"Small Differences"

American, British and French soldiers snapped to attention. A band played the Marseillaise, God Save the King, the Star-Spangled Banner. Slowly three men mounted the steps to the 30-ft. granite statue on the avenue Pasteur in Algiers. They laid wreaths of roses, chrysanthemums, carnations and tropical flowers on the slab supporting Lanowsky's figure of the Unknown Soldier. They saluted. Then they went off to lunch.

The lunch was in honor of crusty, one-legged Pierre Boisson, Governor General of French West Africa (including the port of Dakar). The three men who joined him were Kansas-bred Lieut. General Dwight Eisenhower, Commander of Allied Forces in North Africa, Irish-born Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham, Commander of Allied Naval Forces under Eisenhower, and Admiral Jean Louis Xavier Francois Darlan, newly self-proclaimed "Chief of State in French Africa."

The four men chatted easily. If any one of them was aware of an element of travesty in their having jointly laid wreaths honoring a French soldier who fell for the France of World War I, he did not show it. This was a meeting of hard-headed military men playing for high stakes.

Present. From Boisson and Darlan the British, through Admiral Cunningham, wanted: 1) permission to use Dakar as a base against Nazi U-boats in the South Atlantic; 2) use of French Fleet units at Dakar. From Darlan in particular, Eisenhower wants the status quo maintained in Morocco and Algeria so that there will be no transport interruptions or rear-guard threats to Allied forces now attacking Tunisia.

At week's end there was no agreement on use of the fleet units at Dakar. But Allied navies were given permission to use the port. Neighboring airfields were thrown open as transit points. There was evidence that the status quo in Morocco and Algeria was stabilized. The price: recognition of Darlan as head of the French State and his new "imperial council" as the repository of French sovereignty.

Not only was Eisenhower's luncheon date with Darlan a tantamount acknowledgment of the new setup, but he gave it further weight by a public statement: "All Frenchmen worthy of their country's great past have forgotten their small differences of ideas." To Darlan, who still maintains the fiction of acting for Marshal Petain in France, there came messages of support from a scattering of French colonies. A message from Boisson's own West African native group, the Legion of Black Africa, ended with the salutation: "Vive le Marechal [Petain], Vive la France!"

An opportunist in an opportunists' market, Darlan had emerged as more than a "temporary expedient" useful to Allied invasion forces. Fortnight ago Washington diplomats were hinting that he was on his way out (after the "delivering" of Dakar and the scuttling of the French Fleet). But as "Chief of State," Darlan has control of 300,000 native troops-commanded by French officers and a firm grasp on civil administration.

Future. Darlan was a useful military tool. What he represents in political warfare is another question. "A monumental piece of effrontery" was the verdict of the Fighting French. General Georges Catroux, Fighting French High Commissioner for Syria and Lebanon, bitterly demanded that Darlan's power-grab "be ended quickly." He charged that there were grave dangers to Allied communication lines when "under control of a man like Darlan."

Britain's House of Commons took a poor view of the situation. M.P.s cheered at the announcement that Britain did not consider herself bound by the Darlan-Eisenhower agreements. Dourly, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden explained that Darlan's assumption of power, "as far as I know . . . was a unilateral inspiration of Admiral Darlan himself."

In a war supposedly being fought for liberty, justice and freedom, Darlan posed a knotty question for the Allies: How far can a policy of military opportunism be allowed to go without sound political planning?

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