Graveyard Smell

"I'm exhausted!" cried Premier Edgar Faure. It was 4 a.m., and intermittently for three days and continuously for the last 14 hours, France's National Assembly had been drearily debating Faure's policy for Algeria. The policy had to be the "middle course of integration," said Faure. "Assimilation" was impracticable; "secession" was unacceptable. Faure proposed a program of land reforms, stepped-up investments and increased political liberties, including "free, democratic elections" (a suggestion that, heretofore, elections had been neither).

Faure could read little but hostility in the faces confronting him. The Socialists, who a few days before had saved him by approving his Moroccan policy, did not think his Algerian reforms went far enough. The right-wingers thought they went too far. Most hostile of all were the Gaullists, nominally a part of his majority; they "liked his policy but not his government."

Faure was not deceived. Shaking his fist at the Gaullists, he accused them of trying to overthrow him at all costs. "Your game is crystal-clear. You want to prevent me from applying my Moroccan policy endorsed last Sunday," he cried. Privately, the Gaullists admitted the truth of the charge. At last Faure wearily posed the Algerian program as a vote of confidence in himself, and set the vote for early this week. Quipped a left-wing Deputy: "There is a pleasant graveyard smell here."

The Deputies returned to their constituencies to consider the fate of France's 21st government in nine years. In their absence, Premier Faure, to present returning Deputies with the sense of something being accomplished, pushed and prodded until at last he was able to announce that the long-promised throne council had been set up to govern Morocco.

If that did not work, and the Deputies returned in the same distemper they left in, Faure was clearly doomed. But one thought gave pause. With nearly general approval in France, Faure had ordered France's delegation out of the U.N. Assembly on the ground that Algeria is an internal problem that France will settle internally. If Faure were to be overthrown, would it not be a tacit confession that France was incapable of devising any policy at all for Algeria?

Sticking point in formation of the Moroccan throne council has been the choice of a "neutral" third member. Both sides have long accepted 1) Mohammed el Mokri, the 108-year-old Grand Vizier, as representative of the traditionalist supporters of ex-Sultan Ben Arafa, and 2) Si M'Barek ben Mustapha el Bekkai, 48-year-old idol of Moroccan nationalists, as representative of ex-Sultan Ben Youssef. But French colonists feared the influence of Si Bekkai, whom they regarded as a dangerous extremist. Final solution was to dilute Si Bekkai's influence by adding not one but two more "moderate" members--one a young (38), obscure Berber chieftain called Si Tahar ou Ali Assou Loudyi, the other an old (71), respected jurist and doctor of Koranic law, Si Mohammed Sbihi. The council's first task: to designate a Moroccan Premier to form a representative Moroccan government.

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