Honeymoon Ends for Mollet:
TAS, SAL
HONEYMOON ENDS FOR MOLLET By Sal Tas New French Premier hurt by Cabinet tiff, Algeria Paris The honeymoon in the French Left, celebrated by the accession to the Premiership of Socialist leader...
...Mendes-France declared that the ambitious social program adopted In the Socialists at their last convention threatened Fiance fiscally...
...In these circumstances, he preferred to sulk and to sit in the Cabinet without portfolio...
...He has some time left, because right now nobody wants to inherit his difficulties--least of all the Communists, who curiously combine their propaganda for a popular front with moderately critical support of the Mollet Government...
...The boys we saw on the street must have been 10 years old when Mollet joined the Resistance...
...Though Mollet's Republican Front partner...
...In any case, it was naive for Mollet to make the trip without knowing that the nomination of Catroux would infuriate the Algerian French...
...Had Mendes-France followed the logic of his belief that France must reconstruct its economy before it can afford a foreign policy, he would have accepted this post...
...In this atmosphere, Mollet went to Algeria, a trip obviously modeled on Eisenhower's trip to Korea and Mendes-France's own dramatic flight to Tunis...
...As always, the personal conflict was translated into a political difference...
...The Radicals forced the Assembly to shelve this inopportune proposal--inopportune because so many other fundamental decisions await the Assembly, and these decisions demand the cooperation of the Catholics against the Communists...
...In fact, the idea of the Premier's dealing with Algeria in Algiers had been proposed by Mendes-France during the election campaign...
...A prime minister does not travel to gather information...
...he goes to negotiate...
...For these friends would have to come from the Catholic MRP, which had more than one quarrel with Mendes-France to forget...
...If the responsible state officials in Algiers did not warn Mollet of what was obvious to every informed spectator, this alone suggests the possibility of collusion between those officials and the mob leaders...
...Only a firm policy of negotiation with the Algerian nationalists can save this situation...
...The psychological impact of such a program, however, may not be felt for a decade or more...
...But free elections are impossible until there is an armistice...
...Radical chief Pierre Mendes-France, accepted Mollet's nominal leadership, and the Assembly confirmed this by a massive vote, the seeds of discord had already been sown with the formation of Mollet's cabinet...
...Indeed, the demonstration had been organized by Poujadist leaders and carried out by students and schoolboys--though doubtless expressing many of the repressed feelings of the French colony generally...
...Mollet has announced an ambitious social and economic program for Algeria...
...And this Mollet failed to do...
...Under pressure from Mendes-France...
...On the other hand, the successful revolts in Tunisia and Morocco deepened the breach between these Frenchmen and the Moslems, and the latter are now fighting for nothing less than independence...
...HONEYMOON ENDS FOR MOLLET By Sal Tas New French Premier hurt by Cabinet tiff, Algeria Paris The honeymoon in the French Left, celebrated by the accession to the Premiership of Socialist leader Guy Mollet, did not last very long...
...Even France has participated in the lunatic race to "win the sympathy of the Arabs" by arming them...
...The French minority is strong: one Frenchman to eight Moslems...
...Le Monde commented that it wondered "which comrades Mollet was talking about...
...who is also critical of his hesitancy, the Premier declared that political measures (i.e., negotiations) must accompany social and economic measures...
...As in South Africa, such a strong inbred minority is unwilling to resign itself to minority status...
...The Algerian guerrillas are undoubtedly using some of the arms France has sent Nasser...
...All this lacks clarity, and has caused great discomfort to the Socialists and to the Government as a whole...
...As it turned out, Mollet's trip was not a political act, but an escape...
...Both knew they could only form a minority government, which would need silent friends, if not silent partners--and it was improbable that Mendes-France could get them...
...Mollet's confused trip to Algeria aggravated his difficulties...
...Curiously enough, it was Mendes-France's Radical party, traditionally anti-clerical, which counter-attacked on the last item...
...On the other hand, Mendes-France's rejection as both Premier and Foreign Minister meant that he was being publicly sacrificed to the MRP...
...certainly he met no responsible Moslem leader...
...Socialist deputies also helped the Communists move a law abolishing state subsidies for parochial schools...
...He again urged a one-chamber Algerian Assembly instead of the existing two chambers (one for whites, one for Moslems), but he has already said that this could contain two separate representations--which would mean that the one new house would combine all the defects of the two old ones...
...The MRP preferred not to forget, and the selection of Mollet as Premier thus acknowledged the balance of power within the Assembly...
...Mollet says he will only negotiate with men who have been picked by their people in free elections...
...During his long series of consultations in Algiers, he scarcely saw any Algerian Moslem...
...Faced with mob rule, Mollet could only weep in dignified sorrow...
...and how can you get an armistice if you refuse to negotiate with the heads of the opposing force...
...Though China is stronger than Egypt, one need only observe how considerately the West reacts to Nasser's provocations to realize that he can go a long way in helping the Algerian guerrillas before being stopped...
...And, in a statement to the press later, he said that he deeply deplored having been faced with the fury of men who had been his "comrades-in-arms in the fight for France's independence...
...These Algerian French had, and have, but one object: to prolong their own dominant position...
...With the help of the Communists, they picked as many committee chairmen as they could--sometimes to the detriment of the MRP and profit of the Communists...
...Mollet by his behavior made himself the prisoner of this group...
...Perhaps it was necessary, after this mistake, to drop Catroux, but at least this should have been accompanied by the arrest of the mob leaders, to show the world that the Government and not the mob ruled...
...He crossed the Mediterranean for lack of any other idea...
...He quickly dropped the newly-nominated governor, the progressive-minded General Georges Catroux, bete noire of the anti-MoIlet demonstrators...
...The Cabinet wrangle began with the indisputable fact that Mollet had the largest Parliamentary group, but that Mendes-France had the strongest personality...
...it would absorb, he said, funds that should have been earmarked for investment and modernization of the economy...
...He was received by a veritable revolt on the part of the Algerian French and insulted as few heads of state have ever been...
...The problem in Algeria is more intricate than in Tunisia and Morocco...
...Though the Catholics are moving toward that working majority we discussed above, the Socialist deputies till now have shown more interest in dogmatic squabbles than in realistic behavior...
...If Mendes-France was unacceptable to the MRP as Premier, he was even less so in the Foreign Ministry, where he would deal with matters which could only provoke Catholic wrath...
...Meanwhile, the Arabs remain fanatical and turbulent nationalists...
...Mollet instead offered him a super-Ministry of Economic Affairs, which would deal with all the problems of commerce, industry and finance...
...This was the program of the Republican Front, but that program has been considerably weakened by Mollet's statements...
...Many other problems await Mollet, and demand similar resoluteness...
...With 15,000 guerrillas occupying the attention of 250,000 French soldiers, the Algerian war could easily become another Indo-China, with Egypt playing China's role...
...No fruitful negotiations can take place so long as the Algerian French--or the most vocal among them--place themselves between the French Government and the Arab masses...
Vol. 39 • March 1956 • No. 10
