FRANCE: Soldierly Duty

Whatever happens in Algeria, Old Soldier Charles de Gaulle is determined to carry the army along with him. By artfully reassigning the principal military malcontents, by paying close attention to the military’s fears and hopes, he has brought the army along to grudging acceptance of his offer of Algerian self-determination. Last week came the first military challenge to De Gaulle’s authority. It came from the only living Marshal of France—cantankerous, Algeria-born Alphonse Juin, 70, whose once prestigious role in French affairs has diminished over the past five years as a result of ill-timed and ill-conceived forays into military politicking. De Gaulle’s offer of self-determination, charged Juin in a newspaper article, was “a bet which cannot come off” and which “has reawakened hope in the rebel camp.”

Though long retired from active command in the French army, Juin by his stand might stir up troublemakers among the 400,000 soldiers on active duty in Algeria. Taking no chances, French Defense Minister Pierre Guillaumat curtly summoned Juin to his office in Paris and reminded him of “the government’s will that military chiefs hold themselves entirely apart from political discussions.” And in his first order of the day to the troops in Algeria, as President and “Chief of the Armies,” De Gaulle himself sternly declared: “In full knowledge of the facts, I have fixed what must be our course of action in Algeria,” no less sternly demanded of the army “devotion and discipline in the service of France.”