A Trail of • Blood
From DARSIE GILLIE A FrER August 15, France's August Bank ...Holiday, the old year is petering out. The last great wave of holidaymakers has gone forth. It remains for them all to ebb back into the cities and begin the new year, which should really be celebrated under modern conditions about September 15. The past year, so defined, began and ended with an attempt on the life of President de Gaulle. About half-way through it came the Evian agreement bringing a prospect of peace in Algeria. It must now be recognised that one element of the hopes attached to Evian was tragically overestimated, the ability of the Algerian Moslems to group themselves round a political leader and get down to political recon- struction. Apart from the strand of cruelty and violence that runs through the rebel record no less than through that of the French police and arm-y,
there was an inevitable prospect of revenge.
Revenge against anyone, guilty or innocent, coupled with a widespread ignorance- of the disaster to Algeria that the withdrawal of French schoolmasters, doctors, engineers and shop- keepers would be. The policy of the Evian agree- ment presupposed that the framework of eco- nomic life would remain. It has come perilously near complete collapse.
More than half the European population has taken ship or aeroplane to France, carrying with it bitterness towards the mother country in general and a glowing coal of hatred towards the President. The OAS, with its tale of murder and destruction, had struck the dominant note of the last six- months of French rule in the Algerian Cities (not the countryside); the underlying con- sciousness of this stiffens the resentment of their new situation amongst the young refugees. They know and constantly justify to themselves the crimes of their own side. Their schools had Ceased to function many weeks before the end of French rule, regular employment had broken down. Manhood was shown with the revolver. Now these young people are massed in the towns of southern France. Their elders are without the Prestige 'of breadwinning. They have nothing better to do than pick quarrels with the local 'rench and with Moslem fellow-citizens. The Minister of Information, M. Peyrefitte, recently appealed to the nation to assist in absorbing these Young people. You have only to listen to what a rads taxi-driver has to say about them to know that the Government will have an uphill struggle to get co-operation. But the number of refugees is Still growing and some of the Europeans most determined to stay in Algeria find their resolu- tion weaken when the Algerian Political Bureau's appeal for doctors to return is followed by the murder of the Pasteur Institute's chauffeur and the kidnapping of two laboratory assistants; *hen the appeal for schoolmasters is followed 1,_)Y the announcement that a progressive French headmaster who stayed at his post has been miss- ing for three weeks; when the appeal for business- men to return is accompanied by an inability to find and liberate the president of Algerian trriPloyers, who has- been missing for as long, or 'ran Prevent the disappearance of the director at 'ran of an important road-transport business. The hope of Evian, therefore, has not blos- somed during this summer. It has indeed brought the negative relief that the boys are corning home. But the political atmosphere has been heavy, just as the weather has been unsatisfactory —for the pathetic fallacy remains compellingly with us. Was it fire-maniacs, or political criminals, or the long hot weather on the Mediterranean coast, helped by the mistral wind, that destroyed' the green forests and the heath on the hills of Provence? Surely there was a sinister alliance. And who set tire to five cars and vans in a Paris street? And what devil seized 120 trainee- officers to misbehave like the most idiotic stu- dents in a Pyrenean spa? Day after day the radio or the newspaper brings its contribution to set nerves on edge and to sour tempers.
Then on top of it all the second attempt on the life of President de Gaulle. There is first of all the salutary shock of a standard well set. It may be unwise in a public man so bitterly hated by his enemies to go with only two guards to a family party in a country restaurant when on his holidays and to drive away from a council of Ministers without telling the Prefecture of Police what road he is taking, but such behaviour goes well with the 'certain idea' of his country that the President tells us in his memoirs he has always had. It is a stimulus that France needed and to which many Frenchmen react.
On a more practical level it reminds French- men how hard the President would be to replace. It was de Gaulle who prevented France from offering in the winter of 1944-45 a spectacle very like that of Algeria at this moment. And what sort of spectacle would she herself offer today without him? It raises in an acute form a prob- lem that he has been unwilling to face—the suc- cession. At present the constitution prescribes that if the President dies in office or is otherwise prevented from fulfilling his duties, the Presi- dent of the Senate (whose name most French- men do not know) rules for a period of from twenty to fifty days, while the 40,000 mayors of France, together with nearly as many additional delegates from the bigger towns, elect his suc- cessor. Could France possibly wait in the crisis that would be likely to arise? Could the resultant president,elected mainly by the country mayors, possibly have authority? Should there not be a vice-president----but if so who—unless it be the unpopular if respected Michel Debra But clearly something must be done.
Finally the ambush in which the President nearly died was the work of highly competent and- ruthless and courageous men. Last Sepem- ber's attempt on his life—less impressive as a plot — opened the season of OAS crimes in France. They would not necessarily be of the same kind or frequency this winter, but the warn- ing has been given that the 1,200 activists now in gaol do not exhaust the political_ fanatics and criminals of France. Responsibility for their existence is not all on one side. At all events, though President de Gaulle does arouse the per- sonal devotion of a few his system of govern- ment mainly rests on the tranquil satisfaction of the many that they will not be asked to exercise civic virtue, because there is someone prepared to-do it for them. The threat of the OAS cannot be measured by the smallness of-its numbers.
Previous page
