Vision of Victory

"The affairs of France are difficult. But they are not insoluble." In this mood of cautious optimism, General Charles de Gaulle last week moved unflinchingly toward another great moment of reckoning for his regime.

In a courtroom in Algiers earlier in the week, Jacef Saadi, onetime boss of Moslem terrorists in the Algiers casbah (TIME, Oct. 7), astounded his French judges by "rallying to De Gaulle." Saadi offered no apologies for the murders he had committed in the name of the Algerian people--and for which the court promptly sentenced him to death. But, said he, "if General de Gaulle had remained on the political scene after the war, if our rights had been recognized earlier, this drama would never have happened."

The Right Flank. Nonetheless, the heaviest fighting in Algeria since De Gaulle's return to power (45 rebels killed, 64 captured) made it plain that the Algerian revolt was by no means ended. And on De Gaulle's other flank--the right one--the balcony generals of the French army were applying unrelenting pressure. Without bothering to consult De Gaulle, military authorities in France last week seized issues of two of the Parisian papers most frequently suppressed under the Fourth Republic--France-Observateur and L'Express.

Most interesting thing in the seized papers was a L'Express article reporting that since De Gaulle's advent the army in Algeria had purged itself of all senior officers with "liberal" tendencies and had set up Committees of Public Safety in every Algerian commune. Behind these maneuvers, charged L'Express, was a youthful, fascist-minded "college of colonels" whose moving spirits had served against the Communist Viet Minh in Indo-China. From their enemy they were said to have developed an intense admiration for Mao Tse-tung's psychological techniques in controlling villagers. (Algerian rebels who served in the French army in Indo-China are also said to have learned in the same school.)

The Spearhead & the Stave. Against this thesis of an officers' conspiracy, pale, intense Gaullist Minister Andre Malraux pitted an eloquence doomed to be soon silenced. (At week's end, Malraux, although retained in the Cabinet, was relieved of his post as spokesman for the De Gaulle government.) Malraux is the author of some of the most influential French novels of this century (Man's Fate, Man's Hope), an erudite art historian (The Voices of Silence, The Metamorphosis of the Gods), and an old revolutionist who served in the Chinese Civil War of 1927 and the Spanish Civil War, still limps from leg wounds suffered during his days as "Colonel Berger" of the World War II French Maquis.

At a press conference attended by 600, Old Revolutionist Malraux noted dryly, "The works of Mao Tse-tung are dominated by one political concept: Communism. Those who talk about the group that they call 'the colonels' group' are thinking about a psychological technique without a doctrine."

The key to Algeria's future, insisted Malraux, lies not with the soldiers, but in the wave of fraternization between French and Moslem Algerians that followed the army insurrection of May 13. "Was fraternization organized at the outset?" he demanded rhetorically. "It seems fairly probable . . . But even if fraternization was organized at the beginning, the moment came when it ceased to be organized . . . We have seen on the television and movie screens more Moslems applaud General de Gaulle than there are fellaghas in the whole of Algeria.

"You know the famous metaphor: 'The fellaghas are the iron head of the lance.' Very well. But what if the lance no longer has a stave? What does one do with the spearhead when it is not any longer on the stave?"

Back to the Crusades. De Gaulle has no desire "to prejudge the destiny of Algeria," declared Malraux. What the general does want to do is to "transform" fraternization into some kind of voluntary association between France and Algeria--and in the process to give France a new sense of mission. "Some countries," Malraux proclaimed, "are never greater than when they fall back upon themselves--England, for instance. But the greatest France in the eyes of the world is not the France of Louis XIV; it is the France of the Crusades and that of the Revolution. And the French will not forgive others, or themselves, for becoming a people without a mission.

"With the help of the army, of volunteers from France and Algeria, with our young people--with other assistance perhaps--we are calling upon France to tell the world, in a low voice at first, but soon perhaps loudly: 'This is what France and Algeria are doing together . . .'

"Is this not a guaranty of our victory? No. But it implies the possibility of our victory. And while France has not won this victory yet, the whole world knows that before the call to General de Gaulle she had already lost."

The General's March. Malraux's vision of victory was one calculated to appeal to millions of Frenchmen. But its details evoked black anger among the diehard European ultras of Algeria, determined to maintain their privileged position though the heavens fall. This week, accompanied by Socialist ex-Premier Guy Mollet, the Cabinet minister most hated by the ultras, De Gaulle staked his future--and that of France--on another dramatic trip to Algiers.

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