AUGUST THAW
By DABS 1 E GILLIE Paris
BY the time this is in print M. Felix Gaillard, the French Minister of Finance, will have launched his campaign for stabilising prices, and the Cabinet will have discussed the draft of a new statute for Algeria. French affairs have been frozen. for so long that her public men are very properly preoccupied with the consequences of a thaw. M. Gaillard is very tentatively unfreezing the economic situation with the hope of keeping its dangerous potentialities under control while the waters resume their movement on a new level. The real value of the franc has been admitted though all the consequences have not been drawn. The complicated structure of subsidies is being partially dismantled, while at the same time the Government is desperately trying to keep price increases within limits. M. Gaillard's measures show a strong desire to let economic reality show itself in a recognisable form, but equally strong are the effects it may have on the public once it is recognised.
All things considered, the Government's finan- cial and economic policy is courageous and de- signed to deal with living things. It is by no means, certain that this can yet be said of its attitude to Algeria. There have been some encouraging symptoms, but also some very discouraging ones.
The former concerns the press rather than the Government. A good many French readers have been informed more honestly than hitherto about one very unpleasant aspect of Algerian affairs. A fortnight ago it looked as if they were to be left with the impression that the delegation sent to Algeria by the International Commission against Concentration Camps had acquitted the French authorities of any serious malpractices. This Commission is an association of former inmates of Hitler's camps set up to prevent such things being re-established. It has defined what it means by concentration camps—places where the reign of law is suspended, human beings are deliberately dehumanised and forced by their labour to make their tormentors economically independent of the rest of the State. The delegation which it has sent to look into the treatment of political prisoners in various countries—Spain, Tunisia four years ago, Greece—do not use the term 'concentration camp' to describe institutions which are not of this pattern, but they report in moderate language on anything that might lead to its revival.
These inspecting delegations never include citizens of the State whose working is to be in- vestigated, but may be accompanied and assisted by them. In this case the Commission consisted of a Belgian (chairman), a Dutchman, and a Nor- wegian woman. It was accompanied by a French publicist, M. Louis Martin-Chauffier, and a sociologist, Madame Germaine Pillion. The dele- gation obtained permission from the French Government to visit any prisons or internment camps, to interview officials, and to interview prisoners and internees without the presence of officials. The provisional report published at the end of last month acquitted the normal French judicial machinery and normal prison system of any irregularity; it acquitted the internment camps of any deliberate inhumanity; it stated, however, that military and police using or abusing special powers had kept persons sequestrated for long periods, and that in several cases the delega- tion was convinced there had been torture; that this had been defended by a very high official; and that there had been a number of disappear- ances.
While the readers of the Monde, Paris-Presse and Franc-Tireur were able to read a fair account of this report, those of other papers might well have supposed it was an acquittal. The Govern- ment did not react at all. The impression that all charges of torture were baseless seemed con- firmed to most Frenchmen by the statements of the Belgian chairman at a press conference at Brussels. No reference was made in France to the very severe articles published in Scandinavia by the Norwegian member of the delegation.
Meanwhile the Humanite of July 30 had been confiscated by the police for printing the com- plaint smuggled out of an internment camp by M. Henri Alleg, former editor of the banned Alger Republicain (Communist) about tortures he suf. fered during the first days of his month's deten- tion by parachutists (June 12-July 11). There were still marks of burns on his body, he said, at the time of writing—when, in an internment camp, he was isolated but at least safe from torture. Too many copies of the Humanite had escaped confis- cation for the story to be suppressed. On impor- tant points it was confirmed by Mme Alleg. A second case, that of a young university don at Algiers, M. Maurice Audin, also aroused dis- quiet. He had been arrested the day before Alleg and was officially stated on July 1 to have escaped on June 21. There was a witness who declared he had been tortured on June 18 and 19 and could not possibly have escaped. The Government did nothing. It did not even submit M. Alleg to in- dependent medical examination, and he was not allowed to see his lawyers.
These two cases which had occurred while the International Commission's delegation was actu- ally in Algeria seem to have aroused anxiety in circles which had refused so far to take seriously. adverse reports about methods used by the police and by soldiers used for police purposes in Algiers. In particular the Figaro, to its honour, printed an article by M. Louis Martin-Chauffier about what he had learnt when accompanying the delegation. It was moderately worded but made clear that the delegation had evidence of practices scandalous in any country claiming to be civilised. The delegation's report had been in- tended as a polite indication of the gravity of the charge, not as an acquittal. The next day M. Martin-Chauffier published another article, still more plainly spoken, in the independent Socialist weekly Demain. This has since been quoted fairly widely. In this he stated that he tried to discover what had happened to Alleg and Audin and be. lieved the allegations made by the first and about the second to be true. In view of the facilities enjoyed by M. Martin-Chauffier this is a very grave statement.
It is now quite impossible to deny that high authority has hitherto turned its back and looked the other way while certain 'results' were being achieved in Algiers. But the Government still remains silent. It has not published the report-of two military doctors who saw Alleg on August 10 —nearly two months after the torture, which he declared, had left burns on his body and inside his mouth. It has confiscated another issue of the Humanite, this time apparently for expressions of opinion. There are, however, also some indica- tions of alarm. Five more Algerian Communists recently arrested have been hurried out of the hands of their parachutist captors.
These two cases may seem remote from tile problems of Algeria's future status. But until the French Government manages to show that it really wishes to put a stop to such abuses concealed behind a bland official ignorance, it will remain difficult to convince the sceptics that other aspects of Algerian policy are not so much facade con- cealing less agreeable realities. M. Lacoste, the Resident Minister, for instance, has been sketch- ing to the New York Times a future constitution for Algeria which appeared on various points to have close analogies with that of the United States. Even if he had not hastily issued a com- plementary communiqué declaring that Algeria must remain an integral part of France (in order to reassure the Algerian Europeans), it would have been extremely hard to convince anyone who knew North Africa that he was 'not thinking rather of American opinion than of Algerian problems.
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