FRANCE: New Course

“Now is the time for all who fear seasickness to take to the lifeboats. The rest of you must cling to the mast.” In these ringing quarter-deck tones, President Charles de Gaulle last week warned his ministers that he had set a course into the eye of the storm. His decision: to speed a solution toward an “Algerian republic.” The U.S. had just elected a President who in 1957 stirred up a flurry in France by declaring that “the independence of Algeria” was “the essential first step” in North Africa. The Algerian rebels are pressing Morocco hard to grant passage in the next three or four weeks to the first shipments of arms and “technicians” from Red China. France itself seemed suddenly at its nerves’ ends over a war that has eaten at its vitals for six years.

The Wreckers. Storm clouds could be seen gathering. In protest at De Gaulle’s new course, André Jacomet, No. 2 man in the Algerian civil government, handed in his resignation. De Gaulle’s response was decisive. Ignoring Jacomet’s resignation, De Gaulle ordered him dismissed from his post and suspended his membership in the elite Council of State. After that, other officials in Algeria who had been muttering about resigning fell abruptly silent.

But on Armistice Day, Algiers erupted . in the worst rioting since the January insurrection. Shouting “De Gaulle to the gallows” and “the paratroopers to Paris,” a crowd of 5,000 students and settlers wrecked buses, smashed windows, and fought a pitched battle with police. To clear the streets of demonstrators, police charged again and again, swinging rifle butts and truncheons. The rioters threw stones, pavement blocks and tin cans until dispersed by tear gas. Regrouping a few blocks on, the mob swept down on the U.S. Information Service office and wrecked it for the second time in two years. By the time darkness halted the fighting, 100 were wounded, including 70 cops.

In Paris, President de Gaulle rode through a cheering crowd of 45,000 to lay an armistice wreath at the tomb of France’s Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe. But police headed off a possible riot only by rounding up 1,900 demonstrators, and De Gaulle’s old comrade in arms, Algerian-born Marshal Alphonse Juin, refused to take part in the Arc de Triomphe ceremonies. “I had to do something to protest,” cried Juin, who is France’s only living marshal. His gesture placed France’s most influential soldier beside such disaffected army chieftains as the former commander in Algeria, General Raoul Salan. Ordered by De Gaulle to stay out of Algeria, Salan has gone to Spain for “a vacation,” last week summoned reporters to his seaside hotel in San Sebastián to declare: “The time of false retreats has ended. A categorical no to this Algerian Algeria.”

The Surveyors. As the weather thickened, De Gaulle was reported ready to put the question of Algerian peace to a referendum in France. At week’s end he sent Defense Minister Pierre Messmer and Armed Forces Chief General Paul Ely to Algeria to survey prospects for a unilateral cease-fire and to inform the army that the destination is ultimately an independent republic.