Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays

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  and win. But you and I know that this war will not have any real victors and that, once it is over, we shall still have to go on living together forever on the same soil. We know that our destinies are so closely linked that any action on the part of one calls forth a retort from the other, crime engendering crime, madness replying to lunacy, and, finally, that if one stands aloof the other suffers from sterility. If you Arab democrats fail in your work of pacification, the activity of us French liberals will be doomed to failure in advance. And if we falter in our duty, your poor words will be swept away in the wind and flames of a pitiless war.

  This is why I am with you in your effort, my dear Kes-sous. I wish you, I wish us, luck. I want most earnestly to believe that peace will rise over our fields, our mountains, our shores, and that then at last Arabs and French, reconciled in freedom and justice, will make an effort to forget the bloodshed that divides them today. When that happens, we who are both exiled in hatred and despair shall together recover our native land.

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  APPEAL FOR A

  CIVILIAN TRUCE IN ALGERIA

  (Lecture given in Algiers in February 1956)

  Ladies and gentlemen, despite the need to sur-round this meeting with precautions, despite the difficulties we have encountered, I shall speak this evening not to divide but to unite. That is my most ardent wish. Not the least of my disappointments (and the expression is weak) is to have to admit that everything stands in the way of such a wish. For instance, a man and writer who has devoted a part of his life to serving Algeria is almost deprived of the right to speak, even before anyone knows what he intends to say. But at the same time this emphasizes the urgency of the effort toward pacification that we must make. Consequently, this meeting had to take place to show at least that an exchange of views is still possible and to keep people from accepting the worst as a result of the general discouragement.

  My speaking of "an exchange of views" suggests that I did not come to deliver a formal lecture. To tell the truth, in the present circumstances I should not have the heart to do so. But it seemed to me possible, and I even considered it my duty, to come and echo among you a

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  purely humanitarian appeal that might, at least on one point, silence the fury and unite most Algerians, both French and Arab, without their having to give up any of their convictions. That appeal, endorsed by the committee that organized this meeting, is addressed to both camps in the hope that they will accept a truce insofar as innocent civilians are concerned.

  Hence I have only to justify such an enterprise in your eyes. I shall try to do so briefly.

  Let me insist at the outset that, owing to the force of circumstances, our appeal has nothing to do with politics. If it were otherwise, I should not be qualified to speak. I am not a political man, and my passions and inclinations do not lead me to public platforms. I step onto the podium only when forced to by the pressure of circumstances and by my conception of my function as a writer. As to the basis of the Algerian problem, I shall probably have, as events multiply and suspicions increase on both sides, more doubts than certainties to express. My only qualifications for talcing a stand are that I have lived through the Algerian calamity as a personal tragedy and that I am incapable of rejoicing over any death whatever. For twenty years, with paltry means, I have done all I could to contribute to the understanding of our two peoples. To be sure, one can laugh at the expression of the preacher of reconciliation when history answers his preaching by showing him the two peoples he loved embraced in a death grip. He himself, in any case, is not inclined to laugh at it. Faced with such a failure, his only concern must be to spare his country any unnecessary suffering.

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  I must add that the men who took the initiative of backing this appeal are not acting in any political capacity either. Among them are members of large religious families who were willing, in keeping with their lofty calling, to support a humanitarian duty. Others are men not singled out either by profession or by sensitivity as the kind who get involved in public affairs. For most of them, indeed, their profession or business, which served a purpose in the community, sufficed to fill their lives. They could have stood on the sidelines, like so many others, keeping score and from time to time sighing with a fine note of melancholy. But they thought that building, teaching, creating were functions of life and of generosity which could not be pursued in the realm of hatred and bloodshed. Such a decision, heavy with consequences and commitments, gives them no special rights except one—the right of asking that their suggestion be seriously considered.

  I must say finally that we don't want to get you to agree to anything politically. If we wanted to raise the problem on a political basis, we should run the risk of not getting the agreement we need. We may differ as to the necessary solutions and even as to the means of achieving them. To contrast positions that have been defined over and over and even distorted would, for the moment, merely add to the weight of insults and hatreds under which our country is stifling and struggling.

  But one thing at least unites all of us—and that is our love of our common soil, and our anguish. Anguish as we face a future that closes up a little every day, as we face the threat of a degrading struggle, of an economic

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  disequilibrium that is already serious and is increasing every day, that may reach the point where no effort will be able to revive Algeria for a long time to come.

  We want to address ourselves to that anguish, even— I might say, especially—among those who have already taken sides. For even among the most militant, in the thick of the fray, there is an element, I know, that will not indulge in murder and hatred, and that dreams of a happy Algeria.

