Fighting Words

In his first week as France's 23rd Premier since World War II, and its youngest Premier since 1883,* ambitious Maurice Bourees-Maunoury, 42, looked as though he might be bounced out of office. He approached his first vote of confidence after doling out so many jobs--splitting portfolios two ways--that his Cabinet became a 45-man team, biggest in French history. But he still had to water down his demand for higher taxes before the Deputies would give him a chance. In the end the specter that haunts his government, and would probably bring him down, is Algeria.

Bourees-Maunoury, a Resistance hero, is the center of the tough and unyielding French position on Algeria. So far, it is the dominant one in French politics. But more and more Frenchmen are beginning to talk more openly about "solutions" for Algeria. None has been so outspoken as thin, hawk-nosed Raymond Aron, respected French political commentator and Sorbonne professor. In a slim book, The Algerian Tragedy, published last week and an immediate sensation in Paris, Aron argues that only false pride prevents Frenchmen from recognizing Algeria's "vocation" for independence.

Humiliation. Says Aron: "If France had voluntarily accorded in 1954 (in Tunisia and Morocco) what she finally accorded under the pressure of terrorism, she would not be suffering from this intolerable feeling of humiliation." Aron's advice: negotiate with the Algerian rebels, slowly transfer power to the Moslem nationalists, and spend a fraction of the cost of the war repatriating Algeria's Europeans to France. Until recently Aron was as insistent as most Frenchmen that only by holding Algeria could France continue a great power.

Aron has no categorical answer to the question that troubles every Frenchman: Can a French minority remain, one million against eight million, in an Algerian Republic? But, he warns, "the longer the pacifying war continues, the more the chances of peaceful cohabitation between the two communities diminish." In the long run the men who govern an Algerian Republic, "unless they are carried away by mad blindness, cannot ignore the need they will have of France." For Aron the crux of the question is the formation of this Algerian state--"a difficult enterprise, and nobody can guarantee its success.

"But today it is a question of choosing between two evils. The policy of pacification has not brought peace but perpetuates a ruinous war.'' Aron says. "The acceptance of a policy resulting in Algerian independence would at least provide the chance for an intermediary solution between indefinite violence and sudden surrender."

Cooperation. To Aron's bold plea last week was added the strong Arab voice of Tunisian Premier Habib Bourguiba, longtime friend of France, in an interview in L'Express. Said Bourguiba: "There are words for which one is willing to die--'liberty' and 'independence.' I know that many French sincerely believe that the Algerian people want to continue living in French territory, but I know the Algerians ... In Algeria, believe me, the fellagha are supported by the vast majority of the Algerian people . . ."

Bourguiba wants to "balance Algerian sovereignty with a form of new cooperation of the three North African countries with France. I propose creating a French-North African community in which France, at the same time that she voluntarily gives up her colonial position in Algeria, would win the cooperation, of our three people." But this granting of Algerian independence could be successful only if it "emanated from a man respected by all the French and all free men--a man who incarnates the spirit, the greatness, the tenacity of France." The man who fits these qualifications, according to Premier Bourguiba: General Charles de Gaulle, who at 66 still waits in retirement at Colombey-les-deux-Eglises.

*When Armand Fallieres took office at 41.

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