Arriving in Algiers, Camus was immediately shocked by the virulence of anti-liberal sentiments among the pieds noirs. At his first public meeting on 22 January 1956, a hostile mob congregated outside the hall and their shouts of "Camus au poteaul!" were clearly audible inside. On the dais with Camus was Ferhat Abbas, in one of his own last appearances as a moderate nationalist. Eloquently Camus urged: "We can at least exercise some influence on the most hateful aspect of the fight; we can propose, without making any change in the present situation, that we refrain from what makes it unforgivable—the murder of the innocent." If this were to fail, the only prospect would be one of "definitive divorce, destruction of all hope, and a calamity of which we have so far only the feeblest idea". Though an F.L.N. militant present accused Camus of having spoken like "a soft sister" (bonne soeur), for a time he held his mixed Muslim and European audience in a unique mood of fraternal fervour that was not to be witnessed again in Algiers until, briefly, the euphoric days of May 1958. Then the mounting hubbub outside forced Camus to cut short the meeting. The inspired but perhaps hopelessly over-idealistic notion of the "civil truce" collapsed from the stresses within and without; and with it there also died the last hope of a liberal compromise in the war.

XREF: Connects to debates about whether moderate voices can matter in escalating civil conflicts; parallels to other last-moderate-standing moments in divided societies. QUESTION: Was the civil truce proposal ever realistically achievable, or was the polarization already irreversible by January 1956?

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 395