Bastille Day, 1941

Bastille Day passed in France this week without a single parade by Frenchmen. Plans for a parade in Paris were canceled by the Germans, who five days earlier had staged an impressive parade of their own, down the Champs-Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde through a double line of stone-silent onlookers. Chief of State Marshal Henri Philippe Petain had ordered those of his countrymen whom he governs to observe France's onetime No. 1 holiday as a day "without labor" devoted to thinking of "our dead, our prisoners, our ruins, and our hopes."

Germany was squeezing tighter the noose about the neck of her mortal enemy. There was no more resistance left in sagging old Marshal Petain; in puffy little Admiral Jean Franc,ois Darlan there never had been any. Vice Premier Darlan went to Paris during the week, got his orders, returned to pass them on to Chief of State Petain in Vichy. The orders remained secret, but perhaps Vichy's Ambassador to Paris Fernand de Brinon let the secret slip when he said that formation of a volunteer force to help Germany fight Russia "might be the beginning of French military cooperation with Germany." Sleek, long-nosed Fernand de Brinon, who is made of the same stuff as Pierre Laval, is rumored to be in line for the all-important Ministry of the Interior, one of the five posts now held by Admiral Darlan.

If all this was grim news for France, there was one glimmer of hope in it. The more Vichy succumbs to Germany, the more tenuous becomes its hold on the man charged with holding its empire together: General Maxime Weygand. Ever since October 1940, when he quit France for the North African command, wiry Septuagenarian Weygand has kept observers guessing. Repeatedly he has been accused of coolness to Vichy, repeatedly he has sounded off in ringing statements of loyalty. Three times the Germans have tried to force his removal from command of the most potent remnant of the once mighty armies of the French Republic.

Ruling the 16 millions of France's North African Empire (only one million of whom are French) with a steadily dwindling French Army is trying even for the adroit General. The Moslem natives, subject to a ceaseless barrage of German propaganda, have been grumbling under the British blockade that deprives them of sugar for their much-loved sweetened mint tea.

Last fortnight the U.S. apparently decided that General Weygand might form the focus of opposition to all-out Vichy-Berlin collaboration. Released from internment at Bermuda, the French tanker Shelterazade, full of U.S. oil, was en route to General Weygand's North African armies. The oil shipment should demonstrate to the natives and Vichy alike that the U.S. still has a stake in French policy.

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