(10 of 11)
It has also a history of producing men on horseback, from Napoleon Bonaparte to Napoleon III to the "brav' général" Georges Boulanger, who failed to seize power only through a crucial loss of nerve in 1889. The first elected President of the Third Republic was a soldier, Marshal MacMahon; the last act of the Third Republic was to surrender its powers to another soldier, Marshal Pétain. The rebirth of France began when General de Gaulle disobeyed the Pétain government, which had made peace with the Nazis, and launched the Free French movement.
But no matter how volatile the army may be politically, the one thing that fills it with horror is the prospect of fighting within itself. Last week the army seemed still ready to take orders from De Gaulle—provided he gave his orders with care. That De Gaulle sharply appreciates the thinness of the balance is obvious in his reluctance to appeal for support in this crisis to any parties of the left. To a visitor at Elysee Palace, De Gaulle said bluntly: "The left without the Communists is zero. The left with the Communists is unacceptable to the army."
Wailing Siren. At week's end Algeria still seemed a smiling white city lying between a blue sea and distant snowcapped mountains. In the nightclubs along the Rue Michelet, couples danced until the midnight curfew, although traveling strippers have taken Algeria off their itineraries. At a movie house on the Rue d'lsly. Moslems and Europeans queued up to see Spartacus; the line moved slowly not because of a lack of seats, but because each moviegoer was frisked for gun, knife or bomb before admittance. At sidewalk cafes, no one turned at the familiar wailing siren of an ambulance racing to Babel-Oued or Belcourt or Climat de France, where someone—European or Moslem—lay wounded or dead.
In their crowded tenements, Moslems listened dourly to a clandestine S.A.O. broadcast. The S.A.O. announcer told them: "You must understand we are in this country and we will never leave." And then he added: "Moslems, we are both of us in the same boat. The storm is raging. We will all be saved or we will all perish together.''
*The plastic bomb, developed during World War II, has become the trademark of the S.A.O. It is a puttylike substance made by mixing two explosives, Hexogen (known as R.D.X. in the U.S.) and TNT, into a rubber compound base, and can be exploded either electrically or by fuse. Terrorists prefer the plastic bomb for two reasons: it is so stable that it can be cut into strips and easily transported; at the site marked for the blast, it is adhesive enough to stick to almost any surface — under a window ledge, on a mailbox, or around a fence or lamppost.
*Among the intended victims so far: eight Cabinet ministers, 35 legislators, about 30 mayors, an equal number of journalists, the rest assorted officials, politicians and anti-S.A.O. intellectuals, including Jean-Paul