Expediency Again

Allied secret diplomacy last week made its second major decision in French North Africa. The results were as politically disturbing, as morally disheartening to the United Nations cause as the first decision nine months ago. Then the U.S. had used turncoat Admiral Jean Franc,ois Darlan on the ground of expediency. Now the U.S. and Britain insisted that control over the French armed forces in North Africa must go to General Henri Honore Giraud and not to General Charles de Gaulle, on the ground that it would be militarily dangerous to risk a sudden reform in the French army.

The Allies let their wishes be known as the French Committee of Liberation met for a showdown over the issue of military control. Out of a three-hour session emerged a makeshift compromise. General Giraud remained as Commander in Chief of the North and West African troops (300,000), with his own army, navy and air chiefs of staff. General de Gaulle remained as Commander in Chief of forces (90,000) elsewhere in the Empire, also with his own chiefs of staff. The two commanders and their staffs would operate as a committee to supervise military reform.

Organized Disunity. From Algiers TIME Correspondent Jack Belden cabled this estimate of the compromise:

"Clearly the Committee of Liberation is not yet a de facto, sovereign, unified power. Within the French Empire there now exist two armies responsible to two different commanders who are not responsible to one war minister. In terms of the hopes of a few days ago, this is a turning back of the French political clock. And hollow sound the recent words of De Gaulle and Giraud: 'Frenchmen, the unity you have been waiting for has been achieved.'

"The compromise has eased tension, but it has not meant victory for either party. De Gaulle, who came here with the intention of creating a strong, central, sovereign power, now finds that the power is split, that his plans for broad, sweeping reforms are reduced. For General Giraud, also, the compromise cannot be satisfying. It places him in the embarrassing position of being Commander in Chief by virtue of Allied intervention.

" The politically conscious Frenchman in the street is bitter as he sees his country's unity and sovereignty once more broken in pieces. One Frenchman summed up his feelings thus: 'The British landed here first as Americans. The next time the Americans will have to come as British.' "

Organized Defamation. " The attempt to cover political acts with a cloak of military necessity in this case will just not go down. Yet certain backstage French interests are trying, under this cloak, to foster their own interests and sabotage the De Gaulle-Giraud union. There is growing evidence that certain interests, fearful of public opinion in favor of General de Gaulle, have deliberately set out to guide, control and change that public opinion as the chief stumbling block in the consummation of their aims.

"Viewing this struggle, it is not surprising that French unity has not been achieved. North Africa has not been pregnant with a new France, but has only had a miscarriage. Here the issue, fought out through contending cliques at the top, is not strained through the French masses, who are too far away to make themselves strongly felt.

"If the struggle for unity had taken place in France without the presence of a foreign power and without the existence of war, it would ordinarily have been decided by a vote or by a resort to force, wherein the correlation of forces could properly express themselves. Here political phenomena do not have full, free play. They develop unnaturally, and hence an unnatural compromise, satisfying no body, but keeping everything in suspension, is reached."

Certain French Interests. The anti-De Gaulle faction in Algiers included an unsavory lot: thousands of ex-Vichyites, many recently "escaped" from the homeland; royalists; big industrialists who had always feared the Republic more than the Nazis; antidemocrats like Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil, the peanut-oil king, who helped install Giraud, then was dis missed from an important liaison post, is now making overtures to the De Gaullists. But the classic example was Marcel Peyrouton, the opportunist who as a Vichy minister signed Charles de Gaulle's death warrant and later was plucked from exile to become the Giraudist Governor General of Algeria.

When General de Gaulle arrived in North Africa in May, Peyrouton found public opinion veering away from Giraud. He decided to switch sides. He approached an influential colonial family with contacts in the De Gaullist camp. A plan was devised. Peyrouton would send a letter of resignation to De Gaulle, who would accept, give Peyrouton an army commission. Later, his good faith and patriot ism established, Peyrouton would be returned to civil office.

The plan was executed (TIME, June 14). But when De Gaulle offered Peyrouton a commission as captain, the ex-Governor General was insulted. So he tried to save himself by sending another letter of resignation to General Giraud.

The results : Correspondents interpreted Peyrouton's first letter as evidence that De Gaulle had assumed power; Giraud saw the incident as a plot against his authority; De Gaulle felt that he had been tricked. Both sides got set for coups that never materialized.

Certain Allied Interests. As supervisor of civil affairs under General Dwight Eisenhower, who, by his own admission, is no politician, U.S. Minister Robert Murphy plays a pretty free hand. He has consistently misinformed Washington, and perhaps himself, on the strength and significance of De Gaullism. When Washington this week announced that General Giraud would soon visit America, it was further evidence of where official U.S. sympathy lay.

The hard fact is that DeGaullism, as the only uncompromising channel of French resistance, represents the French masses in the homeland and in the Empire. Charles de Gaulle, as its leader, is the only leader who can fairly claim to represent the French people, pending a free election. De Gaullism's basic strength has beaten Robert Murphy before (TIME, June 14). Its pressure last week forced the resignation of Pierre Boisson, the ex-Vichyite Governor General of French West Africa, who had been stubbornly supported by the U.S. If U.S. policy continues to ignore the fact and the strength of De Gaullism, the U.S. may well earn the enmity of renascent France and Europe.

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