After the Bomb

As the fallout of world reaction began descending on France last week, the nation began to realize that becoming a nuclear power was not going to solve its basic problems.

Although they had plenty of advance warning. Frenchmen had not fully expected the international unpopularity which the Reggan explosion earned them. Scarcely had the cauliflower cloud begun to dissipate, when the Moroccan Ambassador to Paris showed up at the Quai d'Orsay to cancel his country's 1956 diplomatic pact with France. The Sudanese protested "this act of shame." In Ghana the Accra Evening News, which is owned by Premier Nkrumah's political henchmen, inventively reported that "many thousands of Africans are feared killed," added that "the mutilated bodies of the dead Africans are believed to have been hurriedly hidden in the burning Sahara sand, as French troops . . . rushed to blot out the first murderous traces of radiation effects."

Clubmanship. More distressing than the Afro-Asian outcries were the cool to hostile reactions of France's Western allies. The U.S. had not become convinced that it should share its nuclear secrets, nor were the Big Three eager to invite France to join the atomic disarmament talks at Geneva. Wrote Le Figaro's Raymond Aron: "An atomic arsenal of the second order cannot be the foundation of an active or aggressive diplomacy." Nor did atomic grandeur ease the anguish of Algeria. Dismayed by growing indications that De Gaulle intends to ignore the rebels and impose a new solution of his own--converting Algeria into a federation of ethnic communities tied to France --ex-Premier Pierre Mendes-France last week called for prompt negotiations with the rebel F.L.N. on the basis of self-determination.

Discrediting. There was still no evidence that the rebels genuinely want negotiations now. Broadcasting from Tunis last week, Rebel "Premier" Ferhat Abbas spoke moderately to Algeria's million Europeans in a manner clearly intended to discredit their intransigence in the eyes of the Frenchmen of Metropolitan France.

Said Abbas: "Algeria is the motherland of all of us. For several generations you have called yourselves Algerians. Who denies that? In the new Algeria which we will build together there is a place for all." Coming at a time when rebel terrorists had just murdered the last French family with enough trust in Moslems to continue living on a Kabylia farm, Abbas' speech struck Algeria's Europeans as savage mockery; in the streets of Algiers many French men bitterly tore up newspapers reporting the speech. Snapped a Tunisian diplomat who helped lead his own country's struggle for independence : "If we had behaved as the Algerians are doing, we would still be fighting the French today."

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