Unity

The long-awaited negotiations between the Fighting French, backed by Britain, and General Henri Giraud, backed by the U.S., began in North Africa last week. In the preliminaries, the Fighting French were represented by able General Georges Catroux, commander in Syria and Lebanon. But De Gaulle, the Fighting French leader, announced in a broadcast to Occupied France that he himself would soon leave London to meet and confer with that "great soldier and noble figure," General Henri Honore Giraud. Together, said De Gaulle, "we will seek and find means of assuring that the French Empire shall be one Empire, that French strength shall be one strength, and the voice of all patriotic Frenchmen shall be one voice."

General Giraud replied only by action: he appointed several more anti-Axis Frenchmen to government posts, and ousted his Inter-Allied economic adviser, Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil (see below).

Gone were many earlier aspects of Giraud-De Gaulle and U.S.-British friction. But London and Washington were not optimistic about a "one-empire, one-strength, one-voice" agreement. The best that they hoped for was operational unity between divided but cooperating forces. That was an immediate necessity, and the French are practical.

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