FRANCE: The Test for De Gaulle

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Barely 20 months after it destroyed one French republic, the unrelenting Algerian revolt last week threatened the life of another. Across the wide boulevards of Algiers crackled the sound all France had so long feared to hear—the sound of Frenchmen shooting at Frenchmen.

The trouble began one morning fortnight ago with Major General Jacques Massu, the wiry paratrooper who was front man for the May 13, 1958 Algiers military insurrection and now commands French forces in Algiers. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Kempski, star reporter for Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Massu complained that the army did not understand De Gaulle's Algerian policy, and added: "De Gaulle was the only man at our disposal. Perhaps the army made a mistake." Within 24 hours after Kempski's interview hit France, Massu was on his way to Paris to explain. From Algiers, spokesmen for the diehard European settlers' organizations loudly warned De Gaulle not to make them choose between him and the popular Massu; even Premier Michel Debré wanted to accept Massu's ambiguous repudiation of the interview. But at that point De Gaulle blew up. Outraged by the implication that the army had supported him only "for lack of a better man"—the one remark Massu wholeheartedly insisted he did not make—De Gaulle summarily ordered Massu relieved of his command.

On the Boulevard. In Algiers—where censors vainly tried to hold up the news —word of Massu's dismissal sent European crowds surging into the streets with cries of "De Gaulle to the gallows!" On a sunny Sunday more crowds milled aimlessly along the city's great Boulevard Laferrière. But at noon—when many of them began to drift off for lunch—an ultra spokesman appeared on a balcony to shout, "French Algeria is surely worth a meal!" Late in the afternoon the restless crowd began overturning cars and setting up street barricades.

At dusk, despite the ultra leaders' exhortations, much of the crowd turned home. But the most aggressive of the settlers—well-armed members of the Home Guard formed to fight off surprise rebel attacks—continued to lounge along the curbs under the watchful eyes of 1,000 men of the Gendarmerie Mobile. In the gathering darkness, reported TIME Correspondent Frank White, who witnessed the event, the gendarmes charged the crowd, first firing a volley into the air and then throwing tear gas grenades as they ran.

Ducking into doorways and houses, the home guardsmen fought back and within moments other armed French Algerian civilians, pulling out hidden weapons, came to their aid. Caught in a crossfire, the gendarmes dropped into the boulevard's wide middle gardens and unlimbered their automatic weapons. For 20 minutes, while the street lights blinked off and on, the crackle of rifle fire alternated with the rasping bursts of heavy machine guns.