by Albert Camus
Such a spirit of equity, to be sure, seems alien to the reality of our history, in which relationships of force outline another sort of justice; in our international society there is no good ethical system except a nuclear ethics. Then the only guilty one is the vanquished. It is understandable that many intellectuals have consequently come to the conclusion that values and words derive their meaning altogether from force. Hence some people progress without transition from speeches about the principles of honor or fraternity to adoring the fait accompli or the cruelest party. I continue, however, to believe, with regard to Algeria and to everything else, that such aberrations, both on the Right and on the Left, merely define the nihilism of our epoch. If it is true that in history, at least, values—whether those of the nation or those of humanity—do not survive unless they have been fought for, the fight is not enough to justify them. The fight itself must rather be justified, and elucidated, by those values. When fighting for your truth, you must take care not to kill it with the very arms you are using to defend it—only under such a double condition do words resume their living meaning. Knowing that, the intellectual has the role of distinguishing in each camp the respective limits of force and justice. That role is to clarify definitions in order to disintoxicate minds and to calm fanaticisms, even when this is against the current tendency.
I have attempted the work of disintoxication as best I could. Let us admit that up to now the results have been nonexistent; these reports are also the record of a failure. But the simplifications of hatred and prejudice, which are constantly rotting and reviving the Algerian conflict, must be noted every day, and one man cannot do so alone. There would have to be a movement, a press, a ceaseless action. For one ought to note likewise, every day, the lies and omissions that obscure the real problem. Our governments already want to make war without calling it by name, want to have an independent policy and beg money from our allies, and want to invest in Algeria while protecting the standard of living in metropolitan France. They think they can be uncompromising in public and come to terms behind the scenes, covering up the stupidities of their administrators and yet disavowing them in a whisper. But our parties or sects that criticize the government are no more brilliant. No one says clearly what he wants or, if he does so, draws the conclusions. Those who advocate the military solution must know that it can only mean a reconquest by means of an all-out war which will involve, for example, the reconquest of Tunisia in opposition to the opinion, and perhaps the armed resistance, of a part of the world. That is a policy, to be sure, but it must be seen and presented as it is. Those who, in purposely vague terms, advocate negotiation with the F.L.N. cannot fail to be aware, after the precise statements of the F.L.N., that this means the independence of Algeria under the direction of the most relentless military leaders of the insurrection—in other words, the eviction of 1,200,000 Europeans from Algeria and the humiliation of millions of Frenchmen, with all the risks that such a humiliation involves. That is a policy, to be sure, but we must see it for what it is and stop cloaking it in euphemisms.
The constant polemics that would have to be carried on for this purpose would boomerang in a political society where the will to be lucid and intellectual independence are becoming rarer and rarer. All that is left of a hundred articles written on the subject is the adversary’s distortion of them. At least a book, if it does not avoid all misunderstandings, makes some of them impossible.1 A book can be referred to, and it can present a calmer statement of the necessary distinctions. Hence, wanting to satisfy all those who sincerely ask me to state my position once more, I have been able to do so only by summing up in this book twenty years of experience, which may inform unprejudiced minds. By experience I mean a man’s facing up to a situation over a period of years, with all the mistakes, contradictions, and hesitations that such a confrontation implies, of which many an example will be found in the following pages. My opinion, moreover, is that too much is expected of a writer in such matters. Even, and perhaps especially, when his birth and his heart link him to the fate of a land like Algeria, it is useless to think he is blessed with some kind of revelation of the truth; his personal story, if it could be truthfully written, would be but the story of successive lapses, sometimes corrected and committed once again. I am quite ready to admit my shortcomings on this score and the errors of judgment that can be noted in this volume. But, however much it may pain me to do so, I at least thought it possible to gather together the documents of this long record and to submit them to the reflection of those whose minds are not yet irrevocably made up. The relaxation of psychological strain that can be felt at present between French and Arabs in Algeria gives rise to the hope that the language of reason may again be heard.
Consequently, there will be found in these records a picture (on the occasion of a very serious crisis in Kabylia) of the economic causes of the Algerian drama, a few references for the specifically political evolution of that drama, comments on the complexity of the present situation, a prediction of the impasse to which the revival of terrorism and repression has led us, and, in conclusion, an outline of the solution that still seems to me possible. Recognizing the end of colonialism, my solution excludes dreams of reconquest or of maintaining the status quo; really mere reactions of weakness and humiliation, such dreams only prepare for the definitive divorce and the double misfortune of France and Algeria. But my solution also excludes the dream of uprooting the French in Algeria, who, if they haven’t the right to oppress anyone, do have the right not to be oppressed and to be their own masters in the land of their birth. There are other ways of re-establishing the necessary justice than substituting one injustice for another.
In this regard I have tried to define my position clearly. An Algeria made up of federated settlements and linked to France seems to me preferable (without any possible comparison on the plane of simple justice) to an Algeria linked to an empire of Islam which would bring the Arab peoples only increased poverty and suffering and which would tear the Algerian-born French from their natural home. If the Algeria I hope for still has a chance of emerging (and, in my opinion, it has many chances), I want to help it with all my strength. On the other hand, I consider that I must not help even for a second in any way whatever the establishment of the other Algeria. If it came about (and, necessarily, against the interests of France or without consideration for France), through the joint operation of the forces of surrender and the forces of pure conservation (with the double retreat they involve), this would be a great misfortune for me, and, with millions of other Frenchmen, I should have to suffer the consequences. That, loyally stated, is what I think. I may be mistaken or unable to judge fairly of a drama that touches me too closely. But if the reasonable hopes we can still nourish today should fade away and we were faced with the serious ensuing events for which—whether they do violence to our country or to humanity as a whole—we shall all be responsible together, each of us must stand up and declare what he has done and what he has said. This is my declaration, to which I shall add nothing.
