After You, Dear Allies

Having been snubbed from Yalta, General Charles de Gaulle was in a mood to do some snubbing of his own last week. He declined Franklin Roosevelt's invitation to a tete-`a-tete in the Mediterranean. Then, with haughty suspicion, he proclaimed the French Empire's aloofness from any trilateral designs planned in the Crimea.

At a special Cabinet session the General and his Ministers decided to build "a large land, air and naval base" on Africa's Atlantic bulge, at Dakar, which Franklin Roosevelt more than once implied was a U.S. strategic outpost. A few days later the General dropped in at the Institut Geographique, where French Indo-Chinese were celebrating their New Year.

Stiffly Charles de Gaulle accepted an armful of flowers from a creamy Annamese girl. Stiffly he spoke: "Chere Indochine . . . noble, loyal and intelligent Annamese people. . . . France wants to make the political, economic, social and cultural development of the Indo-Chinese union one of the principal aims of her . . . reborn power and greatness." In effect, the General told the Big Three that the Big Fourth reserved all rights in the Far Eastern colony seized by the Japs before Pearl Harbor. Indo-China--bigger than France, with a population of 23,000,000, rich in rice, rubber, tin and zinc--is the French Empire's most precious colony.

In Paris, en route to Yalta, Harry Hopkins had talked to Foreign Minister Georges Bidault about "internationalized bases." He had received a bland reply: "French bases are at Allied disposal now. For the future what we do with our bases is between us and our colonies. If bases are internationalized, it must be reciprocal, which would also include such places as Pearl Harbor. . . ."

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