Turning to Europe
From DARSIE GILLIE •
PARIS
HE French National Assembly snubbed Presi- dent de Gaulle's new Prime Minister with a very narrow majority and showed its inclination to abandon the discussion of Algeria (hadn't it all been settled at Evian? Wasn't Satan a prisoner?) for that of Europe and wage prob- lems. The snub to the President's man of busi- ness would have been more telling if the Assembly had shown itself less blithely prepared is move on. For with Jouhaud and Satan out of the way the OAS has only plunged deeper into crime and damage to France. After murdering officers, policemen, teachers, chemists' assistants, hospital patients and ordinary passers-by, it has gone on to the massacre of dockers when queued Up for jobs and then picking off charwomen. It has murdered over a thousand people in the seven weeks since the cease-fire was signed. At the height of- the Algerian war, it is true, the army used to claim week after week that it had killed between three and six hundred rebels. This new total is not by such standards a heavy death list, but there has been a cease-fire and, however un- desirably, the army was operating for the restora- tion of a State authority. Whatever brilliant ideas the perverted staff officers at the head of the OAS originally had, it has now slumped into being a- machine by which members of the European- community kill members of the Moslem corn- Munity in those few small areas where they still have the power to do so. This is an even more shocking phenomenon than the original war. It threatens to destroy the basis of the Evian agree- ment (anyway a shaky plank bridge into the future); to deprive Algeria of its European mer- cantile and technical craft which cannot readily be replaced; and to inflict on France a problem of refugee absorption under sinister political, social and moral conditions.
It is important to be clear of what they dis- approve. The Communists and some other Left- Wing elements use the name Rothschild as a dirty word when they refer to M. Pompidou's last employers. But for the majority of serious- minded critical Frenchmen that is not the main Point. It is not seriously suggested that M. Pompi-. dou, a distinguished public-spirited man, would allow his association with the house of Rothschild to colour his view of the interests of France. Offence is taken that the President of the Repub- lic should appoint a Prime Minister in the same Way that partners.in a private bank appoint their managing director—a loyal, efficient executive, not a man chosen for his relations with any sec- tion of the citizens, for his representativeness or Proven skill in obtaining co-operation between different party groups; nor, an honest politician would go on to say, a man who 'is in 'any sense one of us.'
M. Debrd might get on the nerves of Parlia- ntent, but he had at least chosen to be a parlia- mentarian; he had gone through the hard mill of election, including, as is the rule in French poli- tics, election to a local body. It might be for- given M. Pompidou that he had never been a Deputy or Senator if, like M. Debre, he was a county councillor. To this sort of reproach the President has offered no sort of reply, but this is certainly not for having ignored the matter. When he brusquely reduced to three minutes his reception Of the newly-elected officers of the Assembilfy,, he capped their expression of hope for co-operaion between legislative and executive with the re- mark that at all events the objective set ..by the nation must be pursued. The constitution, he was broadly hinting, is only an instrument. The objec- tives in question are of course hard to distinguish from those set by himself, but they do anyway in- clude the final stages of the Algerian settlement which may well prove extremely difficult and to which neither the present nor the last Parliament has made any contribution. A Deputy would not be on strong ground in contradicting the Presi: dent if the latter said that he had simply sought a Prime Minister who could do the job. But it is legitimate to ask whether this kind of choice is compatible in the long run with a republic manned by citizens and whether the Govern- ment's difficulty in dealing with a treasonable faction has not been that Frenchmen now think it is enough to be a patriot, leaving civic duties to be carried out by the Republic's uniformed or, in case of real danger, plain-clothed agents.
At all events, there is the President riding away, having taken not only the responsibility for Algeria that Parliament and nation are delighted to leave him, but also that for European and Atlantic policy in which a good many people would like to have a say. France's voluntary contribution to Western policy since the war has been Europe. It' was launched from-the' banks of the Moselle by'M. Robert Scbuman, a man who had experienced both German and French citi- zenship—and indeed uniforms. It was open to Britain from the start, though its initiator was comprehensibly more concerned with the Franco- German problem than the Britannico-Continental one, but, also from the start, there have been a great many Frenchmen most anxious that a European union should solve both of them.
The Coal-Steel pool had followed on an attempt to create a Franco-Italian customs union. Yet farther back, still then allied in French memories immediately after the war, had been the proposal put 'forward in the crisis of June, 1940, for a Franco-British union primarily in matters of external sovereignty and defence. In fact, the European idea has taken form about a Franco-German problem and has been further shaped by President de Gaulle's resolute deter- mination to break what he believes to be Anglo- Saxon domination of the Western world. But in French minds the thought of a Western Europe based in some way on the entente cordiale is in constant competition with that of a Europe based on a Franco-German understanding..
The strength of the latter idea is that on both sides it is based on an aspiration to a politically organised Europe, whereas, as the French will know by experience, the British are prepared to think concretely about economic arrangements and only vaguely about the political future of Europ'e. Indeed, the British constantly forget that the creation of a Europe is at stake and casually suggest that New Zealand or some other distant trifle might be thrown in from the far end of the world. But even economically the impression our exporters have given over recent years has not been one of very vivid interest in the Continent. M. Couve de Murville, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, has clearly said that no expansion of the Common Market which led away from the con- struction of a Europe ('a Europe of the nations,' he of course means) would be acceptable to Presi- dent de Gaulle, and the President himself has persistently conveyed the impression that one of his principal European purposes, if not indeed quite simply his purpose, is to give Europeans and especially those in France, a firm equality in deal- ing with the English-speaking world. If he did not hope for this, he would probably not be a European. (The British should not forget • the national purpose they have proclaimed for cen- turies of preventing the Union of Europeans.) At home President de Gaulle meets with strong criticism in this connection but one which is itself rooted in a self-contradiction. However deeply we irritate the French, we do nationally enjoy an incomparable preference over the Germans. Few Frenchmen want to quarrel with us or, for a rather different set of motives, both rational and sentimental, with the Americans. But it is also true that the deeply-rooted, pro-European opinion in France which has been steadily built up, since the Coal, and Steel Pool was launched, goes well beyond the 'Europe of the nations' idea. French pro-Europeans are by and large federally-minded. The strength of the General's position on the European issue, therefore, is that, while his outlook arouses criticism for being too unfriendly to Britain and America, and too reti- cent with regard to European Union, it does at least offer a prospect that might conceivably be made adjustable to Britain. He can put his case to the nation, a little as he has done over Algeria, in 'terms of `What is it you really want?' So he can to the other Five. But in the case of Algeria, there is no doubt what he really wanted and wants. In the case of Europe and Britain there is such a doubt—a graver doubt than that which arises from the unresolved self-contradiction of his critics.
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