Dilemma for Moderate Men
So far, so good. But you cannot create a political movement on the basis of not being xenophobic, of being friendly to allies, and of remembering that the Republic's government, no less than the Queen's, must be carried on. The Right continues to sit pretty because the enunciated principles of French policy are all on their side. M. Gaillard himself had never seriously contested them. Nor have most of those French politicians who are now trying to walk surreptitiously backwards or sideways, changing direction without changing front. Only this year the French Parliament has again written into the statute book the assertion that the Algerian departments are an integral part of France, although it is probable that a majority of the deputies think this is a silly statement. The deputies of the Right are not mistaken when they think that a large number of their colleagues accepted it only because they dare not deny it in public. The nationalists who brought M. Gaillard down very properly believe that a policy of com- promise with Tunisia would lead to a reversal of the policy which is trying to keep Algeria an 'integral part' of France by the Heath Robinson construction of the 'Algeria Pact.
As for the Saharan petrol, who would dare today to propose that that subsoil should cease to be under French sovereignty or that there should not be a French Mediterranean port to which the pipe-lines should run? Many Frenchmen now talk of Saharan petrol as if Providence had at last corrected an initial error of providing France with so little coal, and it was in consequence blasphemy to consider in any other light than the immediate convenience of French petrol con- sumers the political arrangements of North Africa. M. Bidault, on accepting the President's invitation to form a government, declared that to lose Algeria would be to lose the economic indepen- dence of France, which was at last within her reach. To oppose effectively this order of thinking it is necessary to explain to the French public the extent to which any country can or should strive towards economic independence, to state clearly just how far the petrol discovered in the Sahara can really satisfy French demands (in fact only partially), and how far it is worth while at the present moment of history to determine a nation's policy towards a large part of Africa and Asia by such a consideration. No political leader has dared to be frank about these things. Such a campaign might—amongst other things—have an effect on the capital value of many Frenchmen's recently purchased oil shares.
These things would be a vast long-term enter- prise for a politician. Decisions have to be taken now. So far in the present Assembly governments have been maintained independently of both Communists and the extreme Right (mainly Pou- jadist) by a minimum common purpose stretching uheasily from the Socialists to the more moderate Right, represented mainly by the Independents. The new phenomenon is that an ever larger part of the moderate Right seems to be drawn away towards the immoderate Right. The organisation of a big Conservative Party out of many frag- ments is the achievement of M. Roger Duchet, a senator who, as secretary-general of the new com- bination, is now much more powerful within it than M. Pinay, its principal leader in the Assem- bly. M. Duchet is much more likely to continue to beat the big nationalist drum, if that serves the purpose of party unity, than to support modera- Lion and so provoke a party split. The old Right wing of the Radical Party led by M. Andre Morice is moving in the same direction.
At the same time that the Right has moved farther Right the Socialists and, above all, the MRP are regretting that they have committed themselves quite so deeply to an Algerian policy acceptable to the Right. They are more subject to doubt about such principles as 'Algeria an integral part of metropolitan France.' They know the full measure of the folly of the Sakiet bombardment, for which their weak Ministers accepted responsi- bility. They wish that M. Gaillard and M. Pineal' had immediately accepted the compromise proPo' sals for negotiation with Tunisia prepared by Mr. Murphy and Mr. Beeley instead of waiting until the United States exercised pressure upon them to do so. But they have prepared no retreat. They would now have to accept the odium of appearing as America's good boys. Still worse, any policy not accepted by the former Right wing of M. Gail' lard's coalition could only be pursued by reliance on at least a tolerant attitude by the Communists. Whereas it is quite in order for the deputies of the Right to ally their votes with the Communists to bring a government down, it would certainly be widely disapproved for Socialist, Radical and MRP Ministers to be dependent on even the abstention of the Communists. This is not quite so illogical as it sounds, for any government that owed its continued existence to toleration by the Communists would be constantly suspected of making unavowed concessions to them.
This dilemma lay behind the dramatic choice imposed by M. Bidault this week on his own party, the MRP, in his bid for office. M. Bidault is the party's former leader as well as a former Premier and the president of the clandestine National Council of Resistance during the German occupa' tion. He and his party have been moving in opposite directions for several years. He was one of the three MRP deputies to vote against the Gaillard Government. His party did not wish him to accept the President's invitation to him to form a government. But to repudiate him must have been a severe strain on those links of sentiment which are important to any party and especially to the MRP. Its decision, too, has added to the difficulty of any future attempt to draw the more moderate Right into a coalition with the Centre and moderate Left.
Of the 321 deputies who brought M. Gaillard down roughly 150 are Communists, twenty non- Communist but Left-wing critics of the Govern- ment, and 150 are deputies of the Right. A shift of the Government to the Right would only be possible if the Centre accepts intimidation from the Right. Even then it would lead a most uncer- tain existence. But any shift of the Government to the Left would be brought down at once by the same composite majority that felled M. Gaillard last week. In other words, any attempt to revise France's Algerian policy would carry the risk that no government could be formed in France except with the tacit support of the Communists. That is the situation that the Communist Party is now hoping to exploit, by the offer of generous terms of toleration, either at the polls or in the Assem- bly. That no doubt is what M. Gaillard had in mind when he told the Right that in bringing down his government they were preparing a gravely perilous situation for France.
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