To War Again?

As Bastille Day approached, the creased, oily, white-tied lawyer who steers Vichy-france toward the New Order made ready to go through a mummery with the old Marshal who is no longer strong enough to steer. Pierre Laval and Marshal Petain would stand at salute while buglers sounded taps before Vichy's memorial to the 1,300,000 Frenchmen who died under the banner of liberte, egalite, fraternite in World War I.

In Paris the Nazis had nothing to gain by any such theatrical display. On the eve of Bastille Day they simply announced that if any Frenchman who committed sabotage or attacked Germans did not surrender within ten days, they would execute his grandfather, father, brothers, brothers-in-law and cousins (over 18). They added that they would send all women of the same degrees of kinship into hard labor, all children to reform schools.

Trouble in Egypt. Meanwhile the U.S. Government, alarmed by Germany's Egyptian advance, had been fanciful enough to suppose that Pierre Laval might be willing to move French warships in Alexandria, Egypt* to the U.S., Martinique, or some other Western Hemisphere port for the war's duration. Britain said it would scuttle the ships rather than have them fall into Axis hands. The U.S., recovering its sense of reality, said it would back any such action. Laval replied that the French crews would fight any attempt at seizure. As the U.S. pondered a diplomatic break with Vichy, word came from London that the U.S. and British Governments "are working in the closest cooperation" for the disposal of interned French warships if Alexandria falls. Thus, if the Germans got much closer to Alexandria and Vichy fought to hold its ships, Vichy would find itself at war with the U.S. and Britain.

Trouble at Home. Laval's fellow Nazi stooge, Editor Marcel Deat of L'Oeuvre, did not let him forget it. Said Deat in a Paris speech: "Watch out, Pierre Laval, to the right and left, behind and everywhere, they are surrounding you! Pierre Laval, you are terribly alone!"

All over the nation, where celebrations had been forbidden except for the Vichy mockery of Laval and Petain, Frenchmen observed the day. In Paris thousands marched silently past the Unknown Soldier's tomb. In Lyons processions swarmed through the city singing the Marseillaise. In Marseille a crowd of 5,000 denounced Laval, demonstrated outside the military prison, cheered the U.S. Consulate. Police unlimbered their submachine guns, killed at least five. In Vichy 300 people made a tricolor showing before the Third Republic Memorial.

In London the Free French movement of General Charles de Gaulle changed its name to Fighting France, to symbolize the fact that unnumbered French fighters are not free, but risk their lives in their enslaved native land.

* The old (1913) battleship Lorraine; more recent cruisers Suffren, Tourville, Duquesne, Duguay-Trouin; destroyers Basque, Le Fortune, Forbin ; one submarine.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.