Moment of Decision

Regularly for the past two years, public-opinion pollsters have been asking Frenchmen the same question and getting the same answer: As between independence for Algeria and continued war, which do you choose? The response has not varied: 70% have stuck to fighting on, though 400,000 French soldiers are tied up in Algeria and the war costs nearly $4,000,000 a day. Last week, with the revolt still far from the often promised "final quarter-hour," the French Assembly came to a moment of historic decision.

It had been called into special session by Premier Maurice Bourges-Maunoury. Confronting France was another U.N. debate on Algeria--likely to end in formal censure of France unless it produced some alternative to bloody repression. Four months ago when he took office as the youngest Premier of the century (and 23rd since the war), Bourges-Maunoury conceded that "force alone" could not hold Algeria. Force alone would also not satisfy the Socialists and the Catholic M.R.P., whose support his minority government needs to survive. Over violent objections from his own Cabinet, Radical Socialist Bourges-Maunoury hammered out a loi-cadre (skeleton law) for Algeria that by the current standards of French opinion was almost generous. It would divide Algeria into half a dozen semi-autonomous regions in which Moslems would for the first time have equal voting rights with Algerian Frenchmen. After two years the regional assemblies were to be allowed to elect a "federal executive council." "With the loi-cadre," said Foreign Minister Christian Pineau, "France will have sympathy and consideration from the free world. Without it, I can answer for nothing."

Sowing the Seeds. As French Deputies trouped back from their holidays, they had clearly heard the voice of their constituents: Algeria is French and must remain so. Scarcely had the Assembly reconvened when right-wingers launched an all-out attack on the "federal council" clause of the loi-cadre. This, stormed Gaullist Leader (and onetime Governor General of Algeria) Jacques Soustelle, "sows the seeds of Algeria's eventual legal secession."

Needing all the votes he could get, the Premier desperately summoned the chiefs of all France's "democratic" parties (but not the Communists or the extreme right Poujadists) to a round-table conference to achieve an "expression of large national will." After two days of hard bargaining for the support of Soustelle and the conservative Independents, Bourges-Maunoury agreed that the federal council would not be established in Algeria until 18 months after the cessation of rebellion in all parts of the country--which might well mean never. In addition, he agreed to drop from the law any mention of future transfer to the federal council of some of France's "reserved powers" (defense, finance, foreign affairs, police, education).

Little Rock & Cold Steel. Even with its heart cut out, the French right-wingers still did not like the loi-cadre and, when the final debate began, reneged on their promised support. For one thing, they clearly sensed that they no longer had to worry so much about the U.S. wagging its moral finger at them. "Why should the French have a bad conscience?" demanded Soustelle. "It's not France that must use armed troops to put children into school." Fiery right-wing Deputy Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, who was once barred from office for collaborating with Petain, went even further: "Are you going to have us judged by people from Little Rock, by slavers from Yemen, by our enemies from behind the Iron Curtain?"

Jeered at for his indifferent oratory, sometimes shouted down by the Deputies, Bourges-Maunoury retreated again. Unhappily he agreed that suffrage in Algeria should continue to be weighted in favor of Europeans. At week's end, declaring that "it is impossible for me to make further concessions," the weary Premier shut off debate and demanded a vote of confidence on the loi-cadre this week. "Fascist!" cried the Poujadists. "It takes one to tell one," rejoined Bourges-Maunoury.

The loi-cadre had already been rejected out of hand by the Algerian National Liberation Movement, but it might have had an effect on other war-weary Algerian Moslems. Now, even should it pass and Bourges-Maunoury remain in office, the loi-cadre no longer stood as a shadowy promise of a political solution to the rebellion. Instead, it is a document which says that France intends to hang on in Algeria, whatever the rest of the world says.

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