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Bloodless Collapse. At 1:30 a.m. on the morning of April 23, a plane touched down at Maison Blanche airport outside Algiers, and out stepped Raoul Salan. The city was already in the hands of Salan's fellow plotters: Generals Maurice Challe (who had succeeded Salan in Algeria), Andre Zeller and Edmond Jouhaud. Rushing to his villa in Hydra, Salan kissed his wife, put on his uniform and all 36 of his decorations, and hurried to Challe's headquarters on the Forum.
He found his fellow conspirators plunged into gloom. The only soldiers they could count on were the three paratroop regiments that had rebelled with them. The rest of the armed forces in Algeria were either in opposition or sitting on the fence. Challe, who had hoped to win by a bloodless coup d'état, collapsed. Salan made a last effort to keep the Revolt of the Generals going—again from a balcony overlooking the Forum, where a supercharged Algiers mob was again screaming that it had been betrayed. But Salan's words could not be heard—someone had cut the microphone wires.
At dawn, a newsman asked Salan if he were going to surrender. Curtly the general answered, "No!" Weeping, Lucienne Salan tied a silk scarf about her husband's neck in a farewell gesture. Generals Challe and Zeller returned to France as prisoners; Generals Salan and Jouhaud, with some 100 deserters from the ist Foreign Legion Paratroop Regiment, disappeared into the underground.
A few weeks later, Salan emerged from silence as the chief of the Secret Army Organization.
For Their Lives. At first, Premier Benyoussef Benkhedda of the F.L.N. Provisional Government smugly announced that the S.A.O. was not an F.L.N. concern; it was an "affair between Frenchmen." But as the toll of Moslem deaths mounted in gunfights and ratonnades, Benkhedda reversed himself. This month, in an official communique, the F.L.N. declared war on the S.A.O. In Algiers, underground fighters stood guard at Moslem cafes and clubs; "self-defense units" were formed in the Moslem bidonvilles (shanty towns). Fellagha gunmen stopped skirmishing with the French-army patrols to step up attacks on S.A.O. terrorists.
But Salan's real enemy is not the F.L.N. It is President Charles de Gaulle. Both, in their own way, are playing for their lives. Salan has already been condemned to death in absentia for his part in the Revolt of the Generals. De Gaulle has already escaped one S.A.O. assassination attempt. When it failed, he is reported to have remarked with a trace of regret, "Une belle sortie [a nice exit]." At 71, what De Gaulle dreads more than loss of life is loss of reputation, a downgrading of his place in history.
Whether or not De Gaulle originally wanted the terrible burden of settling the Algeria problem, 45 million Frenchmen have delegated it to him. Most Frenchmen, enjoying unprecedented prosperity, are on a delayed spree of buying everything from refrigerators to ski trips, and are simply not in the mood to worry about politics. Alone in his responsibility for Algeria, De Gaulle operates from a