"The Mark of Victory"

Last week the Spartan old soldier stayed up beyond his usual prompt bedtime: 10 p.m. Not until the clocks in his colonnaded, white-walled Moorish home in Algiers pointed to 11:30 did General Henri Honore Giraud, High Commissioner of North Africa, lay down his pen. He had carefully studied a memorandum from the Fighting French. Just as carefully the General had studied out his answer. There were some points on which he and General Charles de Gaulle of the Fighting French were in agreement. On others--well, wise men move slowly.

When General Giraud rose next day to speak to the Alsace and Lorraine Society in Algiers, he knew that the words he had chosen the night before would be heard by the world. On the speaker's platform were turbaned Arab leaders and the U.S. and British Ministers, Robert Murphy and Harold Macmillan, instruments of pressure for the liberalization of the Giraud regime. Freshly barbered, bayonet-straight in a tan uniform with five stars twinkling on each sleeve, Giraud strode to the platform. Green-bereted members of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse swung bugles high and blasted a march tune in his honor.

Areas of Agreement. Gallantly French was Giraud when he accepted a bouquet from two schoolgirls dressed in the costumes of Alsace and Lorraine. Then, in a high-pitched voice he bitterly condemned the official German incorporation of Alsace and Lorraine into the Reich.

Patriotically French was Giraud when he praised the rising resistance inside France to German rule (see p. 16), when he prophesied the day when "France, battered in her flesh, will have become, spiritually, eternal France, the France of human liberty, of generous ideals." In effect he denied reports that his North African regime might attempt to superimpose a reactionary rule on postwar France. Said he:

"The conditions essential to a free expression of her sovereignty will be restored to France. The people of France will form their own provisional government according to the laws of the Republic. . . ."

Logically French was Giraud when he disavowed the conditions of the German armistice and the subsequent decrees of Vichy ("promulgated without the participation of the French people, and directed against them"). He said that Vichy's anti-Jewish laws "no longer exist," promised to hold municipal elections in North Africa. He also revoked the Cremieux Decree of 1870, which granted French citizenship en bloc to Jews in Algeria, but excluded the Arabs. Henceforth, said Giraud, Moslems and Jews must complement each other economically, "the latter working in his shop, the former in the desert, without either having advantage over the other, France assuring both security and tranquillity."

Area of Disagreement. In pledging a liberated France self-government based on the laws of the Third Republic, in his disavowal of the German armistice terms and Vichy's racial legislation, Giraud was in agreement with the Fighting French. But he made no direct comment on Fighting French demands for the ousting of Vichy-tainted officeholders in North Africa. The fact that reactionary General Auguste Nogues, Resident General of Morocco, and equally suspect General Jean Bergeret, prominent member of Giraud's North African war council, were not present was perhaps a sign that Giraud had scheduled them for dismissal. (Algiers dispatches said that Bergeret resigned this week.) To the Fighting French proposal that Giraud's West and North African administrations be incorporated in De Gaulle's French National Committee, Giraud replied obliquely. Said Giraud:

"Disunity is the sign of defeat; unity the mark of victory. For my part I am ready to cooperate with all those who, accepting the fundamental and traditional principles of which I have spoken, joining in the solemn promises which I make to the people of France, are participating in the fight against the enemy."

Reaction & Solution. Said General de Gaulle: "General Giraud's declaration marks in many respects a great progress toward the doctrines of Fighting France."

Giraud replied with a formal invitation to De Gaulle to join "all the French together under one banner." The British Government thought that it was "the kind of talk Frenchmen want to hear." Official Washington also approved.

What all realized was that if a bridge was being built between De Gaulle and Giraud, it was not yet solid enough to support an army. But the approaches to the bridge were far more solid. What London and Washington were both watching were the forthcoming negotiations between Giraud and Fighting French General Georges Catroux, who is expected momentarily in North Africa. To all Frenchmen Catroux may be able to bring wartime unity--the unity with which, said Giraud, France could "bring the fruit of her reflections, ripened in suffering, to help finally build a better Europe, a Europe at peace."

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