The events of 1945 should have been a warning signal; the pitiless repression of the area around Constantine, on the contrary, emphasized the anti-French movement. The French authorities judged that such repression put an end to the rebellion. In fact, it gave the rebellion a starting signal.
It is beyond doubt that the Arab demands on all these points, which in part summed up the historic condition of the Arabs of Algeria until 1948, are thoroughly legitimate. The injustice from which the Arab population has suffered is linked to colonialism itself, to its history and its administration. The French central power has never been in a position to make French law dominate in its colonies. It is beyond doubt, in short, that signal amends must be made to the Algerian people which will restore to them both dignity and justice.
B. What is illegitimate in the Arab demands.
The wish to recover a life of dignity and freedom, the total loss of confidence in any political solution guaranteed by France, the romanticism too that is natural to very young insurgents without political background have combined to lead certain combatants and their general staff to call for national independence. However well disposed one may be toward the Arab demands, one has to admit that, as far as Algeria is concerned, national independence is a conception springing wholly from emotion. There has never yet been an Algerian nation. The Jews, the Turks, the Greeks, the Italians, the Berbers would have just as much right to claim the direction of that virtual nation.
At present the Arabs do not alone make up all of Algeria. The size and seniority of the French settlement, in particular, are enough to create a problem that cannot be compared to anything in history. The Algerian French are likewise, and in the strongest meaning of the word, natives. It must be added that a purely Arab Algeria could not achieve the economic independence without which political independence is but a deception. However inadequate the French effort may be, it is so far-reaching that no country, at the present moment, would be willing to take over. For this question and the problems it raises, I refer the reader to Germaine Tillion’s admirable book.1
The Arabs can at least claim kinship, not in a nation,2 but in a sort of Moslem empire, either spiritual or temporal. Spiritually that empire exists, its adhesive force and doctrine being Islam. But there also exists a Christian empire, at least as important, which there is no question of bringing back as such into temporal history. For the moment, the Arab empire does not exist except in the writings of Colonel Nasser, and it could not come about without world-wide upheavals that would mean the Third World War in a short time.
The claims for Algerian national independence must be seen in part as one of the manifestations of this new Arab imperialism in which Egypt, overestimating its strength, aims to take the lead and which, for the moment, Russia is using for its anti-Western strategy. The Russian strategy, which can be read on every map of the globe, consists in calling for the status quo in Europe (in other words, the recognition of its own colonial system) and in fomenting trouble in the Middle East and Africa to encircle Europe on the south.
The happiness and freedom of the Arab populations are of little account in the whole affair. One has only to think of the slaughter of the Chechenzes or of the Tartars in the Crimea or of the destruction of the Arab culture in the once Moslem provinces of Daghestan. Russia merely takes advantage of such dreams of empire to serve her own designs. Those nationalistic or, in the strictest sense of the word, imperialistic claims must in any case be responsible for the unacceptable aspects of the Arab rebellion—chiefly, the systematic murder of French civilians and Arab civilians killed without discrimination and solely because they were French or friends of the French.
Consequently, we are faced with ambiguous demands, which we can approve as to their basic causes and as to some of their formulations, but which we can in no manner accept in certain of their developments. The mistake of the French government from the beginning was never to make any distinctions and consequently never to speak out clearly, and this justified every form of skepticism and retaliation on the part of the Arab masses. The result was to strengthen the extremist and nationalist factions on both sides.
The only chance of getting somewhere with the problem, today as yesterday, is therefore to speak clearly. If the elements of the problem are:
1) The amends that must be made to eight million Arabs who have lived until now under a particular form of oppression;
2) The right of 1,200,000 autochthonous French people to exist, and to exist in their native land without ever again being subjected to the discretion of fanatical military leaders;
3) The strategic interests that condition the freedom of the West:
then the French government must make it clearly known:
1) That it is ready to grant complete justice to the Arabs of Algeria and to liberate them from the colonial system;
2) That it will give up none of the rights of the Algerian French;
3) That it is unwilling for such justice to mean a prelude to a sort of historical death for the French nation, and for the West the risk of an encircling that would lead to the Kadarization of Europe and the isolation of America.
Hence it is possible to imagine a solemn declaration addressed exclusively to the Arabs and their representatives (it is worth noticing that since the beginning of hostilities no French chief of state or any governor has spoken directly to the Arab population) proclaiming:
1) That the era of colonialism is over, and that France (without blaming herself any more than other nations that grew up at the same time) admits her past and present mistakes and declares herself ready to make amends;
2) That she refuses, however, to yield to violence, especially the forms it assumes at present in Algeria; that she refuses, in particular, to serve the dream of the Arab empire at her own expense, at the expense of the European population of Algeria, and, finally, at the expense of the peace of the world;
3) That she therefore proposes a regime of free association in which every Arab, on the basis of the Lauriol plan,3 will truly find the privileges of a free citizen.
Of course, the difficulties begin here. But they may never be solved if this preliminary declaration is not solemnly made and directed (as I have said) toward the Arab population by every means of diffusion that a great nation possesses. That declaration would doubtless be heard by the Arab masses, who are today tired and disoriented, and, on the other hand, would reassure a large part of the Algerian French by keeping them from blindly opposing the structural reforms that are indispensable.
It remains to define the solution that might be suggested.
New Algeria
The only regime that, in the present state of affairs, would do justice to all parts of the population has long seemed to me to be a federation based on institutions similar to those of the Swiss confederation, which make it possible for different nationalities to live in peace. But I think that an even more original system must be devised. Switzerland is made up of different populations living in different territories. Its institutions aim simply to articulate the political life of its cantons. Algeria, on the other hand, offers the very rare example of different populations overlapping in the same territory.
Hence it is essential to associate without fusing together (since federation is to begin with the union of differences), not different territories, but communities with different personalities. The solution proposed by M. Marc Lauriol, Professor of Law at Algiers (even without approving all his whereases) seems to me in this regard particularly adapted to Algerian realities and likely to satisfy the need for justice and freedom felt by all the communities.
In the main, his plan combines the advantages of integration and federalism. He proposes, on the one hand, to respect particularisms and, on the other, to associate the two populations in the administration of their common interest. For this purpose he suggests creating, in a first stage, two sections in the French Parliament, a metropolitan section and a Moslem section. The first would include those elected in metropolitan France and by the overseas French and the second would include the Moslems adhering to the Koran. The rule of proportionality would be strictly respected in the election. Thus it is probable that, in a Parliament made up of six hundred Deputies, there would be about fifteen Algerian French representatives and some hundred Moslems. The Moslem section would deliberate separately on all questions involving Moslems and on them alone.
The Parliament in full session, including both French and Moslems, would have authority over everything concerning the two communities (for instance, taxation and the budget) or the two communities and metropolitan France (for instance, national defense). The other matters, insofar as they involved only metropolitan France (in civil law particularly) would fall under the exclusive authority of the metropolitan section. Hence laws involving only the Moslems would be the work of the Moslem Deputies alone; laws applying to all would be the work of all; and laws applying solely to the French would be
