France: The Bloody Clouds

In a broadcast to the French nation last week. President Charles de Gaulle confidently promised that the Algerian problem "will be thoroughly resolved" by July 1. On that date, he predicted, the Moslem majority will vote for independence in the Algerian referendum and the French army will begin a gradual, three-year withdrawal. Thus France will be freed for a more active role in the world* and, De Gaulle implied, for the task of constitutional reform that would make a strong executive a permanent feature of French life. As for the "last bloody clouds" caused by the terrorism of the Secret Army Organization, they would soon disappear, together with the S.A.O. strategy of "assassination, theft and blackmail." Frenchmen, sickened by the seven-year war in Algeria and by the S.A.O.'s senseless brutality, could only hope that De Gaulle was right—even though the "bloody clouds" appeared to last longer than many political weather forecasters had predicted. If the battle was already lost for the S.A.O., it was not yet finally won for either De Gaulle or the F.L.N.

Fleeing Billions. In Algeria, De Gaulle's confident words were met by a new upsurge of S.A.O. hatred. His broadcast had scarcely ended when the S.A.O. launched a bazooka attack against Radio Algiers, and startled radio listeners heard screams and gunfire over the air waves. The one-week truce was abruptly broken by hit-and-run attacks on isolated Moslems.

S.A.O. terrorists planted phosphorus bombs in Algiers University, and European students cheered as their school burned to the ground, destroying a 600,000-volume library.

De Gaulle's Ministry of Finance disclosed that nearly $2 billion has fled Algeria for France within the past two years. Human beings were also in flight: the daily average of European refugees has soared from 3,000 to 8,000. This month alone, an estimated one-fourth of the million Europeans in Algeria will leave for France. They are being replaced by a slow influx of Moslem refugees returning from years of exile in neighboring Tunisia and Morocco with only a few sheep and goats and the ragged clothes on their backs. Most will come home to partially or totally destroyed villages, to weed-grown, untilled fields, and to the frail shelter of army tents.

Extraordinary Move. In Paris, right-wing Deputies in the National Assembly acted as if history were reversible. "We will never abandon the idea of Algerie Française!" cried Deputy Jean-Marie Le Pen. Despite the fact that De Gaulle has overwhelmingly won two national referendums on his Algeria policy, the rightists filed a motion of censure against the government, but were sharply defeated. Even as angry debate on the motion rang from the Assembly floor, news tickers clacked out word of an extraordinary move by ex-General Edmond Jouhaud, who was condemned to death last month by the same military tribunal that later spared the life of his S.A.O. boss, Raoul Salan.