The Tail and the Dog
From DARSIE GILLIE
PARIS
THE citizens of Algiers have always assumed they could have it their own way. They did not aspire to the responsibilities of government, but to set the tone for the administration, to prescribe what policies should not be carried out, and in the last resort to contribute through their representatives in the National Assembly to the downfall of any government that had not under- stood the limits of propriety. They were the tail that wagged the dog and prided themselves on a patriotism that accepted so discrete a power. Alas for May 13, 1958, that led them out of discretion and made them instrt9eptal in bringing General de Gaulle back into power! Henceforth the struggle for power was a struggle for the army's obedience, one therefore which must put the bulk of French opinion on the side of any government that was asserting civil authority over military. Today at all events the citizens of Algiers, depressed and discouraged, are listening to the winds of rumour about other peoples' intentions towards them, not vice versa.
The Europeans of Algiers may well have to choose, when the fate of Algeria is at last decided, between retaining French citizenship and be- coming foreigners in Algeria or becoming Algerians and therefore having no effective appeal against the decisions of an Algerian government that may prove rancorous, and at all events is likely to be revolutionary. The idea of double citizenship for French settlers was raised in both Tunisia and Morocco, when the protectorates were ended, but was vigorously rejected by the two governments in question. There was indeed little case for it. There are, however, between four and five hundred thousand Algerians in France sending home the scanty livelihood of perhaps two million of their fellow countrymen—that is to say almost a quarter of the Moslem community. By a humiliating para- dox it is on the future status of these humble labourers that will probably depend that of the Europeans who have so long been assured of their privileged superiority in Algeria. Negotiations have not yet begun, much less extended to the future status of minorities. Externally France is still the sovereign mistress of Algeria, but since the appearance of the Moslem demon- strators in the streets of her much-policed cities seven weeks ago, and the refusal of the authorities to treat them simply as a subversive obstruction, everyone who cares can see that Algeria is, sooner rather than later, to. become a country in which the Moslem masses will choose the government, and minorities occupy the bitter if natural place of minorities.
The time will come, no doubt, when the future status of the Europeans of Algiers and of the pro-French Moslems will arouse strong and in part justified sympathy amongst metropolitan Frenchmen. At present opinion has been more deeply impressed by some of the shoddy trickery that has been used in their defence in the past. The evidence given by parachutist officers and an Algerian professor of law in the Paris trial of those charged with organising the Algiers insur- rection of a year ago has compared very badly indeed with that of the Gendarmerie, and of those officers who had not been subverted by the army's psychological warfare department.
The whole policy of 'French Algeria' has after all rested on the assumption that,what the para- chutists had done in Algiers could provide a basis for a new Algeria, and that without seriously upsetting the essential political balance of France herself. Here in court, after the hours of patriotic sPecchifying by the accused and their friends, were the parachutist officers trying to explain Why they had not come, as ordered, to meet the gendarmes (who had the shorter but more dangerous line of approach) in the open space be- tween Algiers University and the main post office. Here they were, as an orthodox old-time general observed, 'treating orders as a basis for dis- cussion.' Here they were describing as `a crowd of women and children,' the demonstrators who had opened fire on the gendarmes, killing four- teen and wounding over a hundred while some- one kindly turned, on the street lighting to make them better targets. Here they were putting the blame on the gendarmes who had not used their forty-five sten guns, who had fired fewer than a hundred bullets in self-defence, instead of bow- ing their heads in shame before so magnificent an example of self-discipline. The austere gendar- merie that polices the high-roads and countryside °f France, and provides specially trained riot troops in a crisis, may be respected but is not often loved by the ordinary Frenchman. But shame and affection were the feelings of many Frenchmen when they read the unemotional and obviously true evidence of the gendarmes and then that of the parachutists. A really Right-wing coup d'etat with parachutists as the new regime's bodyguard was a genuine danger in 1958, and what it might have meant in irresponsible self- delusion has been made very clear in this trial.
As for M. Chauveau, the professor of law, one- time dean of the law faculty, who offered a state- ment to the court that the gendarmes had been doped with alcohol, and was unable to provide a scrap of evidence to support his astonishing statement, it is difficult to recall any witness who has aroused such universal contempt. He actually defended himself by saying that he had after all left a margin of doubt in the way he formulated his statement. He had certainly cast a doubt on the behaviour of the gendarmes, whom another Algiers professor of law—and deputy—had kindly described as mercenaries. A formal charge has now been opened against M. Chauveau for calumniating the gendarmerie. It is interesting to compare the favour enjoyed in Algiers by these two professors of law, with the misfortunes of a third, M. Peyrega, ago dean of the law faculty until he was chased out of it because he described what he had seen in the street—a parachutist shoot dead a Moslem prisoner standing with his hands above his head and his face to the wall.
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