A Republic in Chancery
By DARSIE GILLIE Tut Popular Front Chamber of 1936 began by putting M. Leon Blum in power at the head of a Socialist and Radical coalition with Communist support. It ended by surrendering all power to Mar- shal Main. The Assembly elected on January 2, 1956, began by putting a Socialist in office, M. Mollet; it also approved going into a foreign war—though only against Egypt. Will it end by surrendering all power to General de Gaulle; not by `the customary ritual,' but, as he demands, by procedure settled by himself as 'adequate'? The fate of French Parliamentary government now hangs by one slender, if honest, thread. The French Parliamentarians can blame no one but themselves for their situation. They are at least fortunate that the eventual receiver in bankruptcy is de Gaulle, not Main.
The problem that M. Pflimlin must solve is that of restoring the authority of Paris over Algiers. That, at least, General de Gaulle could do without difficulty, though many other problems would immediately lie in wait for him elsewhere. The revolt of Algiers was made possible when the quite different discontents of the European minority and of the army fermented to danger point simultaneously. The professional part of the army has good reason for bitterness. It has spent a dozen years fighting two hopeless wars under conditions in which there is no honour to be gained. True, the current one is not yet lost; but it looks very near to it.
Officers, NCOs and men have a right to com- plain when politicians send them into military operations for objectives which the politicians en- visage imperfectly and with the thought at the back of their minds that the impact on the nation at home must be limited. In the Indo-China war no conscripts served; only the professionals, some volunteers, the Foreign Legion and colonial troops. In Algeria metropolitan France is much more deeply involved, with some 300,000 con- scripts in addition to the regulars overseas; but more than ever the responsibility has lain on the army while the Assembly has vacillated. The army has taken over a great deal of the civil ad- ministration, medical services and even school- teaching, not to mention the police. After years of effort it would like to have a success to its credit. The European minority wishes to main- tain a privileged position, it is true, but it also wants not to be driven into the sea. With these two anxiety complexes, any modification of French policy, in a search for peace, has to be conducted by a steady and authoritative hand. There could be no such hand during a month's interregnum. Things were not improved when M. Lacoste gave the signal for panic by announcing that a diplomatic Dien Bien Phu was in prepara- tion.
The exact nature of responsibility for the ex- plosion in Algiers will be long discussed by historians. The secrets will be found in private rather than public papers. How far ahead did M. Soustelle see when he brought the Gaillard Paris Government down five weeks ago? Were he and his friends deliberately bringing the opposition between Algiers and Paris to such a pitch that General de Gaulle could suddenly be brought back into the arena as the only man who could act as 'national arbitrator' and reunite the French to the north and south of the Mediterranean? Or have they simply seized each opportunity with the superior ability that men show when they are far more intent on their objectives than their rivals? The Figaro correspondent with the army has reported strange goings and comings of emissaries to army commands in Algeria while M. Chaban-Delmas (a political ally of M. Soustelle) was Minister of National Defence in the last government.
At all events, M. Soustelle and his long- and short-term allies did create the generals' oppor- tunity by stirring Algiers into mutiny against alleged betrayal by M. Pflimlin on the eve of the latter's election. They did not succeed in their immediate objective of preventing his election, but they did land him when elected with a problem affecting 400,000 families, which may prove in- soluble for him. Whatever the ambition of some of the generals in North Africa, they are all reasonably well covered by the plea that with no government in the saddle in Paris they had to prevent disorder and make their peace with the European malcontents if they were not to abandon the war on the Moslem rebels altogether. The process of doing this involved the destruction of what was left of a civilian administration and the adoption of attitudes that made submission to the new Paris government very difficult. Were they to shoot on their new allies to make possible the arrival in Algiers of a new Minister for Algeria, denounced in advance as a traitor?
Algiers had already succeeded once in over- riding the Paris government's choice of a Minister for Algeria. The townsmen are far more frightened, and therefore more resolute, now. They have, too, better allies in Paris. M. Lacoste never really enforced on them the authority of the three successive governments of which he has been a member. M. Pflimlin had probably no alternative in the first days of office than to confirm General Salan in the full powers, military and -civil, to maintain order which M. Gaillard had given him.
M. Pflimlin has been elected to office as a reforming Premier to put Parliamentary govern- ment and the balance of payments in order as well as disentangling Algerian policy from its present emotional complex. But the prestige he needs has to be created step by step. The funda- mental condition for creating it seems so far to have escaped him day by day. He cannot exer- cise pressure on the military authorities now in charge of Algeria without damaging an army en- gaged in fighting France's war and penalising the conscripts who are fighting it. He cannot easily remove and discipline General Massu, whom the Algerois consider *as the man who saved their town from indiscriminate terrorism. He cannot conduct a public inquiry into the behaviour of M. Lacoste, whom so large a section of French public opinion considers as the man who has so far preserved Algeria for France.
M. Pflimlin has had the initial advantage of a frightened Assembly, frightened of popular con- tempt, of the agitation of extremists, of events in Algeria. The deputies of the Moderate Left, Centre and Moderate Right rallied to him with enthusiasm on the night of his investiture when he declared his determination to reaffirm the Re- public's authority. They rallied to him in still greater numbers to create a 'state of urgency' in metropolitan France. But frightened support is notoriously unreliable. Since then, General de Gaulle has spoken. He has informed the Assembly that he is ready to govern France on his own terms, as soon as he is needed; and he has gone back home on the clear assumption that the need will present itself very quickly, that the government of M. Pflimlin, which he did not deign to mention, will be quite unable to cope with it, and that the next step will be a deputa- tion from the Assembly knocking at his door.
There has been a curious explosion of comment that the General is really very moderate; the Gaullists of the long dark hours must be laugh- ing very heartily. The deputies are now torn between fear of the General, who would radically reduce their power in installing his Presidential Republic, and fear of finding themselves in hope- less opposition when the General has come into power. There are many who will have no doubt that their duty is to stand by the sovereign rights of the Assembly and of the governments based on it. A few will be convinced the General is right. Others will begin to wonder if their duty is not to make a smooth path for the inevitable.
The events in Algiers have not only delivered a shock to the whole structure of France. They have thrust Algeria some way forward on her history. For the moment, the FLN is almost for- gotten. Fighting has been suspended. French observers seem for the moment more impressed by the joint European and Moslem demonstra- tion outside the Government-General than the total of 65,000 dead in the rebel cause. It is true that a shock such as the Algiers coup may create new opportunities for negotiation, but not that it can efface the hardening of Algerian national sentiment over three years. More information is needed as to how the demonstration came about. It is to be feared that such opportunity as this demonstration perhaps indicates may be lost in another wave of illusion. But meanwhile the attempt to break Algeria into five autonomous provinces under the new Algeria Act has received a shrewd blow in that European Algeria is re- acting as a unity. The civilian apparatus of ad- ministration which links Algeria with France has almost entirely collapsed, its functions being taken over by the army; as sole civilian authority, com- mittees of public safety of local origin have arisen expressing, by the formation of a general com- mittee for all Algeria, an Algerian point of view. They are the organs of those Algerians (mainly Europeans) who wish on no account to be separated from France.
They cannot avoid, however, having appeared on the stage of history as an assertion that Algeria must be consulted. If the European million, then also the eight million Moslems!
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