The Marshal Waits for News

In the cold, cheerless onetime health resort which is now the capital of unoccupied France, Marshal Henri Philippe Petain last week proceeded with the construction of a state designed to suit both him and Adolf Hitler. After weeks of shuffling with names, Chief of State Petain announced the personnel of his National Council, a consultative chamber with a corporative look about it. Sixty-eight of the 188 members were onetime members of Parliament--Rightists and renegade Leftists. The rest included industrialists, shipowners, churchmen, war veterans, scientists, artists, artisans, miners, seamen, one Negro, no Jew.

The Marshal took care to point out that his National Council is no permanent organization, that it will be replaced after the war, when France knows whether the Marshal has guessed right or wrong on the winner. Last week his guess seemed still to be Germany, in spite of the efforts of new U. S. Ambassador Admiral William Daniel Leahy to make him change his mind. France's future, immediate and ultimate, hung on the Marshal's guess.

His Ambassador to Paris, Count Fernand de Brinon, was back there from Berlin with Hitler's terms of "collaboration." The Marshal anxiously awaited the coming to Vichy of this onetime payoff man for Georges Bonnet who now held France's fate in his brief case. Hitler's terms were reported to include a demand that German troops be allowed to cross Tunisia from Sicily for an attack on the British in Libya. This proposition was made to the Marshal by his ousted Vice Premier Pierre Laval when the two met at La Ferte a fortnight ago. Then Marshal Petain was adamant on adhering to the Armistice terms, but since then gasoline stocked in Tunisia has been turned over to the Italians and there have been other signs that the Marshal might weaver.

One sign was the appearance of massed parachute troops in The Netherlands and of more long-range guns on France's north ern coast, presaging an end-the-war attack on Britain, which the Marshal believes probably will succeed. Another sign was the increasing influence of Admiral Jean Darlan, who has had no love for the British since Oran. Admiral Darlan may soon be named second in command to Marshal Petain and his successor if the Marshal dies. Last week Ambassador Leahy had a talk with him about the French Fleet.

The Ambassador's Government would like to see the Fleet and General Maxime Weygand's North African Army back in the war with the British. Admiral Leahy has let it be known that if German demands should force France to re-enter the war on the British side, the U. S. would support her as fully as the U. S. now supports Great Britain. But the U. S. and U. S. aid are far away, and Germany just around the corner.

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