The Test for De Gaulle

Barely 20 months after it destroyed one French republic, the unrelenting Algerian revolt last week threatened the life of another. Across the wide boulevards of Algiers crackled the sound all France had so long feared to hear--the sound of Frenchmen shooting at Frenchmen.

The trouble began one morning fortnight ago with Major General Jacques Massu, the wiry paratrooper who was front man for the May 13, 1958 Algiers military insurrection and now commands French forces in Algiers. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Kempski, star reporter for Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Massu complained that the army did not understand De Gaulle's Algerian policy, and added: "De Gaulle was the only man at our disposal. Perhaps the army made a mistake." Within 24 hours after Kempski's interview hit France, Massu was on his way to Paris to explain. From Algiers, spokesmen for the diehard European settlers' organizations loudly warned De Gaulle not to make them choose between him and the popular Massu; even Premier Michel Debre wanted to accept Massu's ambiguous repudiation of the interview. But at that point De Gaulle blew up. Outraged by the implication that the army had supported him only "for lack of a better man"--the one remark Massu wholeheartedly insisted he did not make--De Gaulle summarily ordered Massu relieved of his command.

On the Boulevard. In Algiers--where censors vainly tried to hold up the news --word of Massu's dismissal sent European crowds surging into the streets with cries of "De Gaulle to the gallows!" On a sunny Sunday more crowds milled aimlessly along the city's great Boulevard Laferriere. But at noon--when many of them began to drift off for lunch--an ultra spokesman appeared on a balcony to shout, "French Algeria is surely worth a meal!" Late in the afternoon the restless crowd began overturning cars and setting up street barricades.

At dusk, despite the ultra leaders' exhortations, much of the crowd turned home. But the most aggressive of the settlers--well-armed members of the Home Guard formed to fight off surprise rebel attacks--continued to lounge along the curbs under the watchful eyes of 1,000 men of the Gendarmerie Mobile. In the gathering darkness, reported TIME Correspondent Frank White, who witnessed the event, the gendarmes charged the crowd, first firing a volley into the air and then throwing tear gas grenades as they ran.

Ducking into doorways and houses, the home guardsmen fought back and within moments other armed French Algerian civilians, pulling out hidden weapons, came to their aid. Caught in a crossfire, the gendarmes dropped into the boulevard's wide middle gardens and unlimbered their automatic weapons. For 20 minutes, while the street lights blinked off and on, the crackle of rifle fire alternated with the rasping bursts of heavy machine guns.

In the end, it was the gendarmes who retreated. But as they disappeared from sight, a convoy of six-by-six trucks full of Massu's old paratroopers came roaring up, sirens screaming. And this time, unlike 1958, the army was not on the side of the mob. Slapping on an 8 p.m. curfew, General Maurice Challe, French commander in chief in Algeria, went on the air to declare a state of siege. While Algiers counted its casualties--19 dead, 141 wounded --Challe angrily blamed the ultras for starting the firing, and announced: "The uprising will never triumph over the French army. I am having regiments from the interior moved into Algiers."

The Murder Test. Already more Frenchmen had been killed by Frenchmen than in the 1958 uprising that brought De Gaulle back to power. The cruel irony was that this outbreak had in fact been successfully provoked by Algeria's Moslem rebels. Assembling in Tripoli in mid-December, the leaders of the rebellion reorganized their "government" by dropping four extremist "ministers" (known as "the men of Cairo" and "the men of Peking") and giving increased power to three ex-guerrilla commanders headed by tough, commonsensical Belkacem Krim (TIME, July 7, 1958). Since De Gaulle has long insisted that he will deal only with the military leaders of the revolt, the new rebel "Cabinet" seemed to smooth the path toward negotiations between France and the rebels. But before meeting with De Gaulle, the rebels had to have an answer to one vital question: Was the French army loyal enough to De Gaulle to impose on Algeria's European diehards the free elections and freedom from revenge which De Gaulle had promised if peace comes?

To put De Gaulle's power to the test, the rebel leaders, worsted in armed conflict in the hills, issued a deadly new order: concentrate on killing civilians. Within six weeks, rebel units in the field had killed, wounded or kidnaped 363 civilians--most of them hard-working small farmers in the Mitidja Plain around Algiers.

Half-mad with bereavement and fright, Algeria's Europeans were easily persuaded to blame all their troubles on De Gaulle. Relentlessly, right-wing politicians hammered at the argument that De Gaulle's offer of self-determination for Algeria was a display of weakness which encouraged the rebels to believe they could win independence by violence. But without the support of the army, the settlers could not hope to resist De Gaulle successfully. And though increasing numbers of junior officers outspokenly echoed the settlers' complaints, Old Gaullist Massu had long made it clear that, while he might grumble, he would never revolt against De Gaulle. In Paris late last week, reflecting on the circumstances of the Kempski interview, Massu--a brave soldier, but not a brilliant man--concluded that he had fallen into a trap somehow baited for him by ultra leaders.

Among the Missing. For all his anger at Massu, De Gaulle had certainly not minimized the risk involved in firing him. Late in the week, after meeting at the Elysee Palace for three hours with France's top military and civilian leaders in Algeria, the general reaffirmed in unyielding language his offer of Algerian self-determination. But as a sop to the settlers, he also ordered the establishment of speeded-up military courts for trying terrorists. (Previously he had insisted that even terrorists caught in the act be given full judicial rights.)

But with the shooting on the Boulevard Laferriere, all hope of passing off the Massu affair by adroit politicking was dead. At the news of the Algiers fighting, De Gaulle came rushing back to Paris from a quiet weekend at his country home in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. Hastily, his government slapped a ban on public meetings throughout France, reportedly set security agents to looking for ex-Premier Georges Bidault in case he should try to get to Algeria to rally his right-wing admirers--just as Gaullist Jacques Soustelle did in May 1958. Sadly, Frenchmen recognized that the Algerian rebels had gotten just what they wanted: an all-out test of the authority wielded by Charles de Gaulle and his Fifth Republic.

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