Drapery
From DARSIE GILLIE
PARIS
THE policy of President de Gaulle in Algeria is to offer a choice between integration, association and secession, but in the meanwhile to construct and man an Algerian State in close organic association with France. He is not, say the Algiers Europeans, playing fair. He is not, say the Algiers Moslems, being honest. Nor is he. Why, indeed, should he not play his own game with at least as many precautions as the two groups who are playing against him? It is more important to ask if he is being realistic.
France is a country where shades of meaning and skill in the use of words have very great importance. The President is clearly under pres- sure, for he used clichd in his last speeches. He, who abhors expressions used by others, as if to speak them were like wearing someone else's unwashed clothes, has actually referred to 'out- of-date colonialisation.' That was, perhaps, the most striking thing about his last broadcasts. Again and again he sought to persuade that the road to greatness in the second half of the twentieth century is by the abandonment of old habits of thought with regard to overseas terri- tories. But, alas, he has also sought to pre- sent the French army as having prepared the way for peace and a new and more trustful relation between France and Algeria. He really cannot have it both ways. The army has not supposed that it was fighting to set up an Algerian Republic. Men have died to keep Algeria for France and it is difficult to imagine what other purpose would have kept an army in the field for six long years. It is quite true that the army has done a great many things, besides collecting intelligence with the help of torture, shooting prisoners and compulsorily concentrat- ing the population in new villages. Its action has often been sensibly utilitarian, constructive and generous. But at its best it is necessarily still paternalistic, and at its worst it has been blind to the natural feelings of the population on which it was working. It is disconcerting to find the same man who has perceived the futility of a 'French Algeria' talking as if the main conse- quence of broad contacts between the French soldier and the Moslem peasant could really be happy, intimate Franco-Algerian co-operation.
His words come all the stranger after the out- burst of Moslem feeling in Algiers and Oran. There was no specific reference to these demon- strations in his broadcasts, though the urgency with which he recommended a liberal solution in the first was certainly inspired by them. But the tactician is still playing for time and indeed is perhaps under some compulsion to do so. He needs a big majority in France and at least a substantial vote for 'yes' in Algeria. The FLN has asked for abstentions, the Europeans are campaigning for 'no.' He must have enough `yesses' in Algeria to be able to argue that in a distracted country his is at least a very respectable minority. To get such a result in Algeria he must have at least the co-operation of the army. It would be quite easy for the army so to interpret 'neutrality' as to encourage absten- tion and demonstrate that the only alternative to war is negotiation with the FLN.
That, no doubt, is in itself a healthy thesis— provided the conclusion is not the need to carry on the war. It is lik5ly enough that the President is this time resolved to negotiate, but then why encumber himself with all the paraphernalia of this third solution, the Algerian republic made with his own hands and manned by his invita- tions? Whether this is just a legacy from the past or a tactical instrument, it looks how as if it may be the mother of another horde of illusions as well as suspicions in all quarters of the Presi- dent's good faith.
The President's declaration of readiness to receive rebel envoys, this time with almost no condition which he could not himself satisfy by declaring it satisfied, is, alas, a long way from a statement that he wants to negotiate. He is him- self busy laying down the sort of agreement that the rebels must sign as a result of the negotiation. And the terms of it are not even such as could satisfy the persons who most need guarantees if they could be obtained, i.e., the European minority. They are at the moment as nearly mad in their behaviour towards their Moslem neigh- bours as is compatible with going about one's daily business at all. But they are at least right in believing that the status of a minority under a newly installed Algerian Moslem Republic is bound to be unpleasant, if not dangerous. How many Mediterranean majorities are happy?
It is difficult not to believe, therefore, that peace in 1961 can only be brought to Algeria by the resolution to cut Gordian knots. The best defence of the General's first broadcast is that he is still not in a position to do any such thing. But if he cannot, can he advance further? And if he cannot advance further, can he either hope to bring peace or to stay long in power?
The parallel is dangerous because the Presi- dent, although eight years older, is not an exhausted man as was the Emperor in 1870. He is a symbol of fidelity in distress as well as of suc- cess in authority. There is, too, little sign of the popular political aspiration that was to make the Third Republic. Nor can a regime that gives the Communist Party a turn at the microphone and the use of public notice-boards for its views about the referendum be a very repressive one. But there is something very alarming about the use of words to avoid reference to the now obvi- ous and dominant fact—the unique position of the FLN in the hearts of the Algerian people. How long can realism remain realist when so shrouded in drapery?
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