Lapsed Liberfe

While worshiping abstract liberte, the French in hours of crisis can stamp hard upon freedom's toes. Last week in Zurich, the International Press Institute, volunteer guardian of the rights of newsmen and newspapers in the democratic world, accused the French government of 40 specific violations of press freedom during 1957's first six months--a record unparalleled for the period in any other democracy.

The report, written by young (30) Andre Vial, co-editor of the leftist Catholic weekly Temoignage Chretien (Christian Witness), was directed at the government of Socialist Premier Guy Mollet, but it did not blame Mollet so much as his successor, Premier Maurice Bourges-Maunoury, who was Mollet's Minister of National Defense. Charged I.P.I.: Bourges-Maunoury moved against the press "because of a single political motive: the Algerian affair."

Though hardly an impartial critic, since Temoignage (circ. 66,593) has frequently been in hot water for criticizing Algerian policy, Editor Vial documented such reprisals as the imprisonment of Resistance Heroine Claude Gerard on charges of "endangering external security" with a series of stories from Algeria that appeared in Demain (TIME, June 11, 1956), the weekly organ of Mollet's own Socialist Party.

In all, eight journalists were arrested or indicted, and 15 French publications were confiscated in Algeria and Paris for stories and editorials critical of the government in the six-month period. As Defense Minister, concluded the I.P.I, report, M. Bourges-Maunoury "revealed to the world, if such were still necessary, the weakness of French politics and the panic of officials who wish to govern with the approval of the public--yet fear its reactions."

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