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The Sleepy Recruit. To Ferhat Abbas, who deplores violence, the Algerian war at first seemed an unmitigated disaster. During the early months of the revolt he tried to act as an intermediary between the F.L.N. and the French. But in February 1956, when a shower of rotten tomatoes thrown by Algiers colons frightened Socialist Premier Guy Mollet into taking a "tough line" in Algeria, Abbas lost the last of his faith in French good will. Within three months he dissolved his own party, the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto, and turned up at rebel headquarters in Cairo, where he told a press conference: "There is only the F.L.N."
The F.L.N.'s tough young masters, who still suspected him of pro-French loyalty, put him through an apprentice course in clandestine operations, sent him scurrying about Europe, the Middle East and South America as a spokesman for the cause. This was hard work for sleep-loving Ferhat Abbas, who likes to get to bed before 9 every night, already wonders how he will hold his head up at evening functions if he ever becomes head of a genuine Algerian state. Slow as he had been to join the rebellion, Abbas still possessed an asset of incalculable value to the F.L.N.—the most respected name in Algerian politics. Three weeks ago, when the rebels proclaimed formation of a government in exile, everyone agreed that "Papa" Abbas was the logical choice for Premier.
Something Borrowed. The Cabinet over which Abbas presides—he is heard with respect but has no decisive voice—is made up of two loose factions. One, which includes Abbas himself, favors some kind of continuing tie with France, in common with the neighboring Moslem states of Morocco and Tunisia. The other group, made up of men intrigued by the dream of Pan-Arabism, favors more extreme measures in fighting the French.
Paradoxically, two of the leading moderates are the Cabinet's military men —Minister of War Belkacem Krim, a moody, 35-year-old Berber with five death sentences over his head, and Minister of Supply Mahmoud Cherif, 43, a onetime career lieutenant in the French army. The extremists are the politicians, notably Foreign Minister Mohammed
Lamine-Debaghine (whose spectacles and partially paralyzed face have won him the nickname "Mr. Moto") and Minister for North African Affairs Abdelhamid Mahri, an Arabic scholar who sometimes talks like a fellow traveler, argues that the F.L.N. is being pushed into ties with the Communists because of "U.S. support of France."
Many F.L.N. weapons are arms that the British left by the thousands in Egypt, and that Nasser, who now has shiny new Soviet guns to replace them, has turned over to the Algerians. Diplomatically, the F.L.N. has had Soviet bloc support in the U.N., and its newly proclaimed state has been formally recognized only by Red China, North Korea, North Viet Nam and Outer Mongolia among non-Moslem states. (Soviet Russia, playing a devious game in hopes of keeping its influence in Paris, has yet to recognize it.)