Of Trees & Flowers

General Charles de Gaulle last week made a ringing appeal for mercy for men branded as traitors and enemies of France. "It is absurd," De Gaulle told newsmen, "that so many young men should still rot in prisons and concentration camps." He talked of a general amnesty for many of the 50,000 political prisoners still serving out their prison sentences.

"I am surprised," De Gaulle said, "that none of you ask me about Marshal Petain. Let me talk to you about him ... It was necessary to condemn him, because his person symbolized capitulation . . . But today there only remains an old man in a fortress who once rendered great services to France. Is he to be allowed to die without again seeing a tree, a flower, or a friend?" Petain, De Gaulle thought, should be the first to be released.

If the almost 93-year-old marshal was once more to enjoy trees and flowers, there was little time to lose. In his fortress prison on the Ile de Yeu, the man who once dragged that he would live to be no was rapidly failing. By special dispensation he was no longer forced to make his bed or sweep his room, and he had given up his two daily 30-minute strolls in the prison yard. Though the prison director allowed him a radio, Petain seldom turned it on. But he still clung to his firm resolve to let posterity judge him on his record. The last paragraph in his will explained why he had never written his memoirs. Wrote Petain (according to his lawyer): "I would have had to praise myself and say unpleasant things about others."

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