Giraud Speaks

General Henri Giraud has always had what the Arabs call the baraka, an uncanny ability to escape death and disaster. He is tall (6 ft. 4 in.), physically powerful, deeply religious, politically conservative, morally self-righteous. He has been wounded six times, cited for bravery 13 times.

No one has ever impugned Giraud's honor, nor had reason to doubt his military valor and his love of France. But when he became High Commissioner of North Africa, succeeding the assassinated Admiral Jean Darlan, the world knew very little else about him.

The man who has told the most about General Giraud is the General himself. A hitherto unpublished memorandum, which Giraud presented last spring to Marshal Henri Petain, reveals the mind of a man who will need all the baraka in North Africa if he hopes to control the squirming ant heaps of political intrigue inside his present Government.

Fury & Flavor. Giraud's memorandum deals with France. His explanation has the fury of a puritan, the gift of shrewd observation, the introspection of a fervent nationalist, the conservatism of the French officers' class:

"Our country was the country of the . . . 'petit bourgeois' spirit. . . . The arrival of the Americans, their methods, their supplies, helped considerably to upset their [Frenchmen's] ideas. They got into the habit of counting in billions. . . .

"Spurious luxury increased. The midinette insisted on her silk stockings and her cheap furs in which rabbit predominated. Perfumers made fortunes. ... At the same time it was forgotten that through the centuries the Church had ordered Sunday as a day of rest. . . .

"First of all it was the short English working week which crept in on the Continent. . . . From 48 hours it went to 45, and then to 40. Workers began somewhere near the proper hour but prepared to leave quarter of an hour before time. . . .

"The employer had a hundred pretexts, a thousand occasions. In summer it was the seaside, in autumn hunting, then the winter sports. He took a week here, a month there. The employe looked on and drew his own conclusions. . . .

"It was easier to succeed by intrigue than work. Politics became a career of compromise, arrangement, betrayal. . . . Foreign policy between 1919 and 1940 was a long period of dreams, illusions, weaknesses and mistakes. . . . We could neither prevent the rise of Germany nor collaborate loyally with her. We profited neither by the British alliance nor the American entente. We could neither dominate the smaller nations nor win them to our cause.

"The remarkable book (Histoire de I'Armee Allemande depuis I'Armistice) by Jacques Benoist-Mechin on the German Army revealed the conditions under which Germany had been living since the previous war, her despair, her sufferings, her will to revenge, her work, her success. . . . In France we ignored all that. . . . Munich was the basest of capitulations

"From 1918 to 1930 France luxuriated in every kind of regime which might be called republican--from horizon blue to the red Popular Front. . . . The ruin which the Popular Front has caused France is immeasurable. . . . The king of all was the corner cafe. . . .

"To preach underproduction at a time when Germany shouted that it was better to have cannon than butter was not only treason against the nation, but a crime against honesty. . . . Admittedly they [the Germans] have not perhaps got liberty, but there is certainly neither disorder nor anarchy. Everywhere it is work, the only hope for a people who wish to live and live happily. May France remember and profit by it."

Virtues & Nostrums. Giraud's trust in old-fashioned virtues gave hope that at least one political figure was aware of the monumental task of all Frenchmen in first reconquering and then rebuilding their homeland. But Giraud's low valuation of simple liberty did not indicate unadulterated sympathy with the aspirations of democrats. Wrote the New York Times's Drew Middleton in North Africa last week:

"Any election would show that the people want a republican government. After two years in which collaborationists, monarchists and Fascists tried to sell their political nostrums. 90% of the Frenchmen here still believe democracy can work."

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