Whirlwind of Fear
From DARSIE GILLIE
PARIS
THE Wars of the Roses, I was taught at school, were sent to the English as a punishment for having ravaged France. The threatened Algerisation of France appears in much the same light to many French people. To others it is as incomprehensible as was, seven years ago, the Algerian rebellion to most of the Algerian Europeans. To some it has all the bitter attrac- tions of revenge. Week by week some new horror creeps into metropolitan French life, such as had long ago become normal in Algeria or as be- tween Moslems in France. We have just had the first case of an infernal machine tucked into the bonnet of a car so as to blow up the driver when he starts it up; we have had the first attempt of Frenchmen to murder in a hospital another Frenchman recovering from the first unsuccess- ful attempt to kill him; in connection with this same case we have had the first gendarme murdered in Paris while protecting a Frenchman from his fellow-countrymen. The imported disease of plastic-bombing the home of your ad- versary at the risk of maiming or killing his wife and children is, of course, so frequent now that it is no more considered an exotic contagion than influenza is associated with Spain.
It is in the light of this writing on the wall that French opinion has welcomed back the silent, tired Minister for Algerian Affairs after his eight- day wrestle with the Algerian ministers at a secret, still unnamed spot in the snow-covered Jura mountains. This at least bore all the marks of a real, tough negotiation as compared with the previous 'official' negotiations, in retrosp'ect little more than exercises in fencing. Has he at least found a way out of the original struggle between France and the Moslem rebels? For this is the necessary first step to the peace which may be almost as difficult to restore between Frenchmen and Frenchmen.
The two essential tests for any cease-fire agree- ment must be whether it is accompanied by such guarantees of security for the European minority in Algeria as would justify a reasonable man in trying his luck with the new regime and whether it creates or leaves in place machinery that can hope to contend with the certain attempt to be made by the OAS to sabotage the cease-fire, and this without creating a wave of sympathy inside France for the Algerian Europeans. It is not, of course, expected that the great majority of the Algiers and Oran Europeans will have reasonable reactions. 'They are caught up in much too wild a whirlwind of fear, hatred and injured pride—not to mention their extraordinary ignorance of the outer world and its possibilities in 1962. But such rational men as there are amongst them, and they are now probably most numerous in the small towns and on the farms, must be given their chance; and in France itself opinion must be shown that in any action which the Government is forced to take against fellow- Frenchmen, it is justified by having at least offered them first an alternative.
In France itself the great change has been the addition, on Tuesday of last week, of a nought to the estimate of men and women in an anti-OAS and (in consequence of the Government's own blindness) anti-Government demonstration. Hitherto the newspaper reader had to choose be- tween such guesses as 10,000 or 12,000- (the pre- fecture) and 50,000 or 60,000 (the Communists) with truth somewhere between. That was true for the demonstrations of both December 19 and February 8. But the estimates for the crowd that turned out on February 13, silent and disciplined, to bury the eight men and women who died by fault of the Paris police and those who com- mand it, was estimated by the prefecture at 125,000 and by the Communists at a million. A crowd of 200,000 or 300,000 is already enormous and is perhaps as much as it was. This change of scale alters the whole political problem.
Hitherto the President has been manoeuvring on the assumption that the majority of French- men would be only too pleased to have the pend- ing problems solved without any more trouble on their past than reading their newspapers. The authority of the Government would be main- tained far above the level of competing parties. Its main concern would be with small bodies of violent men, and with preventing the army from entering the political arena. To achieve this latter aim, the Government would keep at arms' length the proffered help of anti-OAS demon- strators for fear of being itself accused of toying with a Communist alliance. Such a policy at the very least required an artist at the Ministry of the Interior who could convey the impression that the Government was zealous in the fight against the OAS and would avoid a situation (desired by the Communist Party) in which the Govern- ment drew upon itself the hostility earned by the OAS. The Government has hopelessly under- estimated its own failure to impress the public with its ability, or even will, to act, and in par-. ticular the danger of certain police methods. Although the ordinary citizen generally attributes outrageous police behaviour against demon- strators to the gendarmerie and the Republican Security Companies, perhaps because in the cities they only go into action against rioters, it is more often than not the municipal police of Paris, under the command of M. Papon, the Prefect of Police, that causes the trouble. The elements of this latter police are trained for riot duty and are not only brutal but politically suspect; while the ordinary constables are resentful at the additional duties imposed on them in a turbulent age. The whole Paris police force is beginning again to suffer from a doubt as to the government which will be in control of it in, say, a year's time. It is only certain that this will not be a government of the extreme Left.
Instead, therefore, of making use of the popu- lar antipathy for the OAS, military conspirators and returned colonials, the Government, includ- ing the President, has brought itself into the line of fire between Left and Right. It is creating a situation in which it may well need some organised form of mass support such as parties usually provide under a parliamentary system. The UNR, with its total lack of policy or style other than 'Trust the General,' is a very poor substitute for this. The President's only known candidate to replace M. Debre, now admittedly a very battered figure, is M. Pompidou, faithful and able, but never elected by anybody to any- thing. Alas, the President does not like politicians and they don't like him.
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