PARIS LETTER
DIVISION OVER ALGERIA
"When an Empire begins to break up, the blame is ascribed
indifferently to those who for too long refused to reform it and those
who, by permitting reform, accelerated the course of events. The facts
never decide the issue between the opposed theories." And since the
facts never decide the issue, since every citizen belongs to one tendency
or the other, this passage by Raymond Aron-taken from his latest
book,
Espoir et Peur du Siecle--expresses
in a few words what sets
Frenchmen one against the other.
Everyone knows that victory unites, defeat divides. It is when
things go badly that the time comes for evening up old scores. In 1940,
the men of the Left accused the Right of having demoralized France
by making her indulgent toward the dictators. And the Right replied
that it was paid vacations, corrupting reading, trade-unionism and anti–
clericalism which had sapped the strength of the nation. Today, the
Left affirms that France is losing her Empire because the Right refused
to make indispensable reforms while there was still time to do so. The
Right maintains that it is precisely these reforms, finally imposed by
the Left, which are the source of our decadence. The reproaches, this
time, on one side as on the other, are more weighty.
Who is right? Everybody and nobody, no doubt. For reforms should
indeed have been made earlier, but they also would have led to the
loss of the Empire. The only difference would have been that this
purely negative operation would perhaps have cost less.
Yet it is not certain that even if matters had been handled in the
wisest, the most economical and the speediest fashion, the results would
not have been identical. It must be admitted, first of all, that it is
easy to utter judgments today about what should have been done in
the past, but it was less easy to do so then. Suppose that all reforms, in
Indochina, in Algeria, in Tunisia, in Morocco, and in Black Africa,
had been made, and been made in time. It still remains true that nothing
is more painful nor more difficult than for a nation to pass in the
hierarchy of powers from the first to the second rank. To be Switzerland
is not humiliating. It is even highly honorable. But it is hard to become
that when one has been something else.
