A Pro-Colon View of Algeria

...The book purports to be a history of the Algerian rebellion...

...What they should have, he claims, is a "racial partnership" based on the superior status of the Europeans...

...As such, of course, it is valuable, for Americans seldom have the opportunity to view the rancor and semi-hysteria which characterizes the colon mentality...

...Writing with an emotionalism worthy of the Radio Cairo he so deplores, Clark repeats the old colon theses that the revolt is simply the mischief of a handful of Egyptian-led terrorists, that the great majority of Algerian Moslems are still indifferent, or opposed, to independence, and that they still accept European domination as "part of the scenery...

...The hero of the piece is Jacques Soustelle, who had the courage to close his eyes to the rebellion while distributing economic and social palliatives...

...But for a better-rounded picture, I suggest that Americans interested in Algeria read some statements by French politicians and intellectuals, Catholics (and Protestants), de Gaulle, American journalists or even Irving Brown, all of whom have learned things which have apparently escaped Michael Clark...

...General DeLatour and Marshal Pierre-Alfonse Juin are fine types also, as are some of the colon senators, and Generals Raoul Salan and Jacques Massu appear to mean well...

...The vacillations of French Socialists and Radicals, the "weakness" of French Catholics ("and Protestants too," we are reassured), and the blindness of French intellectuals (as well as of their uninformed compatriots) also did their share in betraying the colons...

...When, I wonder, will it be realized that an ethnic majority is vastly different from a political majority, and that it is no more possible to give the Moslem community majority representation in Algeria than it is to give a populous country majority representation in an assembly, or in a partnership, of nations...

...One of the pets in the author's great menagerie of betes noires is Tunisian "dictator" Habib Bour-guiba, whose major crime (aside from being a Moslem North African) appears to be allowing Tunisia to border on Algeria, thus facilitating his aid to the fellagas...

...For only French beneficence, Clark claims, and not union organization, can help the underpaid and unemployed...

...But their mischief pales into insignificance when compared with the misdeeds of another American, Irving Brown...

...Such information should have been noted, for it would have helped the uninitiated reader to understand the whys and wherefores of this long treatise against the FLN, Arabs, nationalism, almost 40,000,-000 Frenchmen and just about everybody who does not share the peculiar pro-colon propensities of the author...

...In making his calculations, he ignores such factors as the better working conditions and higher standards under which Tunisian laborers now work, as well as the political problems with France and Algeria which contribute to Tunisia's economic woes...

...Reviewed by Lorna Hahn Instructor of History, Temple University THE JACKET of this book (which might just as aptly have been titled Michael Clark in Turmoil) fails to mention that the author is married to a Frenchwoman from Algiers, that the National Liberation Front (FLN) burned his farm in Algeria or that he was removed from his North African assignment by the New York Times because of the many complaints against his prejudiced reporting...

...Having helped to organize Algerian workers, and to bring the non-Communist, pro-FLN syndicat into the ICFTU, Brown is held responsible for hurting not only the colons, but the Moslem workers as well...

...In sum, the book gives a completely one-sided picture of the Algerian problem...

...But Frenchmen and North Africans are not the only people Clark blames for the colons' plight...

...As Clark himself states, "No one could be more convinced than I that the Algerian rebellion is an attack on the ordinary decencies of life...

...Much of this data, if presented in counterpoint to colon misdeeds during the same period, might have been useful both in dispersing the illusions of idealists who tend to excuse anything done in the name of nationalism, and in presenting a true picture of the horror that is the Algerian war...

...That the revolt has proven to be too big to control is apparently due to the mistakes and machinations of a conglomeration of people from Calais to Kabul to Cairo, all of whom seem hell-bent on making life as miserable as possible for the Algerian colons...

...But although it does give some information concerning the evolution of Messali Hadj's Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Liberies Democratiques and of the FLN, it is mainly a chronicle of the abuses committed, or allegedly committed, by the latter since the launching of the war five years ago...

...Here, however, it is used merely to justify the continued mastery of Algeria's nine million Moslems by the one million Europeans...

...But woe unto General Henri Catroux, who felt that World War II had brought to an end the classic age of colonialism...

...American journalists, who, it is claimed, repeat the anti-French propaganda given them by American embassy officials, have done their bit...

...This about sums up Algerian nationalism as far as he is concerned, and in proving his point, hardly one act of destruction goes unmentioned, hardly one mutilated corpse goes unmourned...

...That the last thing Bourguiba originally desired was to become involved in this war, and that he has done everything possible to orient the FLN to the West and to bring about a cease-fire on terms favorable to France, is unmentioned...

...As "proof," he cites the case of the Tunisian workers, whom Brown also assisted, asserting that they are no better off economically now than under the French protectorate...

...Mendes-France's deceit" in granting autonomy to Tunisia (which, "although smaller, is the same kind of a country as Algeria") is largely to blame for jeopardizing the French position throughout North Africa...

...Since there are two communities in Algeria, one is bound to dominate the other unless parity and equality are the rule in all institutions common to both...