Soul Searching

The aftertaste of the army mutiny in Algeria, already dubbed "the Hundred Hours," was a bitter division among Frenchmen, flaring into nasty quarrels and petty rivalry. Privates in Algeria denounced noncoms, who in turn denounced officers, who denounced each other. Civil servants fired off anonymous letters accusing their rivals. Labor unions, claiming that they had saved France by their show of solidarity behind De Gaulle, demanded an immediate round of wage increases as a reward.

The three rebel forces that shook France were beaten but still dangerous:

The Army Officers. The country was shocked to learn how deep had lain the seeds of rebellion in the officer corps. In Algeria, a commission set up to investigate individual officers was "helped" by committees of draftee soldiers (quickly dubbed "the Soviets") who accused their wavering commanders. The evidence showed that thousands who had not actively mutinied nonetheless agreed so ardently with Challe's aim of keeping Algeria French that they had not lifted a finger to stop him. With 200 officers under arrest, De Gaulle finally had to call a halt, not because he had caught all the rebel sympathizers, but because he was in danger of shattering the entire command structure of the army. Investigations disclosed the same alarming situation in the army's top echelons in France itself. "There were very few officers on the general staff," reported an official sadly, "who on the revolt's first day remained, without ambiguity, loyal to De Gaulle." The revolt leader, General Maurice Challe, was safely in jail in Paris, where he would go on trial for his life within three weeks, and another rebel general, Andre Zeller, turned himself in at the Algiers police headquarters last week. But two others were still at large.

The Regular Army. Nobody could figure out just what to do with the 40,000 tough regular soldiers in Algeria, including the 15,000-man Foreign Legion, who had sided with the rebels. Three regular regiments would be dissolved, and the rest were confined to their barracks in an ugly mood. De Gaulle closed the Foreign Legion's recruiting office in Paris, and the end was apparently in sight for the storied corps that for 130 years had fought France's worst battles, from the Crimea to Dienbienphu. Today's legionnaire is a downright gentleman compared with his counterpart of the old days, who greased his feet, wore no socks, lived on bread, cheese and a quart of red wine. But none ever better earned the nickname "the Legion of Death" than the present (mostly German and Hungarian) legionnaires, who took 10,000 casualties in Indo-China, 1,236 in Algeria. "Scram, carrion!" a guard shouted defiantly to newsmen last week. "You will not see the Legion cry."

French in Algeria. Algeria's European population, which had cheered on the revolt, was unrepentant and potentially explosive. Pamphlets appeared announcing the formation of a new "Secret Army Organization" (O.A.S.), threatening a new uprising by bitter-enders. Still stashed away somewhere were about half of the 20,000 weapons, including everything up to bazookas and heavy machine guns, passed out by the army rebels to civilians during the four-day revolt. In Algiers, police dragnets searched 10,000 apartments a night, but hundreds of ultras were missing from their homes when the police arrived. The rest of the white settler population, confined by a 9 p.m. curfew, gathered on balconies and roofs, threw rocks and vegetables at police search parties and beat pots and pans in the three-short-two-long rhythm of "Al-ge-rie Fran-c,aise!"

As Frenchmen slowly realized just how deeply the Hundred Hours had cut into the body of France, they could also recognize just how much they owed to the iron nerve of Charles de Gaulle (even the advisory Council of State, at the moment of crisis, had refused, 57 to 47, to vote the government its confidence). But De Gaulle had not wavered. Last week he was grimly pressing to reopen talks with the Moslem F.L.N. (Front de Liberation Nationale), hoping to negotiate independence for Algeria before the shattered ultras could reorganize. For it was unlikely that even Charles de Gaulle could survive another hundred hours.

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