BOOKS
Crise de Conscience
By D. W. BROGAN
You can see the aftermath of Christmas in Paris, the remaining decorations, the round- abouts, you can see them even surviving Twelfth Night, 'la nuit des rois.' What you can't see is 'what isn't there; the army in Algeria, the slow draining of blood, French and 'Arab,' the more rapid circulation of poison in the body political. There are reminders in le meiropole, of course. There are the endless stories of assassinations in France of Algerians and even of 'whites.' There is an undercurrent of anxiety and even of fear. The families of the mobilised are anxious (like the families of British troops in Cyprus or in Malaya a year or two ago). But the official legend is repeated. There is good news of oil in the Sahara, freeing France at last from the tyranny of Arabia and Texas, and each government dithering about 'Ioi cadre,' making concessions here, withdrawing them there, hunting for sup- port or averting parliamentary hostility, chants 'Tow va bien, madame la marquise.'
But, from time to time, a bomb bursts in this artificially cosy world. Last month it was the bold decision of La Croix, representative of the middle-
of-the-road Catholics, to launch a campaign against the betrayal of Christian and traditionally French standards in the 'defence,' the 'pacifica- tion' of Algeria. Sometimes it is some particularly odious episode of repression that can't be hushed up. It may be a report of a commission revealing the adoption of torture, if not as a system of government at least as an instrument of govern- ment. (There are circumstances in which torture pays as well as being fun.) Among these bombs, these voices crying in an artificial silence, this book* by M. Servan-Schreiber is one of the most important and, while one can understand M. Servan-Schreiber's doubts about giving his testi- mony in an English version, exposing the sores of his country to the countrymen of Mr. Dulles and Mr. Faubus, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd and Sir John Harding, he has done right.
But it is first of all necessary to warn the 'Anglo-Saxon' reader against certain easy exer- cises in moral superiority. The closest parallel with the North African situation is the South African situation and we have, fortunately, escaped the responsibility for that endless descent downhill and can take pride in the testimony of prelates like the Rt. Rev. Ambrose Reeves or Father Huddleston, without having the direct responsibility for answering or not answering the even more courageous appeals of the Archbishop of Algiers. Our little adventures in deposing native rulers in Uganda and elsewhere didn't take place in such centres of world interest as Morocco. And if, as we should, we listen with astonishment to statements that Algeria is part of 'France' as French as Brittany or Provence, we should remember that corresponding non- sense is talked here. If it is hardly ever worth while listening to what follows the assertion that 'Algeria is part of France,' it is equally seldom worth while listening to anyone who asserts, with the air of making a conclusive point, 'Cyprus has never been part of Greece anyway.' The men who talk the deepest nonsense may be men of high character and ability, like M. Soustelle or Lord Salisbury, but the silliness of good and intel- ligent men is a political factor to be allowed for. So is the long-term folly of stupid men who have their organ in a paper like L'Aurore, not to speak of the folly of men who have a lot to lose in Algeria and are grimly determined to save it—if saving it ruins France—and Algeria.
But when all this is said, when the universal allowance of folly, vanity and greed is allowed for, a good deal remains to be said. Among these things is the increasingly pathological belief that, if only outsiders would keep out, Tunisians, Moroccans, British, Americans, the question (purely domestic) could be settled. The 'loss' of Indo-China, of Morocco, of Tunisia, has been due, so many Frenchmen think, to ill-timed con- cessions. Force, la min forte, is the answer. The 'presence of France' must be maintained. (This argument is ably countered by M. Francois Mitterand in his 'Presence Francaise et Abandon.') But what is made evident in this grim 'reportage is the emptiness of force as a policy. There is 'an aim, not a policy.' In the course of exercising force, not only is France exhausted, degraded, made to look impotent, the object of contempt in Rome and Bonn, but the problem of living to- gether after a settlement, any settlement, is made harder and harder. The Algerian leaders who, a few years ago, were Mintoffs on a larger scale, as eager as M. Soustelle for 'integration,' are silenced, dead, in exile or driven by the character of French repression on to the nationalist side. (The Black and Tans did the same in Ireland. They ruined the hopes of the more moderate Irishmen, made even so uncharacteristic a Catho- lic Irishman as Oliver Gogarty a 'rebel'). Of the character of the repression, this sombre book gives adequate testimony. There are the trigger- happy soldiers, the frightened and savage colonial militia, the 'high brass' mounting big, dramatic, costly, pointless operations, the gros colons for whom all this extravagant waste of blood, treasure and honour is only the duty France owes to the 'Frenchmen' of Algeria. There are the professional soldiers, some regretting Indo-China where France had some friends among the indigenes and the mass of conscripts bored, baffled, despising the ratons and yet in the dark as to what cause they are serving.
What cause are they serving? There may not yet be an Algerian nation. The report that led to the seizure of France-Observateur and more recently of Les Temps Modernes (Raffaello Uboldi, 'Le reportage interdit' [Temps Modernes; December, 1957j) shows something like a nation or a nationalist movement in the making. From the Arab point of view 'a terrible beauty is born.' No doubt there are divergences. There are the 'durs' who massacre and mutilate like North African Mau-Mau, not only to intimidate but to put a barrier of blood between the two races. There are those who want la presence francaise but on terms based on a free bargain. There are, no doubt, millions who, as in Hungary in 1958, Spain in 1939, China in 1945, only want peace. But it is with the first groups that France will have to deal, with the 'durs,' if no more imagina- tion and generosity is shown than was shown in Indo-China, in Morocco, in Tunisia. We, at least, abdicated in the great manner, 'conune des mes- sieurs.' We reap our profit in the person of Mr. Macmillan in New Delhi in 1958, a century after the horrible repression of the Mutiny. But we owe that happy state to the people who protested, to journalists like W. H. Russell, young 'civilians' like George Otto Trevelyan and to a series of successors who, because they could be ashamed of the crimes of their country, were its ornament and saviours. Of such men France (it is much to say) has at least its share. M. Servan-Schreiber is one of them and he has 'bien Write de la putrie:
* LIEUTENANT IN ALGERIA. By Jean-Jacques Servan- Schreiber, translated by Ronald Matthews. (Hutchin- son, 16s.)
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