FRANCE: The Watershed

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As the moment neared, Frenchmen everywhere were tense with anticipation. In Algiers, settlers gathered around TV sets at home or sipped anisette at bars and cafes, waiting for the broadcast. From five minutes to 8 onward, the television cameras focused on a clock with a large second hand counting off the time down to 8 sharp. Then, at last, an announcer intoned, "16th September, 1959. Elysée Palace. General de Gaulle, President of the Republic and of the Community, addresses the nation."

On glowing screens in France and Algeria appeared tall, grave Charles de Gaulle, seated at his desk, ready to disclose to France and the world his plan to end the savage, five-year-old Algerian war. His words, ringing with purpose, marked a watershed in French history: "I deem it necessary that recourse to self-determination be here and now proclaimed."

Fateful Choices. No other French leader had ever dared to offer the 9,000,000 Algerians what Charles de Gaulle was holding forth to them: a free choice to decide their own future political status, even to secede peacefully from France if that was what they wanted. Algerians, said De Gaulle, could opt for 1) independence, 2) complete political and economic integration with France, or 3) home rule under France's wing (see box).

It was clear that De Gaulle detested the first alternative, considered the second impractical. His own preference, he made plain, was the third alternative—self-government of a type similar to that now operating in the twelve nations of France's new African Community. But even this would not come until the fighting was over: Algerians, proclaimed De Gaulle, would make their decision in elections to be held "at the latest four years after the actual restoration of peace; that is to say, once a situation has been established in which not more than 200 people a year lose their lives, either in ambushes or isolated attacks." (The Algerian war's 1959 toll so far according to French figures: 20,000 dead in battle, 1,613 killed by terrorists.)

The Vanishing Specter. When De Gaulle had finished, France was swept by a vast wave of relief that finally someone had pointed the way to an end of the bloody rebellion that has cost France $5 billion, kept 500,000 young Frenchmen under arms in Algeria and badly strained the fabric of NATO. The Communist and fascist fringes hurled insults at the President, but the great French middle, both liberal and conservative, overwhelmingly supported and applauded the bold initiative. And the dread specter of right-wing revolt all but vanished even in Algeria itself, where diehard French ultras had warned, on the eve of De Gaulle's statement, that "hundreds of thousands of Europeans and Moslems" would "take to the maquis" if self-determination was offered to Algeria.