With or Without History

"The elite of the nation is against me," President Charles de Gaulle told a caller not long ago. He was referring to intellectuals, army officers, big businessmen and the higher reaches of bureaucracy, who at best give him lukewarm support and at worst-sabotage his policy. Most of them agree with Philosopher-Sociologist Alfred Fouillee (1838-1912) that without the elite, "there is no more France; France is reduced to the level of those people who have no history."

The "people who have no history," the vast majority of Frenchmen, continued to support De Gaulle--and were thus making history. The fact became evident again in the latest of De Gaulle's cross-country tours. On Corsica the fierce, gun-happy islanders (strict security forbade the sky-aimed salvos with which they usually welcome visitors) quickly warmed to the President when he eloquently referred to Corsica's favorite son, Napoleon. In the South of France, coatless despite a severe head cold, De Gaulle drew cheers everywhere except in Marseille, where Red dock workers and right-wing ultras heckled him. In speech after speech, he asserted that peace negotiations would begin immediately with the Algerian F.L.N.

New Mustache. De Gaulle had hard words for the angry and dissident European settlers of Algeria, but he could never bring himself to name outright the Secret Army Organization, the fanatical underground that is fighting to keep Algeria French. Said he at one point: "S.A.O.? I don't know them." Yet the S.A.O. was everywhere making its power evident. In Algeria, its chief, Raoul Salan--under sentence of death in absentia --emerged from hiding for a secret TV interview with a CBS newsman. Appearing on film with a newly grown mustache, his white hair dyed black, ex-General Salan boasted that all of Algeria's population was with him: "The Moslems have hidden me. I walked about as I wished.'' Salan called for U.S. support of his movement, but disdained dealing with Paris: "We have finished with General de Gaulle. He has deceived us too much."

Plastifier (to plastify) has become a commonly used French word for bombing, derived from the plastic bombs used by the S.A.O. In the city of Algiers, 40,000 troops were alerted six times last week because of an expected S.A.O. coup. Officials reported that some 2,000 young Europeans had mysteriously disappeared from Algiers, were being trained in the countryside. De Gaulle himself recently told a close friend: "If there is to be a Putsch, the sooner it comes the better. Best get it over with before 1962."

Into the River. In France itself, S.A.O. is getting increasingly bold, and the police itself has become suspect. The Senate investigated alleged police brutality against Algerians in Paris, found that an undisclosed number of Moslem bodies (reliably said to be 60) had been thrown into the Seine or dumped under the trees of the Bois de Boulogne. At week's end police rounded up 30 leaders of the F.L.N. in France, seized $600,000 that they had collected from Moslem workers.

Speaking in Marseille, De Gaulle seemed worn and a little tired of it all. "I am at the close of my life," he told a group of top legislators. "My task is to end the Algerian war." Then, reportedly, he added: "When the war is over and the referendum held in France and Algeria--a period of around six months--I will withdraw. I am not eternal, and you will get along without De Gaulle."

But next day the French government formally denied that he said it.

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