France's Fifth Republic and Its General
NIEBUHR, REINHOLD
By Reinhold Niebuhr FRANCE'S FIFTH IT IS PROBABLY too early to assess the full implications of the French crisis in Algeria. The total effect of President Charles de Gaulle's impassioned...
...The semi-diotatorial constitution of the Fifth Republic, de Gaulle's personal prestige and the fact that he has the only feasible policy for Algeria, place his success in the category of a "last chance" for France...
...De Gaulle had the imagination to recognize that the Algerian problem could not be solved if the option of independence was excluded...
...Only a man of courage and imagination, accompanied by stubborness and mega-lomaniacal self-confidence could have done what he has done...
...Experience with the two Bonapartist empires prompted the Left to elaborate an unstable parliamentary democracy without any strong executive leadership...
...The capitalistic Right developed a static and moribund capitalism, and the Left created a welfare state which was too costly for the productive power of static capitalism...
...That is why the French colons opposed the formula...
...Perhaps he will fail...
...He may fail, but if he does, the prospects for France are dim indeed...
...In his memorable address of January 29, he combined the mystique of this patriotism, with the rather arrogant assumption that he had incarnated the real spirit of France (arrogant, but at least partly true), with orders to the Army to obey him...
...Culturally...
...To understand how a great nation should be in the position of dependence upon the prestige of one man, and particularly upon his prestige in the armed forces, it is well to review briefly the history of French democracy and of the uneasy relation of that democracy with the "imperialism" in Algeria...
...Clearly, the only way of winning the Arabs from allegiance to the provisional government was de Gaulle's policy of genuine self-determination, though the President is utterly convinced that the Arabs, if given an honest choice between freedom and membership in the French Community, will choose the latter...
...One can only be thankful that, if the unity of the nation depends upon one man, that man should be of the stature of General de Gaulle, who had the courage to defy the Right which brought him into power, because he saw no hope of solving the Algerian problem except by proposing the formula of "self-determination" for Algeria...
...The costs of lifting Arab education and economy to the French level have not been estimated and may prove beyond the capacity of the nation...
...The sympathetic world will have to regard his rather extravagant nationalism and egotism as a price which must be paid for such a boon...
...This hazard means that even if he succeeds now...
...In short, his policy for Algeria, like his policy for France itself, combines features of both Right and Left doctrines...
...The problem of ''France Against Herself" still remains unsolved—though given sufficient time, de Gaulle might possibly fuse Right and Left into a consensus more lasting than the double harness by which he now drives the two steeds...
...But what they want means the forcible subjection of the Algerian nationalist movement, and therefore an interminable civil war...
...Economically and politically, the contest between Left and Right was resolved by what Luethy defines as "immobilism...
...The total effect of President Charles de Gaulle's impassioned radio-television address to France, to the Army and to the Algerian Moslems will not be known for some time...
...Obviously, this formula, if honestly applied, does not guarantee that Algeria will keep its relation to the French Community...
...In Herbert Luethy's famous book, France Against Herself, the Swiss historian traces the sad story of the failure of France to digest the revolution of the late 18th century...
...They want absolute security...
...Clearly, de Gaulle's achievements were not in creating a solid consensus underneath the party strife—an indispensable basis of stability for a democracy—but in providing a complicated contrivance by which a strong man could drive two recalcitrant steeds in a double harness...
...It is one of de Gaulle's achievements that, on the basis of his manifestly honest devotion to the Republic, he was able to persuade the Left to accept his new constitution, giving him potentially dangerous dictatorial De Gaulle's policy for France and Algeria 'combines features of traditional doctrines of the Right and Left' REPUBLIC AND ITS GENERAL powers...
...and the Arab nationalists are more revolutionary than any French Left...
...he may fail in the end...
...The ferocity of the terrorists of the National Liberation Front (FLN)—the "provisional government" of Algeria—is prompted by the accumulated resentments against the hypocricies of this situation, and by the budding national consciousness of a nation which literally did not exist when France took over Algeria in 1330...
...The French settlers are certainly more intransigent than the French Right...
...Probably no one after de Gaulle will have sufficient prestige to achieve election to his office...
...Meanwhile, the doctrines of French liberalism, particularly the emphasis on the "rights of man," created the illusion of a harmonious state, as if the cultural and economic differences between Arab and French citizens did not exist...
...and he had the courage to defy the very forces which brought him to his present eminence...
...The Algerian crisis is, in a sense, a miniature and caricature of the political situation in France...
...It is sad to see a great nation in such a sorry plight, but comforting to find a man of courage and insight try to solve the nation's problems...
...This situation proves that France is still in crisis and may be for some time...
...Catholic rationalism was pitted against Enlightenment rationalism, and the strife between clericalism and anti-clericalism was never resolved...
...The curious coexistence between the one million French settlers and the nine million Arabs, under the fiction that Algeria is a part of Metropolitan France, was created by the imperialism of the French Right, as was also the system of weighted voting...
...But it is not too early to measure the significance of a situation in which the security of a nation against civil strife rests upon the prestige of one man and the loyalty of the Army to him, and, by implication, to the nation...
...The only strong dissenting voice was that of the redoubtable former Premier Pierre Mendes-France...
...Incidentally, he created a Presidency, not of the French nation, but of the French Community...
...For the Army in Algeria, which had little or no loyalty to the Fourth Republic, was indifferently loyal to de Gaulle's Fifth Republic until he made his impassioned plea...
Vol. 43 • February 1960 • No. 7
