From the very beginning, the colonialists would attack us, would ask us point-blank to choose, to be for or against the fellagha, to be for France or "anti-France." In the beginning we still were bewitched. Refusing to take a position on the problem, we took refuge in protests against the brutalities of the repression. A committee of students for the defense of civil liberties had been set up. I decided to become a member. It was in this Committee that I was able for the first time to have political discussions with Algerians. Up to that time I had never had such conversations even with my best Moslem friends. A tacit agreement seemed to have been concluded; we recognized the validity of nationalist sentiments among our Moslem friends, but we never spoke of this so as not to break those bonds of friendship whose fragility we sensed.

Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, loc. 545