The Moment Is Coming

As President de Gaulle's ministers sat down in the big Salon des Portraits of the Elysees Palace, the pressures for a decision on Algeria were closing in on France. Operation Binoculars, the new military campaign to crush the rebels, was going slowly. Within the week President Eisenhower would arrive to hear what, if any, new solution De Gaulle had to settle the five-year war. "A climate of expectancy and uncertainty mixed with apprehension reigns," reported Le Monde. "The moment is coming when the game is either lost or won."

For four hours the ministers talked in the 90DEG heat. De Gaulle seemed to have decided on a plan, but gave his colleagues no inkling of what it was. Instead, he polled their views. A small group was for a harsh, unrelenting continuation of the war until Algeria could be integrated with France. At least three "liberals" urged independence for Algeria, even if it meant negotiating with the F.L.N. terrorists. But by far the greatest number of the 18 ministers favored the third alternative De Gaulle had put before them: an entirely new juridical status for Algeria, to be submitted to Algerians in a referendum. The new status was not clearly defined, though some talked about a "Puerto Rico" solution patterned after Puerto Rico's affiliation with the U.S. De Gaulle was left to decide for himself.

Next morning De Gaulle took off in a twin-jet Caravelle for Algeria to sample the sentiments of the army. Pointedly skipping major cities (where he would have had to deal with intransigent French colons), he barnstormed army units throughout Algeria, hopping from place to place by helicopter and DC-3. He chatted with hundreds of officers and noncoms, ate all his meals with officers of colonel's rank or under. Often he would ask a local commander to come along for a confidential chat on a helicopter trip to the next stop. At Orleansville he had a long talk with Paratrooper General Jacques Massu.

At army headquarters in Kabylia, De Gaulle saw for himself the difficulties facing 25,000 French troops as they scour the thick scrub of mountain sides for rebels. He watched helicopters swoop low over a 3,400-square-mile waste of mountains "as full of holes as a Gruyere cheese," as one officer put it, and foot soldiers trudge up and down steep rocky inclines searching caves for the more than 10,000 terrorists hidden in the region.

Wherever De Gaulle went, he found the army wanting a better shake for Algeria's Moslem population, but in no mood for Algerian independence or for giving up the fight. De Gaulle's room for maneuver was small. Extremists in the rebel F.L.N., in one of those unmistakable gestures meant to show that they had no intention of compromising, shot down 67-year-old Senator Cherif Benhabyles, an Algerian, in the streets of Vichy. A friend of F.L.N. Leader Ferhat Abbas, Benhabyles had offered to be a link in discussions with the French.

"A military solution must come quickly," De Gaulle told his officers at Saida. This was unlikely to happen, but at least the French army could probably keep another De Gaulle pledge: "The F.L.N. flag will never float over Algiers." But he also talked about the "auto-determination" that would follow a ceasefire. What specifically he had in mind, or up his sleeve, he was waiting to try on Ike.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.