THE TABLET Tune 14tfc 1958. VOL. 211, No. «1«)

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JUNE 14th, 1958

NINE PENCE

Gifts and Strings: America and the Afro-Asian Bloc Russian Offensive in Africa : Penetration by Stages. By Czeslaw Jesman Newman's Evening Classes : Pioneer Work in Dublin. By H. J. Parkinson Covent Garden Centenary : Two Memorable Productions. By Robert Speaight

Californian Journey : A Visit to Los Angeles. By Sir Shane Leslie Anglicans and Presbyterians : The Theology of the Report. By Ronald Walls

Critics' Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

CHALLENGE FROM ALGERIA

C^ENERAL DE GAULLE had hardly returned to

Paris to give his mind to French constitutional reform before the Committee of Public Safety in Algeria issued a strongly controversial statement, which, if not approved by General Salan, had not been stopped by him. I t is General Salan whom General de Gaulle has nominated as his representative with the special charge of keeping the Committee of Public Safety in its place, and that place is not intended to be that of the power behind the Government, telling the Government what it must do. But what General Massu and his associates have done, after thinking over General de Gaulle’s laconic speeches, is to reaffirm their own policy of complete integration, not without references to the other Committees of Public Safety in France itself. This is a challenge, and it indicates how prudently General de Gaulle acted in refusing to come forward simply as the man of these Committees, but insisting upon coming much more broadly, as also the choice of the Assembly.

General Massu and his friends cannot defy the Government of France, from whom they receive all their supplies, and they cannot hope now to dominate it as originally planned. They could impose their will on the Chamber of Deputies in a way they cannot hope to do with General de Gaulle. His further list of ministerial appointments brings in more representatives of the parties, and underlines his legal continuity with the late regime. This was a great service to France, and it is also a way of proceeding which very much strengthens his hands, for he is neither exclusively the man of the Army nor the man of the Chamber. He is both ; and if either challenges him he has the support of the other to reinforce his own exceptional personal authority.

Six times in just over a century and a half the French nation has acquiesced in highly personal rule ; and that century and a half included one long life-time, from 1870

to 1940, when there was no personal rule. But in the previous seventy years it had been normal ; for even Louis Philippe, as the first King of the French and not of France, and a parliamentary ruler, had a very great personal authority. The nineteenth century was lived under two Emperors and three Kings. The twentieth century has seen two distinguished soldiers called to take over the State because of a military prestige won twenty-five or fourteen years before ; but there is little if any comparison with Marshal Pétain, for, although General de Gaulle is no longer young, he is not, for a statesman, in any sense old, and he is very conscious that his essential mission is one of renewal, his appeal to a new generation of young Frenchmen not prepared to go on any longer in the old way.

What will be called l’expérience de Gaulle has begun auspiciously for him, but he will need all the authority he has collected when the winds from North Africa begin to blow through France.

His brief visit there, for all its personal ovations, did not bring him a welcome free from great reserves. The settlers did not pretend to like the composition of his Government. Both its inclusions and its omissions are not what they would have voted for. De Gaulle had left again before they had formed any clear idea of what be had been offering the Algerian Moslems. What is incontestable is that the French in Algeria are now expected to accept equality with the Moslems, and this is a sharp medicine either way, whether the future is thought of as leading to such an integration with France as will bring an immense Moslem party into a restored Chamber of Deputies, or whether, as is more probable, Algeria is asked to be a self-governing democracy, in the closest union with France.

No doubt the constitutional reforms in France will be designed to break the power of the three or four large parties who have paralysed the State. But under the