FRANCE: Offer to Algeria

The world’s greatest orator since the retirement of Winston Churchill is the tall, lumbering man with the look of a nearsighted llama who is President of France. Last week Charles de Gaulle sat down before TV cameras and addressed a message to his people in prose no other leader can match. He began:

“Once upon a time, there was an old country hemmed in by habits and caution. At one time it was the richest, mightiest people among those in the center of the world stage. But, after great misfortunes, it withdrew within itself.” Gradually, De Gaulle led up to his message: a nation’s greatness does not depend on colonialism. “It is quite natural to feel a nostalgia for what was the empire, just as one can miss the mellowness of oil lamps, the splendor of sailing ships, the charm of the carriage era. But what of it? There is no valid policy outside realities.”

Facing sad realities, De Gaulle went on to make a new offer to end the bitterly inconclusive Algerian war. Said he: “Once again, in the name of France, I turn toward the leaders of the insurrection.

I tell them that we await them here to seek with them an honorable end to the fighting that still drags on, to settle the disposition of arms and to assure the fate of the combatants.”

Thunder from the Right. De Gaulle’s terms—free elections to decide Algeria’s fate and freedom from revenge—were basically the same as those he proposed nine months ago (TIME, Sept. 28). But this time he scrapped his earlier condition that after a cease-fire there should be a four-year period before any referendum on Algeria’s future status. He promised that “the leaders of the insurrection” could help to frame the referendum and then could openly campaign under its terms. He pledged that the election would be “completely free,” that reporters the world over could come to observe it. And to proud Moslems who are acutely appreciative of the twists of semantics, he spoke—for the first time—of “an Algerian people” and “an Algerian Algeria.” Not once did he mention surrender. Said De Gaulle: “Above all, it is no longer contested, anywhere, that self-determination for the Algerians regarding their destiny is the only possible outcome of this complex and painful tragedy.”

The reaction from the French Right was instantaneous. A galaxy of ex-ministers—starring Jacques Soustelle, Georges Bi-dault and Robert Lacoste—charged that De Gaulle’s conciliatory words would undermine the French forces in Algeria or even lead to secession. In Algeria, diehard colons threatened new demonstrations.

Pressure from Allies. But the real decision was up to the rebels. Last month an F.I.N. rebel delegation returned from Communist China without the arms and planes that they had sought to carry on the fight. (The failure might have served them better than success, for the spectacle of the F.I.N. equipped with squadrons of Communist MIGs would have alarmed many of their foreign sympathizers, lost them much of the neutral and Western support they have managed to win.) Last week, as F.I.N. leaders gathered at the Tunis villa of “Premier” Ferhat Abbas, emissaries from the pro-rebel governments of Morocco and Tunisia turned up to urge them to fly to Paris and negotiate with De’Gaulle. The rebels, tattered and restless, gave word that they would seriously consider it.