The Failure

Deep in Germany last week a very old Frenchman doddered among the stones of a graveyard--a Friedhof (peace yard), as the Germans called it. He was Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain, hero of Verdun and hated figurehead of Vichy. He had been ordered arrested in absentia by the French Government. It was unlikely that he would ever be brought to trial for high treason. For he was 88.

He had long expected to be buried in one of the crypts of the Douaumont Monument at Verdun. He would not be. Now he was looking for a grave.

He had wanted a united France, a conservative, disciplined, strong, industrious, religious French people. But to millions of Frenchmen he had become the symbol of French humiliation, surrender, collaboration and spiritual degradation. The liberated France that had emerged in consequence of his efforts was an epitome of the forces he most loathed and feared. He had never really understood the strength of the social and political forces of his time. History, perhaps, would judge him more justly than any jury of living Frenchmen could. But he was one of history's great failures.

And yet fate had been kinder to the old man in one respect than to the little band of political outlaws who were with him in exile--Jacques Doriot, Fernand de Brinon, Joseph Darnand. (Laval was in Berlin, where his hair was reported to be turning white.) They were younger--young enough to be fated to suffer human justice. But Henri-Philippe Petain, hero of Verdun and figurehead of Vichy could simply die.

Here in this German graveyard he was looking for a grave.

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