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F.L.N. leaders like to say that they are grateful for aid from anywhere, but that it is their own soldiers who are doing the dying, and many are resentful i^ particular of Nasser's attempts to pose as the real force behind the Algerian revolt. They say they have no intention of winning their freedom from France only to lose it to Egypt. Partly to demonstrate its independence of Egypt, the government in exile is planning to transfer its headquarters to Tunisia, will move a first contingent of ministers there this week.
On the Offensive. The tragedy of Algiers is that neither side is strong enough to make a country without the other, and neither army is strong enough to defeat the other. De Gaulle's coming to power last June was the first break in the futile, desperate struggle. De Gaulle, though the candidate of the paratroopers and the diehard European extremists who toppled the ineffectual Fourth Republic, is not their stooge. Empowered now by his overwhelming mandate, De Gaulle plans to kick Algeria's shilly-shallying Commanding General Raoul Salan upstairs as Inspector General of the French army, and to transfer the impetuous paratroop General Jacques Massu back to France.
De Gaulle's bold decision to have Algerian Moslems vote in his constitutional referendum was a direct challenge to F.L.N. authority. The rebels warned Moslems to stay away, and threatened vengeance on those who voted. An astonishing 80% of all eligible Algerians, including Moslem women voting for the first time, got to the polls. Many were taken there by the French army, but the size of the poll was nonetheless an impressive indication of France's ability to summon some degree of cooperation from Algeria's Moslem population. It could also be read as a Moslem longing for peace, and as a clear rebuff to the F.L.N.
As a soldier, De Gaulle knows that one can only make a peace with those he fights. But he also wants to talk past the F.L.N. to other more moderate Moslem elements in Algeria. That is why, in last week's speech which so annoyed the European extremists in Constantine, De Gaulle sought to conjure up his dramatic vision of economic equality. Among the announced goals of his five-year plan: 1) equalization of wages in France and Algeria; 2) distribution of 625,000 acres of reclaimed land among Moslem farmers; 3) schooling (by 1966) for all Moslem children; 4) 10% of all civil service jobs in Metropolitan France and more in Algeria to go to Moslems.
De Gaulle's plan was clearly intended to redress many of the underlying grievances of the Algerian war. But F.L.N. leaders, though trusting him more than his predecessors as a man strong enough to do right, were nonetheless indifferent to his economic promises. Accustomed to thinking only in military and political terms, they were unimpressed by estimates that to raise Algeria's living standards by 2% a year would take an annual foreign investment of $850 million, and they dismissed with a wave of the hand the obvious fact that without French capital Algeria would face economic catastrophe. Asked what their own economic plans are, the rebels reply: "There's a committee working on it."