Algeria: The Not So Secret Army

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than do the S.A.O. terrorists. The prefect of Oran hides in an apartment on the top floor of a 15-story building that can be reached only by taking two separate elevators and passing through a complicated maze of locked and guarded doors. The prefect of Algiers and his staff dodge from one hiding place to another, frequently changing cars and routes. The top Gaullist administrators have abandoned Algiers and huddle together at Le Rocher Noir, 25 miles away, behind three rings of barbed wire, defended by armored cars. S.A.O. spies are everywhere. Last fall, the French government sent 200 more policemen to Algiers; shortly after they arrived, they found that the S.A.O. had a complete list of their names, as well as their photographs.

War of Nerves. The S.A.O.'s most conspicuous failure has been its attempt to transport the movement to France itself. It has made a lot of noise in Paris and the provinces with the explosion of 400 plastic bombs at carefully selected targets* and with the theft of guns and munitions from U.S. and French army camps—always well publicized by the press. But the attempts to blackmail funds from the rich and prominent have often backfired: Brigitte Bardot made the S.A.O. seem ridiculous by publishing their threatening letter. In France, the S.A.O. has an estimated 7,000 active members, among them about 500 plastiqueurs. This is enough for a limited war of nerves, but not enough to cause serious trouble—at least not yet. Interior Minister Roger Frey, one of De Gaulle's staunchest supporters in the government, has crippled the S.A.O. in France by infiltrating the S.A.O. apparatus, formally outlawing the organization, permitting his police to round up sympathizers as well as S.A.O. members.

A recent opinion poll shows that only 9% of the French sympathize with the S.A.O., 26% have no opinion or are undecided, 65% are against it. The S.A.O. label in France covers all sorts of right-wing crackpots, from Poujadist tradesmen to old men who were purged as Nazi collaborators at the liberation, to hard-breathing young militants of the neo-fascist Jeune Nation group. The working class is vehemently anti-S.A.O.

Nation's Spearhead. The philosophy behind the S.A.O. is a muddle of authoritarian, imperialist and populist ideas. S.A.O. propaganda is the sort often found in flights from reality—orotund, florid, declamatory, and so ecstatic as to approach hysteria. Communists delight in identifying themselves historically with Spartacus and his slave revolt; the S.A.O. officers see themselves as Roman legionnaires holding off the Red barbarians on the marches of empire and sending back semaphore messages warning Rome—or rather, Paris—to "beware of the anger of the Legions!" A typical S.A.O. manifesto recalls French soldiers fallen in colonial wars: "Our dreams are full of their death, and often at night we hear the desperate cries of the colonial peoples whom we were forced to abandon as our departing boats tore the last French flag from their gaze. The thought of our Tricolor, having led everywhere, having cast the shadow of French peace on the soil of Africa and Asia, gives us a heavy heart. But our dead, our battles, our faith forbid us the cowardice of weariness. The last battle is joined. We will win it."

Such incantations make it difficult to pin down the S.A.O.'s ideas. In literature,