Book Review: The Struggle for Algeria
| Author | John C. Cairns |
| Published date | 01 June 1962 |
| Date | 01 June 1962 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070206201700231 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
188
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
intense
nationalism
and
anti-Israeli
feeling.
According
to
Prof.
Lengyel
this
is
whipped
up
and
exploited
by
rival
leaders
in
inter-Arab disputes.
Yet
experience
has
shown
that
trouble
on
the
Israel
border
checks
inter-Arab
squabbling.
Prof.
Lengyel
yearns
for
Arab-Israel
reconciliation.
It
might,
he
thinks,
be
achieved
through
trade
and
through
use
of
Israeli
skills
to
common
advantage.
Yet
although
Israel
would
offer
a
good
market
for
Arab
raw materials
and
foodstuffs,
Arabs have
their
own
ambitions
of
industrialization
and
would
scarcely
wish
to
help
Israel
become
the
region's
Ruhr
or
Pittsburg.
Not
only
reconciliation,
but
also
particularly
close
intimacy,
would
be
needed
if
Arabs
were
to
look
to
Israel
for
their
scientific
and
technological
needs
rather
than
to
Western
Europe,
North
America,
Russia
and
Japan.
University
of
Durham,
England
F.
R.
C.
BAGLEY
THE
STRUGGLE
FOR ALGERIA.
By
Joseph
Kraft.
1961.
(New
York:
Toronto:
Doubleday
&
Co.
263pp.
$5.00.)
This
is
a
plain
book
about
a
complicated
subject,
told
with
skill
and
without
sentimentality.
A
large
amount
of
information
is
served
up
in digested
and
digestible
form,
as
becomes
a
former
speech
writer
for
President
Kennedy.
There
are
some
minor
slips
of no
great
consequence,
and
some
mots
which
do
not
quite
come
off
(instead
of
Algdrie
c'est
la
France,
"If
anything,
France
has
become
Algeria.")
A
no-nonsense
attitude
marks the
approach
to
the
myths
of
the
struggle,
and
the French
record
is
presented
in
its
unvarnished
form.
There
is,
on
the other
hand,
no
lingering
over
atrocities from
whatever
side,
and
indeed
one
might
feel
that
the
appalling story
of
mass
displace-
ments
and
mass
murder
might
have
had
a
larger
place
in
a
book
bearing
this
title.
But
the
emphasis
is
upon
the
politics
of
the
struggle.
Personalities
are
suitably
sketched, and
a
clear
path
is
cut
through
the
jungle
of
intrigue
and
manoeuvre
so
far
as
it
can
now
be
known.
Mr.
Kraft
has
a
talent
for
telling
summations,
and
his
definition
of
the
struggle
has
force:
"A
struggle
with
some
fighting,
it
enough
resembled
war
to
whet
further
appetite
for
triumph
born
of
years
without
victory.
.-.
.
Connected
with
a
struggle
for
men's
minds,
it
produced
a
doctrine,
void
of
ideas
but
rich
in
slogans,
and
a
wild
energy
clouded
in
Hegelian doctrine.
Coincident
with
the
East-West
rivalry,
its
outcome
came
to
take
on
the
character
of
historic importance."
His
analysis
of
Paris
parliamentary
politics
is
sufficiently
keen
to
be
devas-
tating.
The
portrait
of de
Gaulle
is
almost
cruel
without being in
any
sense
unfair
("In
his
proud
solitude
de
Gaulle
took
France
as
mistress.
She
became
the
love
of his
life,
his
revenge
on
people,
the
crown
of
his
ambition").
Fittingly for
so
senseless
a
struggle,
he
attempts
to
draw
no
moral.
"The
lesson
it
teaches,"
he
says
simply,
"is
the
pain
of
living
in
the
same
world
as
the
underdeveloped
countries."
All
in
all,
an
excellent
brief
account.
It
would
have
benefitted
from
an
index.
There
is
no
bibliography
and
not
a
single
reference.
This
is
a
pity
for
it
is
clear
that
Mr.
Kraft
has read
some
of
the
better
French
newspapers
and
books
on
the
subject.
University
of
Toronto
JOHN
C.
CAIRNS
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