  We are appealing to that element in each of you, French or Arab. We should like to say to those who are unwilling to see this great country break in two and go adrift that, without recalling again the mistakes of the past, anxious solely for the future, it is possible today, on a single definite point, to agree first and then to save human lives. In this way we may prepare a climate more favorable to a discussion that will at last be reasonable. The intentional modesty of this objective, and yet its importance, make it worthy, in my opinion, of your broadest agreement.

  What do we want? Simply to get the Arab movement and the French authorities, without having to make contact or to commit themselves to anything else, to declare simultaneously that for the duration of the fighting the civilian population will on every occasion be respected and protected. Why this measure? The first reason, on which I shall not insist much, is, as I said, one of simple humanity. Whatever the ancient and deep origins of the Algerian tragedy, one fact remains: no cause justifies the death of the innocent. Throughout history, men, unable to suppress war, have made an effort to limit its

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  effects; and, however terrible and repulsive the latest world wars were, nevertheless organizations of aid and solidarity succeeded in piercing the darkness with the feeble ray of pity that keeps one from despairing utterly of mankind. Such a necessity seems even more urgent in a struggle that in many ways has the appearance of a fratricidal war that makes no distinction between men and women, between soldier and worker. From this point of view, even if our present initiative saved but one innocent life, it would be justified.

  But it is also justified for other reasons. However black it may seem, the future of Algeria is not yet altogether sealed. If each individual, Arab or French, made an effort to think over his adversary's motives, at least the basis of a fruitful discussion would be clear. But if the two Algerian populations, each accusing the other of having begun the quarrel, were to hurl themselves against each other in a sort of xenophobic madness, then any chance for understanding would be drowned in blood. It may be, and this is our greatest source of anguish, that we are heading toward such horrors. But we Arabs and French who reject mad, nihilistic destruction cannot let this happen without launching a final appeal to reason.


  Reason clearly shows that on this point, at least, French and Arab solidarity is inevitable, in death as in life, in destruction as in hope. The frightful aspect of that solidarity is apparent in the infernal dialectic that whatever kills one side kills the other too, each blaming the other and justifying his violences by the opponent's violence. The eternal question as to who was first re-

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  sponsible loses all meaning then. And because they could not manage to live together, two populations, similar and different at the same time but equally worthy of respect, are condemned to die together, with rage in their hearts.

  But there is also a community of hope that justifies our appeal. That common hope is firmly based on realities over which we have no control. On this soil there are a million Frenchmen who have been here for a century, millions of Moslems, either Arabs or Berbers, who have been here for centuries, and several vigorous religious communities. Those men must live together at the crossroads where history put them. They can do so if they will take a few steps toward each other in an open confrontation. Then our differences ought to help us instead of dividing us. As for me, here as in every domain, I believe only in differences and not in uniformity. First of all, because differences are the roots without which the tree of liberty, the sap of creation and of civilization, dries up. Nevertheless, we stand facing each other as if frozen, as if struck with a paralysis that can be cured only by brutal and brief outbursts of violence. This is because the struggle has assumed an irrevocable aspect that rouses on both sides towering indignations and passions aspiring to outdo each other.

  "No further discussion is possible"—that is the slogan that sterilizes any future and any possibility of life. After that there is nothing but blind warfare in which the Frenchman makes up his mind to know nothing of the Arab, even though he feels, somewhere within him, that the Arab's claim to dignity is justified, and the Arab

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  makes up his mind to know nothing of the Frenchman, even though he feels, somewhere within him, that the Algerian French likewise have a right to security and dignity on our common soil. Locked up in his rancor and hatred, neither one can listen to the other. Any proposal, whichever side it comes from, is received with distrust, distorted at once and made unserviceable. We are gradually getting caught in a tangle of old and new accusations, of fixed vendettas, of relentless rancors alternating with one another. It's like an old family lawsuit in which grievances and arguments pile up for generations until even the most humane and upright judges can make neither head nor tail of the matter. It is hard to imagine the end of such a situation, and our hope for a Franco-Arabic association, for a peaceful and creative Algeria, becomes dimmer every day.

  Consequently, if we want to preserve some of that hope, at least until discussion about the fundamentals gets under way, if we want to help such a discussion get somewhere by making a joint effort toward understanding, we must act upon the very character of the struggle. We are too much hampered by the scope of the drama and the complexity of the passions it has loosed to hope to achieve a cessation of hostilities at once. Such an action would indeed imply the taking of purely political positions which, at the moment, might divide us even more.

  But we can at least exert some action on the most hateful aspect of the fight: we can propose, without making any change in the present situation, that we refrain from what makes it unforgivable—the murder of the inno-

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  cent. The fact that such an agreement would unite French and Arabs, both of them eager not to cause irreparable suffering, would give it a serious chance of succeeding in both camps.

