of the success of his “mission” and convinced that parliamentary democracy had no future in France, General de Gaulle toyed with the idea of preparing the way for a Bourbon restoration with the Comte de Paris as interim “Prince-President.” (The royalists, who scorn the British system of a purely symbolic monarchy and all-powerful parliament, had a hand in drafting the constitution of the Fifth Republic.) But early in 1960 he confided in one of his ministers his fear that he will be succeeded simply by “the old money-grubbing bourgeoisie,” represented at the Elysée by a man he despises—M. Antoine Pinay, his first finance minister.
“And what about the army?” the minister asked.
General de Gaulle is said to have replied: “The army is restless, I know. But it is engrossed in its internal politics and has no outstanding leader—only condottieri who cancel each other out. It will be content to get under Pinay’s umbrella.”
A PSU leader’s comment on this conversation was: “De Gaulle is an optimist. I think it more likely that we are heading for a French version of the Franco regime. The longer the Algerian war lasts the greater the danger. But even when it is over we shall not be in the clear. One reason why the Fourth Republic fell was that, after Indochina, some two hundred surplus senior officers had nothing to do but sit around and talk politics. After Algeria there will be many more with time on their hands and a grudge to nurse.”
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1 Anti-Americanism and Anglophobia have receded from the high-water mark of two years ago but are still widespread. Provincial SFIO and UNR (right-wing Gaullist) orators still attack the Americans and British “for intriguing against us in North Africa,” and the Canard Enchainé and extreme right-wing weeklies regularly chum out Anglo-American plots against France. The army is more strongly anti-American than the civilian population. A senior officer detailed to report on staff officers' and unit commanders' reactions to the stationing of German troops in France reached the conclusion that the majority were “less anti-German than anti-American. . . . While they would be pleased to see the Americans go they are generally indifferent to the Germans.”
2 Like anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism is less strident than two years ago, possibly because of the eclipse of the ultras' principal bête noire, M. Pierre Mendès-France. Israel is still fairly popular with the moderate right which dislikes Jews but welcomes any stick with which to scare the Arabs; she has lost friends during the last year in liberal circles which criticize Ben Gurion for his intransigent Arabophobia (understandable, surely) and his friendship with men like M. Soustelle and M. Gilbert (a former French ambassador to Israel whom the fascist-minded Jeunesses Socialistes Patriotes claim as a supporter).
3 This description, by an “activist” officer in Algiers, was quoted at the “barricades” trial.
