670
PARTISAN REVIEW
connections. Departure was first postponed several weeks so the can–
didate for the honor could get married, amid the usual tribal motion
and commotion. Then wrenched from his bride and from everything
familiar to him, he was dragged in his desert garb through the glit–
tering salons where he is reported, rather understandably, to have
been lonely and homesick; probably the food disagreed with him
too. The strange pair also did a swing through Switzerland and the
French Alps, with what results either religious or cultural or political
in the protege's outlook is not clear. Nor is it clear how he can have
been ignorant of the plot against his benefactor, or on what grounds
he failed to warn him if he knew of it. But then the subsequent
French anti-Foucauld camp, either leftist Catholic or anti-clerical
altogether, would not all be above picturing the principal as well
warned and opening his door to the bullets on purpose, in order to
be a martyr.
Whether pro or con, it is refreshing, not to say humbling, to
find an antidote to such zeal in a little book by a Moslem writer,
who, while not veiling any imperialist unpleasantness of the period
insists on showing it in context. That includes as fair a picture as has
been drawn of Foucauld's true intentions, not to proselytize but to
exemplify the teachings of Christ. There was no limit to his generos–
ity. He gave and gave and gave- food, clothes, lodging, money; his
tough debate with himself, over a life of service versus contempla–
tion, became solved half and half without his decision, by the flock of
needy at his door, in both Beni-Abbes and Tam. Slavery in Algeria
was not only among the Tuareg; he bought slaves whenever possible
in order to buy their freedom, often with little thanks for his pains
except perhaps from on high. In recalling that long social service and
his grueling work in
tamahaq
vocabulary, grammar, and literature,
this unassuming Islamic commentator, Ali Merad, justly presents
him as the antithesis of the not too untypical French profiteer and
exploiter of the same territory, or their counterparts in any other col–
onizing nation. The French have often been praised, in contrast to
some of those other powers, for their policy of infusing French edu–
cation and culture into the peoples under their dominion, instead of
looking on them solely for grab value; which is not without some
truth but left plenty of grabbers.
As context for the priest's so widely shared assumption that
ultimate good for humankind could come from Christianity alone,
the same Moslem study presents quite a battery of big guns of the
time, in a ruling power that happened to be also a bastion of intellec-
