Death in the Gutter
From DARSIE GILLIE
PARIS
THE situation in Algeria fluctuates with the luck of the bullet. French opinion both mili- tary and civil was deeply moved and angered last week by the killing of a patrol of conscripts in the Algiers poor white quarter, Bab el Oued. The army command felt strong enough to cut Bab el Oued off from the rest of the town to impose a forty-eight-hour curfew and undertake a tough search house by house. On Monday the OAS called for street demonstrations in Algiers to show sympathy with imprisoned Bab el Oued. Effective police barriers prevented a big con- centration of demonstrators, but at one point as many as 2,000 gathered from the streets im- mediately adjaCent to the central rendezvous; they faced a very light barrier, less than a dozen conscript soldiers, mostly Moslem, under a subaltern. The crowd cajoled and infiltrated. One woman kissed a soldier on the cheek; 'You're French—you'll let us go to our brothers in Bab el Oued.' The officer wirelessed for instructions and help. The soldiers had their fingers on the triggers of sub-machine-guns and were more frightened than seduced. They had their eyes on the windows and balconies for the muzzles of weapons. Then shots reverberated somewhere in the city—and someone pressed his trigger. Was it the Moslem boy on the left wing or someone shooting from a window? Bullets poured out at point-blank range, while the officer shouted, `Cease fire, cease fire; for the love of France, cease fire.' His voice echoed through France. In twelve minutes forty-one people had been killed, 120 wounded. Immediately sympathy veered.
It is quite true that the OAS was responsible for calling a banned demonstration. The ban was repeated every quarter of an hour on the RTF (the government radio), but that radio is associated for the Algerian Europeans with be- trayal; even in France the RTF suffers from its reputation as a government trumpet—a repu- tation confirmed by the protests and strikes of its staff who have not minced their words. Why was a mainly Moslem patrol of soldiers at that Central point? Why was it so weak? No doubt because the main barrages were turned the other way to prevent people from getting to the centre. Anyway, what matters is that on Saturday People were thinking of the OAS as butchering French conscripts, and on Tuesday many of the same Frenchmen were thinking of Algerian Europeans bleeding to death in the gutter because they wanted to remain French. 'It is not the army's job,' is heard half over France, and in a good many army units. It is astonishing how easily people accept that the gendarmes and the Republican Security Guards should risk their lives in civil conflict and shoot their' rebellious fellow citizens, whereas this must not on any account be done by conscripts. For their pains the gendarmes are called mercenaries.
To understand the problem bf restoring order In Oran and Algiers it must be constantly remem- bered that one day the resistance is identified with an odious criminal conspiracy called the OAS, and the next day with an unreasonable but patriotic woman dying in the street as she curses the gendarmes or the Republican Security Guards. And who does not like cursing the police? But above all, back of it all there is the horror that this last fighting in Algeria should be against those who want to stay French. It is quite true that the Europeans' record as a community is shocking. They are totally impenitent because totally unmindful of the fact that when the re- bellion started no Moslem could be mayor of a town, and no town could have a Moslem majority on its town council; that no Moslem voter could hope for a fair count orseven a count at all in the country constituencies. And even today OAS commandos mow down Moslems as Moslems in the street—just as FLN commandos have until quite recently murdered Europeans as Europeans. The Moslems could easily start ;doing it again; they have plenty of provocation. The whole of the Algerian problem is marked by this alternation between suffering and atrocity, suffered and committed by members of the same group and often by the same person. It takes great moral courage to persist in a policy in spite of these fluctuations. The final acts of French government in Algeria cannot but be horrible to undertake and grim to remember—however justified, whether in plain justice or in a political perspective.
Ex-General Jouhaud is the first of the impor- tant OAS leaders to be captured in Algeria since the OAS became an open rebellion. A former chief of the air staff (to which post General de Gaulle promoted him to get him out of Algeria already in September, 1958), an officer with a fine resistance record, he must now stand his trial. His colleagues in the April mutiny, Challe and Zeller, are already serving their fifteen years. But their sentence was lightened because they had surrendered as soon as it was apparent that to persist in their mutiny would cause civil war. Jouhaud must receive a much heavier sentence. How can it be less than death? How, when he is caught, can Salan's, ex-commander-in-chief, mili- tary governor'of Paris only two years ago, the most-decorated soldier of France? These are reasons why the path of peace is anything but a happy one, however right.
These are at least palliatives for President de Gaulle's action in treating the French referendum fixed for April 8 as not only signifying approval of the agreements associated with the cease-fire, and giving him powers to carry them out, but as a kind of direct homage to himself from the people of France, without the mediation of party chiefs. He said in so many words on Monday night that he wanted an expression of confidence covering problems other than that of Algeria, though he did not specify them. All the parties of the centre and left are now committed to vote 'yes' in the referendum. They will all, in this pro- paganda, insist that their 'yes' does not bear the interpretation that the President wishes to give it. But who can distinguish between 'yes' and 'yes'? The enormous mass of 'yesses' will weigh in the elections that are likely to follow the referendum, perhaps not more than a month later. The Gaullist UNR organised by M. Soustelle, when he was one of General do Gaulle's ministers, in the hope that its nationalist tone would tip the hesitations, or supposed hesi- tations, of his leader in the direction of his own preference, will go back to the electorate this summer as the advocates of all that M. Soustelle most detests.
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