March–April 1958
1 The entire book entitled Actuelles III was devoted to Camus’s “Algerian Reports” of the years 1939–58, from among which he selected for this volume the present “Preface” and the three following essays. (Translator’s note)
LETTER TO AN ALGERIAN MILITANT
(M. Aziz Kessous, an Algerian socialist and former member of the Party of the Manifesto, had planned, after the rebellion broke out, to launch a newspaper, Algerian Community, which would rise above the double fanaticism now afflicting Algeria and help establish a really free community. This letter appeared in the newspaper’s first issue on the first of October 1955.)
MY DEAR KESSOUS,
I found your letters on returning from a vacation and am afraid that my approval may come very late. Yet I need to give it to you. Believe me when I tell you that Algeria is the cause of my suffering at present as others might say their chest is the cause of their suffering. And since
the 20th of August I have been on the verge of despair.
We know nothing of the human heart if we imagine that the Algerian French can now forget the massacres at Philippeville and elsewhere. And it is another form of madness to imagine that repression can make the Arab masses feel confidence and esteem for France. Hence we are pitted against each other, condemned to inflicting the greatest possible pain on each other, inexpiably. The idea is intolerable to me and poisons each of my days.
Nevertheless, you and I, who are so much alike—having the same background, sharing the same hope, having felt like brothers for so long now, united in our love for our country—know that we are not enemies and that we could live happily together on this soil that belongs to us. For it is ours, and I can no more imagine it without you and your brothers than you can probably separate it from me and those who resemble me.
You have said it very well, better than I can say it: we are condemned to live together. The Algerian French—and I thank you for having pointed out that they are not all bloodthirsty rich men—have been in Algeria for more than a century, and there are more than a million of them. This alone is enough to distinguish the Algerian problem from the problems raised in Tunisia and Morocco, where the French settlement is relatively new and weak. The “French fact” cannot be eliminated in Algeria, and the dream of a sudden disappearance of France is childish. But there is no reason either why nine million Arabs should live on their land like forgotten men; the dream that the Arab masses can be canceled out, silenced and subjugated, is just as mad. The French are attached to the soil of Algeria by roots that are too old and too vigorous for us to think of tearing them up. But this gives the French no right, in my opinion, to destroy the roots of Arab culture and life. Throughout my life I have fought for sweeping and profound reforms—and you know that I paid for this with exile from my country. But people refused to believe because they cherished the dream of power that is supposedly eternal and forgot that history constantly progresses; and now those reforms are needed more than ever. Those which you point out represent an initial effort, and an indispensable one, to be made quickly, before its chance of success is drowned in French blood and Arab blood.
But saying this today, as I know by experience, amounts to taking one’s stand in the no man’s land between two armies and preaching amid the bullets that war is a deception and that bloodshed, if it sometimes makes history progress, makes it progress toward even greater barbarism and misery. If anyone dares to put his whole heart and all his suffering into such a cry, he will hear in reply nothing but laughter and a louder clash of arms. And yet we must cry it aloud, and, since you plan to do so, I cannot let you do such a mad and necessary thing without telling you that I stand beside you like a brother.
Yes, the essential thing is to leave room, however limited it may be, for the exchange of views that is still possible; the essential thing is to bring about an easing of the situation, however slight and temporary it may be. And to achieve that, each of us must preach pacification to his people. The inexcusable massacring of French civilians leads to equally stupid destruction of the Arabs and their possessions. It is as if two insane people, crazed with wrath, had decided to turn into a fatal embrace the forced marriage from which they cannot free themselves. Forced to live together and incapable of uniting, they decide at least to die together. And because each of them by his excesses strengthens the motives and excesses of the other, the storm of death that has struck our country can only increase to the point of general destruction. In that ceaseless attempt to go one better, the fire is spreading, and tomorrow Algeria will be a land of ruins and dead which no force, no power in the world, will be capable of reviving in this century.
We must put a stop to the attempt at outbidding each other; it is the duty of all of us, Arabs and Frenchmen, who refuse to let go each other’s hands. We Frenchmen must struggle to keep repression from becoming general so that French law will continue to have a generous and obvious meaning in our country; we must struggle to remind our people of their mistakes and of the obligations of a great nation, which cannot, without losing its prestige, answer a racial massacre with a similar outburst. Finally, we must strive to hasten the necessary and decisive reforms that will once more launch the Franco-Arab community of Algeria on the road toward the future. You Arabs must spare no effort to show your people that, when they kill civilian populations, terrorism not only raises justifiable doubts as to the political maturity of men capable of such acts, but also strengthens the anti-Arab elements, reinforces their arguments, and silences French liberal opinion which might find and put through some solution leading to reconciliation.
I shall be told, as you will be told, that it is too late for reconciliation, that the only thing to do is to wage war 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 Kessous. 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.
APPEAL FOR A CIVILIAN TRUCE IN ALGERIA
(Lecture given in Algiers in February 1956)
LADIES and gentlemen, despite the need to surround 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 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 taking 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.
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.
