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Ailleret raced to Le Rocher Noir, the coastal fortress that houses the French and Provisional Algerian administrations, confirmed Salan's capture to newly appointed High Commissioner Christian Fouchet. As Fouchet called Charles de Gaulle to break the news, a military transport roared off the Reghaia's airstrip, taking the old soldier for the last time from the country for which Raoul Salan, after 44 years of fighting France's enemies, had himself become an enemy of France. Though he is already under sentence of death in absentia, by French law Salan must stand trial. Like ex-General Edmond Jouhaud, Salan's chief lieutenant who was captured a month ago, he is certain to be sentenced to the guillotine, barring last-minute clemency by De Gaulle.
In Paris, Salan was lodged with hundreds of other captured S.A.O. terrorists in grim Sante Prison. Breaking his silence, he told police: "It had to happen. I saw too many people for too many silly reasons. People that I didn't know. That is probably how I was captured. What difference does it make? Everything was collapsing around us."
Hope in the Bled. Even without Salan, the S.A.O. was still a force to be reckoned with. Bombs still rocked Algiers and Oran after his arrest. Warned the underground S.A.O. radio: "The struggle continues." Still at large are several leaders who are possibly more dangerous than their cautious, calculating commander: Paratroop Colonel Yves Godard, the S.A.O. chief of operations; Colonel Jean Gardes, ordnance chief; Jean-Jacques Susini, an avowed fascist, who formulates S.A.O. doctrine; and ex-General Paul Gardy of the Foreign Legion who proclaimed himself Salan's successor. Nonetheless, for Europeans who remained uneasily loyal to the underground army despite its infamy, Salan's arrest removes the last vestige of respectability from S.A.O. terrorism.
Determined to smash Salan's army, De Gaulle earlier last week flew in 5,000 additional troops to S.A.O.-dominated Oran, named Air Force General Michel Fourquet to succeed Ailleret as commander in chief. Hard-hitting Gaullist Fourquet set out to restore order before restive Moslem mobs got out of control in Oran and Algiers.
Most encouraging portent so far is that in the Algerian bled (the hinterland), where 7,000,000 of the country's 9,000,000 Moslems live, the vast majority are cooperating peacefully with the French army and their own leaders to prepare for independence. At Rhoufi, only a few miles from the spot where the Algerian rebellion broke out seven years ago, a veteran French administrator declared last week: "It's almost too good to be true."