The Plotters

In France last week men talked darkly about The Plot. Conservative Le Figaro described it as an attempt to paralyze "the action of the Chief of State in order to set up an 'activist' government by means of extreme right-wing groups." Leftist France Observateur talked of the "rapidly deteriorating" political situation and the "increasing impotence" of the regime, saw the day approaching when "the army can intervene as an arbiter to prevent 'civil war' " between right and left. The most dangerous plot is that which is prepared in the open.

Twenty-nine months after returning to power, General de Gaulle has been unable to win or end the Algerian war, and though France has no one else to turn to, discontent is spreading. The left calls upon France to negotiate peace; the right calls for war in Algeria to the bitter end. President Charles de Gaulle's vague proposal for an "Algerian Algeria" irritates both left and right, the Europeans in Algeria because it promises too much, the Moslem because it promises too little, and Frenchmen in general because it hasn't solved anything.

Symptoms & Assassins. In the city of Algiers, the symptoms that brought open revolt against De Gaulle last January are again glaringly evident. Student followers of the imprisoned Pierre Lagaillarde, right-wing leader of the January insurrection, have again begun collecting small arms and are spoiling for a fight. A blacklist of known Gaullists, left-wingers and liberals is being circulated in ultra-rightist circles, and terrorists openly boast that "this time we will stage summary executions ourselves." In the garrison town of Castiglione, 25 miles from Algiers, a hundred junior officers met in secret to discuss how they could best save the idea of "Algerie Francaise." The army high command, which last January promised to keep pro-ultra paratroopers out of Algiers last week moved a paratroop regiment into the city for "rest after operations."

Disowned Poster. In Metropolitan France, the right and left are marshaling their forces. Jacques Soustelle, once the most passionate Gaullist of them all, is calling for a new political movement to embrace all anti-Gaullist forces. Blustering Pierre Poujade, the demagogic champion of the 1953 tax strike by shopkeepers, tried to make common cause with the former commander in chief in Algeria, General Raoul Salan, 61, who has become a virulent opponent of De Gaulle's policy and was recently ordered to stay out of Algeria. At a Paris news conference last week in the Palais d'Orsay Hotel, newsmen found Salan flanked by 30 retired generals in mufti, a band of right-wing Deputies and Senators, and a cheering section of strong-armed Poujadists. Salan read a statement denouncing De Gaulle for trying to settle the Algerian war by "negotiating with murderers."

Leaden Capes. The left-wingers have no pre-eminent leaders but a great many troubled followers. A barrage of manifestoes filled the press--manifestoes of Academicians, of mathematicians, of teachers. Left Bank intellectuals were asked to sign the Manifesto of the 49, only to discover they had already signed it when it was the Manifesto of the 30.

Hiring a Latin Quarter hall, some 10,000 demonstrators gathered to demand a negotiated peace in Algeria. They were mostly students but had the support of Catholic labor unions, Left Socialists and several thousand workers just let out at the government-owned Renault auto factory. As the meeting broke up, gangs of right-wingers attacked the students. Helmeted police charged in, swinging batons and lead-weighted capes. When the street was finally cleared, dozens lay on the bloody pavement. More than 500 rioters were arrested and nearly 1,000 injured.

A more definitive measure of the strength of De Gaulle's opposition came not in the streets but in the Assembly itself. At issue was De Gaulle's cherished and expensive project to give France a nuclear "striking force" of its own. Cracked one deputy: "It is too small to frighten our enemies and just large enough to keep our friends from helping us." If France builds up its nuclear force outside of NATO, argued Socialist ex-Premier Guy Mollet, so could West Germany. He asked: "In the name of what principle will you oppose tomorrow Germany's demands for what you yourself ask today?"

Blunt Saying. On a motion of censure against the government, the opposition piled up an impressive 207 votes, only 70 short of the number needed to defeat the bill and overturn the government. But the opposition was stronger in numbers than in cohesion: the 207 votes came from a coalition stretching from far right to far left, from men who, on most issues, hate each other more intensely than they dislike De Gaulle. It represented, nevertheless, the most defiant gesture by Parliament since De Gaulle took power.

Speechmaking in the south, Charles de Gaulle denounced the left-and right-wingers for trying "to bring pressure on the conduct of France." In his most regal manner, he cried, "The conduct of France belongs to those charged with it. It belongs to me! I say it here bluntly!"

De Gaulle, who has long studied and well performed the difficult art of leadership, once wrote of the importance of holding "some piece of secret knowledge in reserve which at any moment may intervene, and the more effectively from being in the nature of a surprise." As the Algerian crisis worsened last week, as pundits gloomily predicted sedition, street fighting and army coups d'etat, De Gaulle was in desperate need of some "piece of secret knowledge" that would surprisingly intervene and save France from factionalism and national failure.

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