"Would You Be So Cowardly"

The President of France is not expected to voice his opinion on matters of government policy. When he speaks, it is by tradition in the voice of the nation as a whole, united above partisan politics. Last week, at a luncheon in Alsace-Lorraine, France's aging (75) President Rene Coty rose and spoke his mind on a subject that has provoked some of the most bitter partisanship in the history of French politics--Algeria.

"To states that dare to accuse France of colonialism," he asked, "is there not a Frenchman proud to answer, in which country among you is there less imperialism, less racism, less enslavement than in ours? It is not to the French, but to civilized public opinion that I pose this simple question: if a number of your compatriots were established anywhere for a long time, would you be so cowardly as to abandon them? Do not count on us to do that. Do not count on us to sacrifice the other side of the Mediterranean as if it were a new Alsace-Lorraine."

In these words, more clearly than any French politician to date, France's President announced his nation's determination to cling to rebellious Algeria. It was phrased as a warning to Algerian nationalists, and France's allies abroad, but it was an appeal to dissident Frenchmen--including such leading intellectuals as Sorbonne Professor Raymond Aron (TIME, July 1), Journalist Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber and Europeanist Andre Philip--who have grown tired of the expensive hopelessness of the struggle in Algeria.

President Coty apparently feared a changing mood in France, a growing weariness of the cost and futility of its Algerian effort, and sought to arrest that mood. At the moment, the government of Premier Maurice Bourges-Maunoury is operating on the dubious premise that the revolt can be "pacified," after which Algerian nationalists will get political benefits. But the deadline to this sort of postponement is the September U.N. session, when the Arab-Asian bloc can be expected to raise the Algerian question again. The French government is currently studying a project to offer Algeria a loi cadre (a "skeleton of law" to be fleshed out as the need arises), in advance of the U.N. session. This would reportedly decentralize and gerrymander Algeria so that the outnumbered French would not be everywhere overwhelmed by Arab votes, and provide some form of internal autonomy. But if the President of France can be presumed to speak for France, it would not provide independence for Algeria.

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