France: Sense of Disarray

Except for the warming gleam in Jacqueline Kennedy's eye, it was a chilly, depressing week in Paris. Day followed day of lowering clouds and slanting rain. Though large crowds gamely lined the boulevards to cheer the closed limousines that splashed by. Parisians were preoccupied by their own multitudinous problems--Algeria, the restive French army, the treason of the generals which led to April's clumsy insurrection in Algiers.

Swirling Snow. During the 48 hours before the Kennedys arrived, a dozen Paris gun fights left two policemen dead and four Algerians wounded. Gendarmes piled 931 suspect Algerians into paddy wagons and carted them off to jail. Right-wing activists set off six plastic bombs. In Algiers, Police Commissioner Roger Gavoury was stabbed to death in his apartment just eight days after beginning to investigate the European terrorist group called the Secret Armed Organization. At Evian-les-Bains, as snow swirled outside the windows, French and Algerian F.L.N. delegates sat arguing around a wide conference table and seemed to be getting practically nowhere.

Rivaling Jackie Kennedy for the headlines were the two generals: blond, flint-eyed Maurice Challe, 55, onetime commander of the French army in Algeria, and balding, tight-lipped Andre Zeller, 63. In an ornate, oak-paneled courtroom of the ancient Palais de Justice, both went on trial for leading the short-lived April rebellion against France and Charles de Gaulle.

General Zeller seemed distracted, kept losing his place in his notes and finally sat down, despairingly putting a hand to his eyes as if saying to himself, "What imbecility! To risk my life for this!" General Challe, erect and unrepentant, spoke eloquently, if not always to the point. Challe thought his insurrection had been aimed at saving Algeria's Moslems from the clasp of the F.L.N. rebels.

Total Victory. An air of curious restraint hung over the courtroom. Not once was Challe's objective clearly stated, nor at any time were high-ranking members of the conspiracy identified by name, except the few arrested with Challe. Both prosecution and defense appeared hesitant and embarrassed about probing too deeply. And army witnesses for the defense made a declaration of faith by saluting the two prisoners in the dock. General Jean-Etienne Valluy, who preceded Challe as Central European commander at SHAPE, admitted: "If I had been mixed up in this affair, I would have told them, 'What you are doing is culpable and unreasonable. Nevertheless, I cannot prevent my heart from being with you.' "

Left unsaid was just what Challe specifically had in mind. He insisted there was no intention of conquering France with paratroops and foreign legionnaires. He only planned to begin a "general offensive" against the F.L.N. in which "total victory" would be speedily achieved, and then he could retire from the fray.

Such a victory was certainly not possible in Algeria, where 500,000 French soldiers have spent more than six years fruitlessly chasing handfuls of F.L.N. guerrillas over mountains and through deserts. To many observers, it seemed clear Challe planned to launch an invasion of Tunisia and wipe out the so-far-untouched F.L.N. bases where an estimated 20,000 rebels rest, train and refit for battle inside Algeria. In short, Challe saw himself doing the dirty work for De Gaulle and then handing over to him a fait accompli that De Gaulle could not easily refuse.

Divided Minds. The court, after deliberating 75 minutes, found Defendants Challe and Zeller guilty. Each was sentenced to only 15 years imprisonment, instead of death before a firing squad. General Challe heard the verdict unmoved and departed for Sante prison, reflectively smoking his pipe. Both troubled and relieved by the lenient sentences, Paris' thoughtful Le Monde felt that greater severity might have provoked "the indignation of the majority of the French. Why? Because today minds are divided, institutions uncertain, and civil sense in disarray."

What was clear to minds even less logical than the French was that the army had been neither cowed nor crushed by the failure of the Algiers coup, and that it remains the chief power center after De Gaulle himself.

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