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French Reform: Moroccan and Tunisian nationalist leaders in 1946 demanded the suppression of the French secretariat, administration and gendarmarie, the complete elimination of French influence from government except in local bodies where there was a French minority. The French government replied with a program of reforms which provided for Arab representation in local and municipal government. Reform plans were submerged under a hail of protests from the 1) French colonials, who thought the Arabs were getting too much, and 2) the Arab nationalists, who thought they were not getting enough. France still believes a compromise possible. The French say one stumbling block is encouragement given to Arab ambitions by anticolonial sentiment in the U.S.
Colonial Sentiments. What makes the colonial problem in North Africa different is the presence of nearly 2,000,000 French settlers, many of them born in North Africa, which they regard as their home. Americans on the scene frequently accuse the settlers of being more narrow, repressive and intransigent than the French government. Marshal Alphonse Juin, commander of the NATO ground forces in Europe, was born at Bone in Algeria. Last week Juin (onetime Resident-General of Morocco, 1947-51) strongly attacked the U.S.'s wavering attitude. "There was nothing to get excited about so long as our opponents were only the Arab bloc, bound together by Moslem solidarity, and the U.S.S.R. with her satellites . . . but today we are seriously threatened with the possibility of seeing the U.S. join this group . . . This fact is very grave for it wounds us sentimentally and strikes at our idea of what should be the international solidarity to which we have already made such heavy contributions."
American Parallel. When an American tells a Frenchman that the U.S. once fought a war to throw off a colonial power, the Frenchman is apt to reply that the Americans have oversimplified their own history. The Indians were the true local population of America and they were pretty well exterminated by the colonists, say the French. In other words, colonialism in U.S. history involves three elements, not two: the natives (the Indians), the European colonists (George Washington) and the parent government (George III). When the Americans instinctively and sentimentally rush to the side of the Arabs in North Africa, they are mindful of the American Revolution, and think they are siding with George Washington. They actually should be thinking, say the French, of their own Indian wars, and should realize that they are siding with Sitting Bull, while committed by a military alliance to General Custer. The American dilemma: What happens if the Sioux go seriously on the warpath and Custer decides to make a last stand? America's great military bases in North Africa are in Indian territory.
U.N. Intervention. Actually a good deal more than air bases would be in jeopardy. The French fear that U.N. intervention in North Africa would eventually result in a U.N. trusteeship and the loss of her colonies. This, the French claim, would so weaken their nation as to destroy the balance of power between