Mobs & Morals

The surest sign of a real political crisis in France, now as in the 1930s or the days of the 1871 Commune, is the emergence of the mobs. Into the Champs Elysees they came one afternoon last week, 5,000 youths, war veterans and rightist sympathizers. After a small group had placed a wreath on the grave of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe, they crowded toward the office of the weekly L'Express, which has been attacking French army excesses in Algeria (TIME, April 1). Some shouted, "Mendes to the gallows"; others cried, "Down with Mollet." They carried placards: "Are Our Deputies Still French?" A grenade exploded, a paving stone crashed through the big plate-glass window of the L'Express building, and steel-helmeted riot police moved in, clubs swinging.

What exercised the mob was the conviction that France may be softening its stand on Algeria. In the National Assembly Premier Mollet barely survived his 33rd vote of confidence by a margin of 33 votes. Led by Mendes-France, a bloc of 13 Radical Socialist Deputies boldly voted against the government, though the party has 13 members in Mollet's coalition Cabinet. Mollet, hurt by the attacks on his military policy and tough police methods, had been obliged to plead: "I am sure none of you think that the government, the army and the administration want or plan torture ..."

One of France's most distinguished soldiers, General Jacques Marie Roch Paris de Bollardiere, paratroop veteran of Indo-China, last week asked to be relieved of command of the Algerian sector east of the Atlas Mountains. His reason he made plain in a letter to L'Express Editor Servan-Schreiber, who had served as a lieutenant in his command and now faces treason charges for his published indictment of army brutality to Arabs in Algeria. "I think that it was highly desirable," General de Bollardiere wrote to Servan-Schreiber, to have called attention to "the frightful danger there would be for us in losing sight, under the fallacious pretext of immediate efficacy, of the moral values that alone, until now, have been the grandeur of our civilization and of our army."

Between those who thought, as the rioters did, that there must be no letting up in Algeria, and those who agreed with General de Bollardiere that things cannot go on as they are, all France seemed to be caught in a dialogue without decision. In the circumstances. Premier Guy Mollet's government might limp on a few months more, for lack of an alternative, but, said Figaro, "the rot is setting in."

As with Britain in Cyprus, the French in Algeria are trying to create a favorable atmosphere for negotiations by ending violence, although the very methods which suppress violence serve to perpetuate hatreds. The Algerian situation is complicated by the presence of 1,000,000 European residents in a nation of 10 million; they are Frenchmen who have made Algeria their home, done much to develop it as a country. If there had been a proportionate number of British in India when the British pulled out in 1947, it would have been necessary to evacuate or leave behind 34 million people.

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