Word: mollet
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...white pointed slippers on dry ground. Nothing was too good for Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef, the pro-Nationalist monarch who, a prisoner of the French in Madagascar exile seven months ago, now returned in triumph to open negotiations for Moroccan independence. Welcomed at the airport by Premier Guy Mollet and a platoon of ministers, the Sultan was borne off with his wives to a tapestried villa, and launched on a round of banquets and Parisian splendors...
From the airport, Mollet's route lay through the French part of the city. It was grimly silent. Shops were closed, balconies draped with black "for mourning"; French men and women stonily turned their backs as his car swept by. A crowd was waiting for him at the war memorial in the city's center. At sight of the Premier, it broke into an angry roar. "Mollet to the lamppost!" rose the shout, and the crowd became...
Plants were uprooted from flowerbeds and flung at France's Premier. Oranges, banana peels, tomatoes, even the droppings from the uniformed Spahis' rearing horses showered about him. Pale but resolute, Mollet went up the steps through the barrage to the war memorial, and laid there a wreath honoring Algiers' war veterans. Even as the Spahis cleared a path for him back to his car, the demonstrators swarmed upon the monument, tore his wreath to shreds...
Three hours later, while furious Frenchmen circled his refuge in the Palais d'Eté, honking their horns, Mollet admitted shakily to newsmen: "I saw in their faces the look of total miscomprehension and hatred." His hands trembled, and his voice was little more than a whisper. His first retreat was to accept the resignation of 79-year-old General Georges Catroux, whom he had appointed Minister for Algeria (TIME, Feb. 13). Catroux' appointment had been a political blunder in the first place. To Algerian French, Catroux was "the liquidator'' of France's presence...
Meanwhile, the French rioters grew more arrogant with success. They called an organization meeting to merge war veterans, Poujadists and students into a Committee for Public Safety. Veteran leaders who had consulted Mollet were shouted down. "Why talk to Mollet?" the crowd yelled. Up sprang a little man with bulging eyes. Jean Baptiste Biaggi, a Corsican lawyer from Paris, had flown in, a week earlier, with the avowed purpose of whipping up a new French Revolution. "Victory is yours now! Don't drop it!" bellowed Biaggi. "Mollet's surrender was unconditional. Throw out his policy just...