Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR HOOK In his article on "Marx, Dewey and Lincoln" (NL, October 21), Sidney Hook quotes Dewey as saying that instrumentalism means that knowing is "literally something we do." I don't...
...Washington, D. C. Jerome Shoenfeld ALGERIA Sal Tas ("Another Fall in France," NL, October 14) has entirely misconstrued Jacques Soustelle's actions and motives, both past and present, in regard to Algeria...
...As for Tas's absurd comparison of my friend Soustelle with Governor Faubus of Arkansas, lei me offer a few facts: In June 1955, when I was in Algiers, Soustelle told me that "some of the worst enemies of France in Algiers" were Frenchmen, but that despite them he would continue in his struggle to bring about the changes he considered indispensable...
...To begin with, as Governor-General of Algeria, appointed by and subject to the Minister of Interior, his powers were far inferior to those of M. Lacoste, who is Resident Minister and as such a member of the French Cabinet himself...
...The extraordinary truth of the matter is that in the course of one brief year Soustelle succeeded in gaining the immense majority of the non-Moslem population to his way of thinking, and not the other way around, as Tas would have us believe...
...On the political side, he would prefer complete integration of Algeria with metropolitan France, department by department, which would mean the abolition of the Governor-Generalship and all the special laws covering Algeria...
...This year he will probably sit with the Tunisians or Moroccans...
...However, I do know that, until world conditions have changed radically, France must remain in Algeria...
...The Algerian rebels are losing ground steadily, as Tas admits, and will make desperate attempt at a comeback through the UN...
...Are we going to assist now, by our soft-headedness, in throwing the choicest land in North Africa, with its great promise of Saharan oil, into the waiting arms of Russia...
...I don't quite understand...
...This would naturally result in the elimination of the double college of voting and any other inequalities that may persist...
...Does this imply that there is something, some single thing, that they're all doing...
...Last February, the rebel representative in New York sat as a member of the Syrian delegation...
...This, I contend, is in the best interests of Algeria and France, and is also in the best interests of peace and the liberty and prosperity of the Western world...
...This is so empty that there would be no point in saying it...
...I don't know whether integration is feasible at present, and have no wish to discuss it here...
...Back of the Egyptians, and of those same Syrians with whom the rebel Arab Algerian sat, is Soviet Russia...
...Who is he trying to bamboozle by this sudden "reasonableness...
...The Arabs are constantly declaring that all Arabs constitute "one nation.'' Egyptian arms are going to Tunisia and Egyptian school teachers to Morocco...
...Practically everybody knows that Eisenhower is the President...
...Another interpretation might be that anybody who knows something is doing something or other...
...What...
...These demonstrations obliged Guy Mollet to hastily replace Catroux with Lacoste...
...New York City Benjamin Protter...
...Tas has apparently forgotten that sandwiched in between Soustelle and Lacoste was General Catroux, and that it was against him the Algerian French demonstrated in the belief that he was favorable to the give-away of Algeria...
...Algerians of European stock told me that Soustelle was not the man for the job, meaning the task of "holding down" the Moslem population...
...However, Lacoste, probably remembering how hamstrung Soustelle had been, asked for and received greatly enhanced powers...
...If two people know the same thing, is there some action that both are doing...
...Jacques Soustelle's ideas for economic and social reform, embodied in the "Soustelle Plan," are known to all...
Vol. 40 • November 1957 • No. 44
