The General's Problem

Tired and rather haggard, General Georges Catroux, Fighting French emissary to the North African government of General Henri Honore Giraud, arrived in London last week and registered as usual at Claridge's. Within an hour he had bathed, changed and with a bulging briefcase left in a four-year-old Buick flying the French tricolor to see his leader, General Charles de Gaulle. Behind him lay two weeks of conferences in Algiers; before him, perhaps, a solution at last of the differences which had long divided the French.

A Friend Lost? General Catroux had a problem. His conferences in Algiers with General Giraud had been intended to lay a basis for uniting the two French factions. The stage had been set for De Gaulle's coming to Algiers. Then, at the eleventh hour, a message signed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower had requested De Gaulle to postpone his visit.

This postponement reawakened all of De Gaulle's old doubts, suspicions and mistrust of the U.S. policy which had pointedly ignored his movement for two years. The misgivings were not allayed when General Eisenhower tartly announced that the Fighting French announcement of the request and the delay surprised him.

The explanation, when it came, confirmed General de Gaulle's worst misgivings. This time it was not his U.S. detractors and opponents who had thrown the wrench. General de Gaulle's old friends and supporters in the British Government had suggested that he stay away from North Africa; someone at General Eisenhower's headquarters had merely agreed and acted in his name.

To soothe touchy, egoistic General de Gaulle, to explain once more the harsh realities of North Africa, was General Catroux's problem. As mediator between De Gaulle and Giraud, astute General Catroux at times had taken on greater stature than either of the two leaders. Certainly he understood some things that his chief did not.

Despite some spectacular manifestations of support, French North Africa was not ready to fall into De Gaulle's arms. A visit now would divert the energies of generals absorbed in the climactic phase of the Tunisian campaign. Previously, and in vain, Catroux had pointed out these things to General de Gaulle. Higher and harsher authorities finally had to do so.

Resurrection Lost? The U.S. State Department, the British in their alignment with U.S. policy, even General de Gaulle sometimes forget that there are two De Gaulles. One is the hypersensitive, often arrogant, always difficult De Gaulle in London. The other is the De Gaulle who commands the unquestioning faith and loyalty of millions in his occupied homeland.

Of that De Gaulle and of the alternatives to him, a Frenchwoman in Vichy-france wrote last December. When she penned her letter to a friend in the U.S., turncoat Admiral Jean Franc,ois Darlan was still alive and in U.S. favor. Since his death, many things had changed for the better. But when her smuggled letter turned up in the U.S. last week, its words still rang:

"I would like you now to try to convince our American friends that if they were obliged, for strategical reasons, to make a compact with the devil, this operation might later prove as disastrous as it may at first have appeared fruitful. The key which opened for them the doors of Algiers will not open metropolitan France.

The Allies are in danger of finding one day in France the passivity of a people relapsed into despair. . . . There is a greater danger, that of seeing this people driven to violence by the fullness of its disillusionment.

"Perhaps my weak voice will induce you to defend with more earnestness the cause of French resistance. Put all your heart into it, I beg of you, because--I do not fear to repeat it--it is the cause of France herself. There will be no resurrection in compromise."

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