The theme of "rather de Gaulle than Massu" (in itself bearing echoes from the days of the pre-war Front Populaire), as expressed by Beuve-Méry, the editor of Le Monde, had become the view generally endorsed by the moderate Left of France. In purely practical terms, any physical confrontation with the paras would, said Mollet, "have been a Spanish civil war without the republican army".

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 902