Longing for Stability

With a single, eloquent evocation of the common sense and grandeur that should be France, Charles de Gaulle last week changed the mood of his nation. Until he delivered his ringing "no retreat" speech (see below), France had been drifting seemingly unchecked toward civil war in Algeria. After he spoke, there was hope--and growing assurance--that the situation could be saved.

When the European settlers of Algiers began their uprising fortnight ago, it seemed unthinkable that 1,000,000 Algerian "Frenchmen"--60% of whom are Spanish, Italian or Maltese by ancestry--could topple a government satisfactory to the majority of their 45 million fellow citizens in Metropolitan France. But as last week wore on, metropolitan Frenchmen came to realize that it was not the insurgent settlers they had to fear; it was the French army, which stood revealed as neither a neutral witness nor an unwilling accomplice, but as the active and continuing patron of the settlers' revolt. "The army," lamented Paris' Les Echos, "has become the first party in France."

The Treason Theme. Beaten by the Nazis and the Viet Minh, humiliatingly ousted from Morocco and Tunisia, evacuated from Suez, the French army has salved its pride by ascribing all its reverses to "betrayal by the politicians." Its mutinous spirit was not ragtag but austere: a conviction that they who did the dirty fighting are purest of heart, and entitled to sit in judgment upon the acts of the state. "Conditional loyalty," Old Soldier De Gaulle called it.

Convinced that in Algeria they are defending not only France but the West against Communist imperialism, many French officers were quick to see yet another political betrayal in De Gaulle's offer last September of self-determination to Algeria. When the European extremists of Algiers went to the barricades, the army's commanders made a few tough noises, then lapsed into undisguised sympathy with the insurgents. And when news of the army's attitude reached Paris, the effect on De Gaulle's civilian subordinates was shattering. Some members of the government all but openly took the army's side; even more panicked.

In this chaos--the same kind of chaos that toppled the Fourth Republic--all that restrained the army was the fact that France's head of state was Charles de Gaulle, who clearly had overwhelming public support in Metropolitan France. Public opinion in the Metropole was behind De Gaulle partly because the likeliest alternative to his government was civil war, partly because his contemptuous refusal to bow to the insurgents' pressure gave good republicans the kind of leadership they had lacked in 1958. Frenchmen also saw Algiers' unseemly display as a blow to France's claim to be a great power. Public opinion was also behind De Gaulle, because France in 1960 is preoccupied with normality.

The Princess Line. To the army officers in Algeria--many of whom have spent half of the past 15 years out of France--nothing seems so important to France's future as the fate of Algeria. Yet the passionate argument over Algeria raging last week between De Gaulle and the insurgents passed clean over the heads of many, perhaps most Frenchmen. The Paris of the emergency Cabinet meetings was also the Paris of the big fashion shows, memorable chiefly for such dramatic developments as the ingenious way Couturier Guy Laroche managed to combine "the popular princess line" with silhouettes resembling a Coke bottle or a bowling pin. In the Paris area's famed "Red belt," Communist-organized workers, whatever their politics, placidly continued to assemble Simcas and Renaults. All France was united.

What neither the army nor the settlers had counted upon was that issues which once aroused France's deepest political passion have lost much of their power to do so. In endorsing De Gaulle's return to office, the French were expressing above all their desire for a stable and legitimate government that would allow them to forget the extremes of politics and get on with the job of expanding the prosperous, productive society they had built since World War II. And where Algeria had once been a source of national pride, it now seemed a threat to that hard-won political stability.

If the Fifth Republic survived the Algiers insurrection, it would be chiefly because of the historic speech--a magnificent retrieve--in which De Gaulle had rallied his countrymen to its defense and the army to its duty. But it would also be because an increasing number of Frenchmen were weary of seeing the life of their country perennially disturbed by storms out of Algeria.

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