Although the C.N.R.A. had passed a solemn motion declaring that the war would be lost if no reinforcements could be got through to the "interior" in the course of the year, it was not Boumedienne's intention to follow in the footsteps of those French generals of the First World War. He was not going to let his army of the "exterior" be "bled white" in repeated vain attacks against an almost impregnable Line, against this ideal of a Maginot system which French ingenuity had at last perfected. Boumedienne's was a calculated risk which external political developments, notably de Gaulle's peace initiatives, were to vindicate.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1263