The Army Disease

Frost still silvered the trees on Strasbourg's Avenue de la Paix last week as Charles de Gaulle stood up and peeled off his khaki greatcoat. Before 2,800 officers summoned from Algeria, Germany and France, he launched into a sonorous speech commemorating the 17th anniversary of Strasbourg's liberation by French tanks. "France," declared its President, "is again menaced, body and soul." Later, staring icily at a tight-lipped audience that included 80 generals and admirals, President de Gaulle turned abruptly to the force that menaces France more urgently than any outside invader: its divided, disaffected army.

It is not for the army, snapped De Gaulle, to dictate a solution "contrary to reality" for France's seven-year war in Algeria. Said he: "Self-determination is the solution laid down by the chief of state, adopted by the government, approved by Parliament and ratified by the French people. Now that state and nation have chosen their path, the duty of the military is fixed once and for all." In the sternest rebuke he has ever addressed to the army, General de Gaulle warned: "Outside this duty, there are and can be only doomed soldiers." He concluded: "I ask you all to sing with one voice the Marseillaise.'' Dozens of officers stood stonily silent.

The New Opposition. Under De Gaulle's one-man regime, the army has taken over the role of the political opposition. Instead of the Fourth Republic's recurring crises, it has substituted putsches. Since the 1958 uprising that cleared the way for De Gaulle's accession to power, the military crises have come annually, exercising a constant blackmail threat against government action it opposes. So mistrustful of the army is De Gaulle that its fuel, food, ammunition and other supplies are being doled out in quantities sufficient to last only a few days, after which any putsch would theoretically be "asphyxiated." Disaffection has gradually spread from the 400,000-man force in Algeria to the French army in France and in West Germany, where two divisions recently returned from Algeria have become hotbeds of anti-Gaullist intrigue.

The malaise de I'armee has infected probably two-thirds of France's 10,000 regular officers in Algeria; 300 generals and colonels and 1,000 majors are reported to have taken an oath not to accept Algerian independence. As a further symptom of army disease, 1,300 officers have handed in their resignations. Though the government found it almost impossible to gather evidence against officers who took part in the April 1961 revolt, eleven of its top generals were condemned to death in absentia or to prison terms. The chief of staff, General Paul Ely, resigned last year in open disagreement with De Gaulle, and his successor, General Jean Olie, resigned last month, pleading ill health. For his new chief, De Gaulle for the first time picked an air force officer, General Andre Puget, promoted him over half a dozen ranking officers, and prudently trimmed his powers.

The Real Battle. Among most high-ranking officers, the malaise stems from 21 years of almost continuous defeat--World War II, Indo-China, and now North Africa. Venting their sense of guilt, the army's humiliated leaders raised the now familiar and partly justified cry that they had been "betrayed" by politicians. Convinced that Algeria was Europe's last bastion against Communism--and the army's last chance to recover its lost glory--a militant core of officers fanatically subjected Moslems to such Communist techniques as brainwashing and torture, helped form the terrorist Secret Army Organization, whose plastic bombs and murders seek to halt the move toward Algerian independence.

In private, De Gaulle has spoken witheringly of the army: "It has never understood politics and continues to understand nothing of it. The army commits one stupidity after another." This attitude, suggests De Gaulle, goes all the way back to the Dreyfus Affair, was continued in the collaborationist Vichy regime and now expresses itself in the blind insistence on Algerie Franc,aise. In public. De Gaulle sounds different. Valiantly attempting to salve his army's honor and restore its sense of vocation, Charles de Gaulle last week ringingly depicted the challenges of the cold war and described the powerful, independent nuclear striking force that France counts on having by 1965. But despite assurances to his officers that the war in Algeria is finished, it was plain in Strasbourg that the real battle may be for France.

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