The Limits of Tolerance

In a moment of high Gallic drama, President Charles de Gaulle entered the resort town of Vichy fortnight ago for the first time since World War II, emotionally told a cheering crowd: "We are a single people, the great, the only, the unique French people." This statement, delivered in the seat of Marshal Henri Philippe Petain's wartime collaborationist government, seemed to most Frenchmen to be De Gaulle's way of saying that the time had come to forgive and forget World War II collaboration with the Germans. Last week his countrymen learned once again how risky it is to interpret their unbending leader.

Up for election to the august French Academy, established 325 years ago by Cardinal Richelieu to safeguard the purity of the French language, was Novelist Paul (Ouvert la Nuit) Morand. At 70 he was suitably ancient, with his Scott Fitzgeraldish novels of the '20s had more claim to literary distinction than many of the "immortals" already in the academy. But he had also been Petain's envoy, first to Rumania, then to Switzerland.

Morand's first bid for election to the academy failed last year, after ten outstanding academicians publicly denounced his pro-Vichy record. This time, 18 of the academy's 36 members were pledged to vote for him, and he seemed likely to squeeze in. But minutes before the "immortals" were to start balloting, Morand withdrew his candidacy. The reason: pressure from De Gaulle.

Morand said that De Gaulle (whose titles as President of France include that of Protector of the Academy) had asked him through intermediaries to postpone "a candidacy that, at present, still provokes too much partisan hatred." What really decided Morand, said Paris gossip, was the warning that De Gaulle would not receive him, if and when it came time for Morand to make the newly elected academician's traditional call on the President of the Republic.

Despite his willingness to let bygones be bygones, De Gaulle had not forgotten that Vichy had once sentenced him to death in absentia. His tolerance clearly did not yet extend to paying an ex-collaborator public honor.

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