  If our proposal had a chance of being accepted—and it does have such a chance—we should not only have saved precious human lives but also have re-created a proper climate for a healthy discussion that would not be spoiled by ridiculously uncompromising attitudes; we should have prepared the ground for a fairer, subtler understanding of the Algerian problem. By bringing about such a slight thaw on a single point, we may hope someday to break altogether the block of hatreds and crazy demands in which we are all caught. Then the various policies would have a hearing and each individual would again have the right to defend his own convictions and to explain his difference.

  That, in any case, is the narrow position on which we may hope, as a beginning, to get together. Any broader platform would, for the moment, provide us only an additional field of discord. We must be patient with ourselves.

  But I do not believe that any Frenchman or any Arab would refuse to agree to such limited and yet capital action. To convince ourselves of this we have only to imagine what would happen if this enterprise, cautious and limited as it is, were to fail. We should have to face a definitive break, the destruction of all hope, and a carnage of which we have so far had only a slight foretaste. Those of our Arab friends who courageously stand beside us in the no man's land where we are threatened

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  on both sides and who are torn within themselves would be forced to adopt a policy of retaliation that would kill all possibility of free discussion. The essential dialogue between us could not take place. Directly or indirectly, they would enter the fray, whereas they could have been artisans of peace. Every Frenchman's interest, therefore, is to help them escape such a dilemma.

  But, on the other hand, the direct interest of Arab moderates is to help us escape another dilemma. For if we fail in our undertaking and give proof of our impotence, the French liberals who think that French and Arabs can be made to coexist, who believe that such coexistence will do justice to the rights of both sides, who are sure in any case that it alone can save the people of this country from calamity, will be given the lie.

  Instead of the broad community they long for, they will have to fall back on the only living community that justifies them—France. In other words, by our silence or by the stand we take, we too shall enter the fray. I cannot speak in the name of our Arab friends to illustrate both sides of that fearful evolution which gives an urgency to our action. But I have seen how possible such an evolution is in France. Just as I have felt here the Arab's distrust of whatever is proposed to him, one can feel in France, as you are well aware, a growing doubt and similar distrust. The doubt and distrust may become permanent if the French, already disturbed by the continuation of the Rif war after the Sultan's return and by the revival of the Fellagha movement in Tunisia, are forced by the spread of a relentless struggle to think that the aim of the struggle is not only the Arab claim to

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  justice but also the achievement of foreign ambitions— at the expense of France and her complete ruin. Many Frenchmen would then indulge in reasoning exactly as the majority of Arabs would reason if, losing all hope, they had to accept the inevitable. The French reasoning would run like this: "We are French. Regard for what is just in the cause of our adversaries will not lead us to do injustice to everything good and deserving in France and her people. We cannot be expected to applaud all forms of nationalism except French nationalism, to forgive all sins except those of France. In the extremity to which we have been driven and since a choice is necessary, we cannot choose anything else but our own coun-try."

  Thus, through the same reasoning operating in contrary directions, our two peoples would separate once and for all and Algeria would become for a long time a mass of ruins, whereas a mere effort of reflection today could still change things and avoid catastrophe.

  This is the double danger that threatens us, the mortal risk with which we are faced. Either we shall succeed, on one point at least, in getting together to limit the havoc and shall in this way bring about a satisfactory outcome, or we shall fail to unite and to persuade— and our failure will influence the whole future. Our enterprise needs no other justification; the urgency is evident. This is why my appeal will be as emphatic as possible. If I had the power to give a voice to the solitude and anguish in each of us, that is the voice with which I should address you. As for me, I ha
ve passionately loved this land where I was born, I drew from it

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  whatever I am, and in forming friendships I have never made any distinction among the men who live here, whatever their race. Although I have known and shared every form of poverty in which this country abounds, it is for me the land of happiness, of energy, and of creation. And I cannot bear to see it become a land of suffering and hatred.

  I know that the great tragedies of history often fascinate men with approaching horror. Paralyzed, they cannot make up their minds to do anything but wait. So they wait, and one day the Gorgon devours them. But I should like to convince you that the spell can be broken, that there is only an illusion of impotence, that strength of heart, intelligence, and courage are enough to stop fate and sometimes reverse it. One has merely to will this, not blindly, but with a firm and reasoned will.

  People are too readily resigned to fatality. They are too ready to believe that, after all, nothing but bloodshed makes history progress and that the stronger always progresses at the expense of the weaker. Such fatality exists perhaps. But man's task is not to accept it or to bow to its laws. If he had accepted it in the earliest ages, we should still be living in prehistoric times. The task of men of culture and faith, in any case, is not to desert historical struggles nor to serve the cruel and inhuman elements in those struggles. It is rather to remain what they are, to help man against what is oppressing him, to favor freedom against the fatalities that close in upon it.

  That is the condition under which history really progresses, innovates—in a word, creates. In everything else it repeats itself, like a bleeding mouth that merely