ALGERIA: Successful Mission

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And in Oran, shortly before his return to Paris, De Gaulle, in the presence of Soustelle, Delbecque and Massu, flatly ordered the insurrectionary Public Safety Committees to get out of politics. Said he: "Authority is in the hands of General Salan and his subordinates, and it must not be contested. You have no more revolutions to make because the revolution has been accomplished." In reply, the Algiers Public Safety Committee pledged itself to support De Gaulle "with out conditions and without reservations." As his jetliner carried him back to France, Charles de Gaulle was keenly aware that the men he left behind him, although outwardly submissive, were inwardly seething with disappointment and discontent. For weeks, perhaps months to come, the European population of Algeria would be restive and potentially dangerous. But it was a measure of De Gaulle's moral force and the success of his mission that not a single member of the Committee of Public Safety had dared to challenge the general's parting shot: "You must help De Gaulle, but you must not push him. He would not like that."

^{*De Gaulle himself wore only the two stars of a brigadier on
his kepi, the same rank as Paratrooper Massu.}