The Continuing Struggle

In Paris last week a gaunt, leathery career officer acquired, almost unnoticed, more political power than any other soldier on active duty in the Western democracies. By governmental decree, General Paul Ely, 61, Chief of France's National Defense Staff, was given precedence over all French officials save President Charles de Gaulle and Premier Michel Debre. Hereafter, Ely, not the Minister of Defense, will be directly in charge of France's national security; if he chooses, in a time of crisis, Ely can even enter into international negotiations on his own authority.

Behind Charles de Gaulle's decision to grant Ely such sweeping authority lay one of the great continuing struggles of France's Fifth Republic. When De Gaulle took office last June, some of his critics, disregarding the record of his previous self-restraint in power, freely predicted that he would soon be dictator of France. Nine months later De Gaulle is still waging a cautious and complicated campaign to win full mastery over the very force that sparked his return to power--the French army.

Ominous 13. The Algiers colonels' revolt of last May was dramatic proof of the disaffection that 14 years of losing colonial wars in Indo-China and North Africa had engendered in French professional officers. Just how deep that disaffection went is now the talk of Paris as the result of a new book by two top French newsmen, the brothers Serge and Merry Bromberger, who call the Algiers uprising a fusion of 13 distinct conspiracies ("the 13 plots of May 13").

Had De Gaulle not been voted into power when he was, army leaders in both

France and Algeria planned to carry out an assault on Paris called "Operation Resurrection." This plan was widely discussed at the time, but the Brombergers' book adds many details. From Algiers, swashbuckling General Jacques Massu was prepared to move on Paris with 1,500 paratroopers--to be flown over in planes supplied from France by a senior air force officer. Other generals in France had promised to support Massu's movement with an additional 4,000 paratroopers, 80 tanks and two battalions of colonial infantry. In all probability the attack would have met with no organized resistance. Unwilling to take responsibility for plunging France into civil war, General Ely resigned as Chief of Staff rather than issue an order calling upon units in France to oppose their brother soldiers from Algeria.

On the Alert. As soon as De Gaulle took power, he restored Ely to his old job, encouraged him in the quiet dispersal of May 13 plotters, including General Raoul Salan, the overall commander in Algeria, who has now been made Commandant of Paris, an honorific post. But the sickness of the French army runs too deep to be cured by reassigning a few senior commanders. The real problem, as De Gaulle sees it, is to give France's young officers a mission more stimulating than colonial suppression.

Six weeks ago De Gaulle quietly issued a series of drastic decrees placing on the army's shoulders full responsibility for preparedness against atomic attack and "subversive ideological war." Under these decrees, if the President officially declares a "state of alert," every citizen of France between 17 and 60 automatically becomes subject to mobilization and military justice. The task assigned to each individual --military, civil defense or industrial--would be determined by army-run "zones of defense," each capable of carrying on even if communication with Paris or all other zones is cut.

The Moral. The authority granted General Ely last week is both a consequence and a symbol of the vast new peacetime role De Gaulle has given France's army. Famed for courage--Ely wears the Croix de guerre with six citations (both World Wars and Indo China), still carries his arm in a sling as a result of a World War II wound--France's top active soldier has rare prestige with the French officer corps.

Last week, clearly acting as De Gaulle's spokesman, Ely gave French officers a pep talk in the official National Defense Review, outlining their new mission. The Soviet bloc, wrote Ely, is not necessarily as monolithic as it looks. Already, he declared, "Russia, in its endeavors to catch up with American industrial and scientific developments, is moving toward a similar structure." If Red China persists in driving toward "true-blue Communism," the day might come when, between the Chinese threat and "a shift toward the old mystic spiritualism of the Slavs," a Christianized and "Americanized Russia . . . might return to the Western camp."

Chief threat to such a happy ending, Ely emphasized, is Russian expansion in Asia and Africa--"for each new implantation of Communism helps it find again the purity of its younger days." Hence the prime task of the West is to keep Russia out of the underdeveloped nations by carrying out "a just and equitable distribution of Western wealth."

These were high-flown words--and thoughts--to come from the pen of an old soldier. But they were words carefully calculated for their effect on France's restless officers. The moral that Ely and De Gaulle clearly intended them to draw: the fate of Western civilization will rest in part on the manner in which France and the French army conduct themselves in the awakening nations of France's former African empire.

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