12 SEPTEMBER 1941, Page 4

The little French restaurant was very crowded and I steered

by the patron to a table where a charming, v.hi bearded old gentleman, obviously French, was sitting. bowed, I excused myself for appropriating the menu, and talked. He was a Savoyard. Did he know the Lake Annecy? Know Lake Annecy? He lived on its bank. so on. But that concerns no one else. What did interest was his attitude on France. He was not a refugee, for he ca here long before the war. When the crash came he had rail to General de Gaulle, but now, now " je l'ai renonce." Why Because he is dividing France. The paper France (which friend was reading) had that effect; it was always attac other Frenchmen. France would save herself yet ; the salvau would come from Unoccupied France. "Avec nous," I inter jected. "Sans volts," he insisted firmly, with the most cour teous of smiles. It may be so; we shall know that in time. Meat. while there is perhaps something in the criticism of the ri Gaulle movement. France must rise again as a united countrl and that must be the aim of all Frenchmen everywhere. In vidual exceptions, chief among them Laval, are inevitabk, but it is more important to heal breaches today than to perpetuate them.