Clarifications

I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my. world crumbles to nothing.

--Stendhal, 1783-1842

In presenting Premier Guy Mollet with the complete works of famed French Author Stendhal last week, members of the French government did more than celebrate Mollet's first year* in office. They underlined a noteworthy fact: Socialist Mollet (who has survived 32 votes of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies) continues to be Premier because the vast majority of Frenchmen and their deputies support his Algerian policy, which might be defined as a policy of the right enforced by a man of the left.

Seeking Stendhalian clarity on this point, Mollet last week addressed a letter to 34 party leaders (not including Communists or Poujadists). Wrote Mollet: "The chiefs of the Algerian rebellion . . . will refuse to accept our offer of a cease-fire so long as they can hope that France may change its Algerian policy ... It is important . . . that there be no misunderstanding about the continuity of the policy during the present legislature . . ." On the eve of the critical U.N. debate on Algeria, Mollet asked for and got a blank check.

Ultras and Actionists. He was not the only one preparing for action. The shadowy leaders of the Algerian rebellion, working mostly out of Cairo, were issuing promissory notes: 60,000 francs ($170) for every loyal Algerian or Frenchman killed by their hired assassins. To show the U.N. how powerful their influence is after two years of civil war in Algeria, they ordered an eight-day general strike of all Arabs in Algeria and France. Algerians literally sniffed the arrival of the killers whose job was to make the strike stick: young Arab gunmen who invariably spend a portion of their blood money on jasmine-scented hair pomade. Leaflets in crudely printed Arabic pledged death to Arab "traitors" who reported for jobs, or to shopkeepers who opened their shutters.

Minister Resident Robert Lacoste, charged with the job of demonstrating French control over the Arab population (which outnumbers the French by nearly nine to one), had his task complicated by French counterterrorists, known locally as Ultras, who are mostly poorly employed veterans of colonial wars in Morocco and Indo-China. They fear that Mollet's government plans to "abandon" Algeria.

Looking around for a tough uncommitted officer to handle the strike and its expected wave of assassinations and counter-bombings, Lacoste chose tall, hawk-nosed Brigadier General Jacques Massu, commander of the 10th Parachute Division. Massu moved in a rock-hard force of 20,000 green- and red-bereted paratroopers, legionnaires and spahis to take over the city of Algiers and its teeming Casbah. Troops stood outside stores and restaurants frisking every passerby, man and woman. All parcels were opened to prevent bombs from being planted in public places by anybody, European or Moslem. At least two soldiers rode every streetcar and bus. A constant cover of helicopters hovered over the city. Essential municipal services were kept running by troops or French civilian volunteers. Soldiers ran bakeries, distributed food, while schoolboys delivered telegrams.

Open Up. On the first day of the strike Moslems remained inside their crowded houses and shops. Said General Massu: "If shopkeepers refuse to open their doors, they will be forced open." The French army, he said, would not be responsible for guarding merchandise. Soldiers beat heavily with gun butts on front shutters. If the owner opened up, they moved on. In the scores of cases where they did not, the soldiers forced shutters and doors, in some places helped by locksmiths, in others with the aid of crowbars and roped jeeps. At one tiny Casbah shop the soldiers found a notice: "Mustapha Abdelkader, being dead, will not reopen his shop until further notice." Down came the door, revealing bearded Mustapha Abdelkader, terrified but alive.

Lacoste was convinced that most Arabs wanted to work but were afraid to go to their jobs because of Arab gunmen. He therefore gave them the best possible excuse for working: he forcibly took them to work. Before dawn a long line of military trucks snorted into the Casbah. Soldiers pounded on the doors of the rickety dwellings, forcing entry and ordering men to dress. Some 10,000 Arabs were herded off, mostly to the docks. On the third day of the strike most Arab shops and all but a third of the Arab workers in Algeria were back on their jobs. The blood bath that many had feared and some, both Moslems and Europeans, had hoped for, had been avoided, and the French were confident that they could continue in control even though the U.N. debate, the occasion for. all the demonstrating, had been postponed. Said a government spokesman: "Algiers has returned to its habitual vivacity."

*Of the Fourth Republic's 13 Premiers, only Henri Queuille lasted longer (13 months).

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