Conflict of Sympathies

In the hot sands of North Africa, burning Moslem nationalism collided head-on with determined French colonialism. The tribesmen of Morocco slew hundreds and were slain by the hundreds in return; neither side troubled unduly to spare the innocent. The occasion for the bloodshed was local in nature but worldwide in its implications: Who should be Sultan of Morocco--a French puppet or the man the Moroccans themselves wanted as their Imam (Commander of the Faithful)? Deeper than this ran stronger currents: France's pride of empire, the Moroccans' longing for independence. In this confused situation, the nation that brought modern progress to a sterile land was made to seem oldfashioned, and a backward people's aspirations commanded the sympathies of those who look to the future.

Shocked by the massacres that his government's indecision had done so much to provoke, Premier Edgar Faure strove to repair the damage that his predecessors had made inevitable. Faure's delicate problem: to find a middle way between Morocco's urgent nationalists and the angry French colons, whose remedy is simple repression. Moderate men on both sides had been ready to compromise, but violence drowned their voices and left the field to extremists. Faure's way out was characteristic of the balancing French politician: to adopt the moderate recommendations of courageous Resident General Gilbert Grandval, while sacrificing Grandval himself to the wolves. At week's end there was prospect of a patched-up compromise. It promised to settle the question of who should be Sultan of Morocco by having no Sultan at all. Much depended on the timing, for if either Grandval or the puppet Sultan departed without the other's going too, one side or the other promised violence.

The trouble with such a "settlement" was that it did not promise peace; it merely postponed solutions. "The whole place could explode again at any minute," said a worried French official in Morocco.

In this situation, the U.S., like everyone else, is caught up in a conflict of sympathies. But the choice is not between backing the Arab cause, whatever fanatic course it may take, or backing the French, however meanly they behave. It is to seek out and to encourage those in both camps who wish an accommodation fruitful to all. That such forces still exist, after all the violence, is North Africa's one flickering hope.

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