Coup

General Charles de Gaulle last week swept into full power. Out of the Liberation Committee went General Henri Honore Giraud, former Committee Co-President, and three of his Committee appointees. For reasons as yet unclear, former Gaullist Defense Commissioner General Paul Legentilhomme also vacated his post. Simultaneously seven Gaullists entered the Committee's ranks. At week's end, the reconstituted group, facing up in Algiers to their first major problem since the coup, tackled Lebanese demands for independence with drastic and provocative action (see p. 28).

Giraud was still in his job as chief of the French armed forces. But his retreat from power had not necessarily ended. De Gaulle spokesmen said that the unhappy General would continue as military chief "for the time being." Possibly available for the military command, if & when it is open: General Legentilhomme.

Algiers Today. The political scene in Algiers now has an almost unbroken Gaullist fac,ade, by virtue of purge and new personnel. In the strongly Gaullist Consultative Assembly, which convened in Algiers last fortnight, only a four-man Communist bloc including firebrand Andre Marty may be a source of dissent.

Andre Marty is one of the most colorful figures in present-day Algiers. His past includes leadership of the French Black Sea Fleet Mutiny in 1919, a consequent death sentence (later reprieved), a stormy career in the French Chamber of Deputies, a key command in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, and a scorching place in the pages of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Of Marty in Spain, Author Hemingway wrote: "One of France's great modern revolutionary leaders . . . a large man, old and heavy . . . [who had] become with time, disappointment, bitterness both domestic and political, and thwarted ambition . . . dangerous. . . . His face looked as though it were modeled from the waste material you find under the claws of a very old lion."

But even Andre Marty represents no real threat to Algerian unity. De Gaulle now dominates both the controlling Liberation Committee and the advisory Consultative Assembly. Frenchmen had waited long for a national standardbearer. Whether that standard was to be the Tri-color or the Cross of Lorraine did not matter. De Gaulle personified a France rampant, able at least to force its presence on the consciousness of other nations.

France Tomorrow. De Gaulle's ascendancy pointed up a looming question: Who will administer France in the early days of its liberation, when there may be Germans to be fought in France? De Gaulle last week said that when France is liberated, the Committee alone will be valid on French soil.

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