Dolorous Situation

The situation in North Africa is "dolorous," Premier Edgar Faure told the French National Assembly last week.

Though most Deputies believe passionately that North Africa must be held at all costs if France is to remain a big power, those who favor holding it by savage repression were on the defensive. The Casablanca murder of Publisher Lemaigre-Dubreuil in Morocco (TIME, June 27), a Frenchman killed by other Frenchmen for being moderate, had stirred all France. Premier Faure seized his chance. His government, said Faure, "will never agree to renounce, palter with, or open to question the French position in Morocco." But there must be a new policy for Morocco and a new man to implement it. Out went ineffectual Francis Lacoste as Resident General; in came Gilbert Grandval, 51, a former Resistance leader who built an impressive reputation by the way he administered the Saar after the war.

Faure also grimly told the Assembly that the complicity of local police in counterterrorist crimes in Morocco has been "clearly established,"" that four policemen, including a brigadier police chief, have been arrested, and "we are in the presence of a complete counterterrorist organization, to which dozens of outrages can be attributed." In Casablanca, suspects were hustled to police headquarters with paper bags over their heads to conceal their identities. Members of the gang had reportedly confessed to participating in 80 "incidents," including the burning of an Arab market, the murder of several Arab farmers, and bomb attacks on local Frenchmen.

Faure's report on Algeria was no more encouraging. "The situation is not developing favorably," admitted his Minister of the Interior, Maurice Bourges-Maunoury, announcing that another 20,000 troops will be sent there as soon as they return from Indo-China. Next day the French smashed at rebel strongholds in eastern Algeria with fighter-bombers, parachutists and motorized infantry, while in the cities police made mass roundups.

At week's end the President of France, Rene Coty, made one of his infrequent departures from Olympian impartiality. In a speech he endorsed Faure's program for a peaceful "interdependence" in North Africa, condemned "abominable violence" by Frenchmen, and attacked Arab agitators from "certain foreign countries."

"We have by unanimous votes undertaken to lead the peoples who are Under France's protection to a position where they can manage their own affairs. This solemn promise--can France dream of failing to abide by it? No! These countries, whom France has civilized and enriched, she will not abandon to imperialistic fanaticism which would lead them to the worst type of regression, to a racial segregation and a religious isolation at the very time . . . when they only wish to advance towards peace, security, liberty and prosperity."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.