Forced Pace

Startling as a shout, the silent casbah sprang to life last week, and its outburst basically altered the nature and changed the pace of the long-drawn-out agony known by the bleak title of "the Algerian problem."

In the aftermath of De Gaulle's turbulent five-day visit, two things were becoming clearer. As a hope and a plan, Algerie Franc,aise was dead. The European extremists, whose mob violence overthrew the Fourth Republic, had proved paper tigers. And in the face of the mass Moslem hostility displayed last week, not even the most misguided colon could continue the fiction that the silent Moslems (who are nine-tenths of the population) secretly longed to become Frenchmen and make Algeria an integral part of France.

Second fact was that De Gaulle's proposal of an "Algerian Algeria" linked to France had neither appeased nor diverted the Moslems in their drive for independence. By liberalizing voting laws and by massive social reform, De Gaulle had hoped to win over the vast noncombatant Moslem majority, separate them from the F.L.N. rebels, eventually produce a new moderate leadership that would negotiate a new relationship with France as between friends. That hope dwindled when the F.L.N. flags bloomed on every minaret, when the shouts of the demonstrators in Algiers and Oran, in Bone and Constantine, changed from "Vive De Gaulle" to "Vive Ferhat Abbas," from "Vive Algerie Algerienne" to "Vive Algerie Musulmane" (Moslem Algeria).

De Gaulle's offer of an Algerian republic now seems the only course left, short of granting immediate independence. Plainly, a French-sponsored republic would be only a transitional regime; with Moslem sentiment as it was demonstrated to be last week, it would be only a matter of months before the F.L.N. was voted into power. And, giving no comfort to De Gaulle, even those Moslem leaders who had won offices in De Gaulle's new elections privately describe themselves as key men of the "transition."

The way events are heading, De Gaulle's problem is whether he can give the Moslem Algerians their freedom fast enough before the F.L.N. wrests it away. If he can, the two communities can part in friendship. If not, De Gaulle has lost his gamble, and Algerians, European and Moslem alike, may face the threat of vengeful and bloody reprisals when the F.L.N. takes power.

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