Second Look

In Tunis too, the bright promise of local autonomy that Premier Mendes-France brought (TIME, Aug. 9) was already being tarnished by old habits of suspicion. The venerable (72) Bey of Tunis, with Mendes' backing, appointed Tahar Ben Amar, 68, one of the protectorate's biggest landowners, to be Premier. He was certainly as pro-French as anyone could wish. But he immediately ran into difficulties.

Tunisia's 250,000 French colons, knowing that in any local government they would be swamped by Tunisia's 3,000,000

Arabs, were angry at Mendes' promise of autonomy within the French Union. They denounced Mendes-France as a "Judas Iscariot"; planeload after planeload of them went tearing off to Paris to protest his "sellout" to their powerful representatives in the National Assembly. Paris told Premier Ben Amar that Tunisian independence was at best a "stated principle," which could not possibly be implemented until "arrangements" have been made to secure the colons' special interests--investments, privileges, jobs.

Ben Amar, a practical man, accepted the French restrictions without a murmur.

But his difficulties were not over. He offered cabinet posts to the leaders of Neo-Destour, Tunisia's clandestine but powerful nationalist party. Most of the leaders are in exile or cooped up in French jails, but six hurried to Switzerland to confer. They talked by phone with their exiled leader, Habib Bourguiba, 51, now a "guest" of the French in a villa near Paris. Bourguiba counseled "accept."

But when Premier Ben Amar submitted his cabinet list to the new French Resident General, Pierre Boyer de la Tour du Moulin, it was the Frenchman who would not accept. Only after Ben Amar dropped two out of six Neo-Destourians was his ten-man team approved. Every man on it is a moderate (what the French call "calm"). This week at a formal investiture, they kissed the right palm and left shoulder of the Bey of Tunis, received his "blessing of Allah."

The blessing of Tunisia's nationalists was less certain. With their religious festival, Aid el Kebir, upon them, crowds gathered in the streets, waiting for Neo-Destour to decide whether the holiday should be celebrated with joy, or with reserve. At last the word spread through the bazaars: celebrate with joy.

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