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PARTISAN REVIEW
sent anything except M. Mendes-France himself. This is indeed the
tragedy of this statesman, perhaps the only statesman France possesses
today: none of the existing political structures will ever be able to
tolerate his personality nor to follow him in his intransigence. Yet at
the same time no one is more attached than he to the permanence
of these structures, so he holds on desperately with one hand to a
Radical Party which he is destroying with the other.
The break in the UNEF is the more serious of the two because it
represents the profound division among Frenchmen in a more real and
more exact fashion. When no political or electoral interest brings them
together-which is to say, when they meet over issues that are outside
of party concerns-they are forced into uncompromising positions. How
does it happen then that the country is so calm? Except for demon–
strations like that of last month at the Arch of Triumph-and it is true
that such occasions are few-the basic forces in existence, fascist,
democratic, or Communist are relatively inactive.
This calm is deceptive. For France at this moment is living through
a sort of civil war, in Algeria. At the same time that it is a struggle
against the nationalists, the war in Algeria is taking on more and
more the aspect of a settling of accounts among the French. Jean–
Jacques Servan-Schreiber, director of the weekly
Express,
has taught
us this in his recently published report,
Lieutenant in Algeria.
The
fascist organizations of continental France are "infiltrating" the units
fighting in Algeria with volunteers charged more with keeping an eye
on the officers and the draftees of the army than with fighting the
rebels. Sometimes their mission exceeds that of simple observation;
Servan-Schreiber met one man who had been ordered, quite simply, to
"liquidate" him. At the last moment the agent's courage failed him and
the "network" behind him was discovered.
Among the Algerians, events are developing in the same fashion.
It would be false to represent this country today as the theater of a
simple operation, in which two adversaries are opposed, French on one
side, Moslem nationalists on the other. At the same time that they are
fighting the rebels, the French are tearing at each other. It is not a
question only of the Communists, most of whom have put themselves
at the service of the National Liberation Front. Among the French
"colonialists" (and this means not only the wealthy and influential
colons)
and the French "liberals," an open fight is going on. The
liberals have against them not only the greater part of the population,
but the official services and the Resident Minister himself, although
