MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
MONSIEUR F. DE BRINON, the odious little Ambassador accredited by the Vichy Government to Genzian headquarters in Paris, made a speech the other day in which he assured his startled audience that Pierre Laval " had always run straight." He added that although he was unwilling to anticipate the important pronouncement which Monsieur Laval would shortly make, yet he could reveal that the Vichy Government, after long and patient efforts, had now secured " essential results." The only thing which might prevent the French people enjoying to the full the benefits conferred upon them by Laval and his German masters was the Communist propaganda of Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt and the attitude of "incomprehensible hostility " ("invraisemblable hostilite") adopted by so many Frenchmen to the undeviating in- corruptible of the Villa Said. I am unaware, at the time of writing this article, what Laval's tremendous pronouncement is likely to be. Will he proclaim that he has transferred all or some of his powers to Gauleiter Doriot? Will he inform his compatriots that he has agreed to sell as slaves to Germany the zo,000 French Jews now interned at Drancy or Compiegne? Will he announce that he has already handed over to the Gestapo the foreign Jews who had taken refuge in France, and who as I write are being shipped like cattle to Dachau or Buchenwald from the camps at Giers, Rivesaltes and Vernet? Or will he announce that he has been persuaded to surrender, either to Franco or Hitler, the Spanish Republicans who after their great struggle took refuge upon French soil? I do not regard the hostility of the French people to such deeds of shame and dishonour as in any sense " invraisemblable." The French have always, as Paul Reyraud reminded Marshal Petain in his now famous letter, possessed a sense of " tenue" ; they have always recognised that there are certain actions which a country conscious of its own dignity cannot commit. Their hostility to the man who perpetrates such actions is not "invraisemblable": it is what one would expect of a great people who, even in the hour of adversity, retain their traditions and their pride. It is fitting that we should remember that Pierre Laval can never, with his slimy meanness, represent the spirit of France ; that spirit is represented by forty million people ; it is personified in Charles de Gaulle.
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It is time that those of us who have hitherto regarded General de Gaulle with admiration but perplexity should clear our minds. Our admiration for his military qualities has always been unstinted. The young lieu:enant who was three times wounded in the last war, who fought so valiantly at Douaumont, became during the interlude between the two German wars the prophet of mechanised strategy, a prophet who was without due honour in his own country. His books, and especially his prophetic volume Vers l'Armie de Metier, were carefully studied in Germany, but pronounced " dangerous " by the French General Staff. As commander of the fourth armoured division he won a dashing victory over the Germans or. June 2nd, 1940, when he penetrated their columns to a distance of fourteen miles. Appointed Under Secretary for War at the very moment of disaster, he refused to share either the panic of Tours or the capitulation of Bordeaux. At the time when the people of France were stunned by defeat a resolute voice spoke to them upon the ether. On June 28th, 1940, late at night, those who in shame and in despair turned to the British wireless for hope heard the resonant words: " It is I, General de Gaulle, who am speaking to you from London." " Today," he said, " we are overwhelmed by mechanical force: tomorrow we can conquer by superior mechanical force ; therein lies the destiny of the world." We realise today that these words were no rhetorical gestures flung upon the air to comfort a defeated people ; they were words of prophecy. We realise today that it was no idle boast on the part of General de Gaulle that he and those who joined him were the saviours of France's honour and the vanguard of France's resurrection. We realise that in the twenty- six months which have passed since he issued his call to arms he has become not merely the symbol of hope but the organiser of
power. Many people know today that General de Gaulle commands an army of trained fighting men ; that there are many hundred French airmen under the direction of General Valin ; that the Fighting French Navy contains many valuable vessels of war ; aqd that the Free French Merchant Marine helps the common cause with more than one hundred ships. But how many people are aware that today territories of the French Colonial Empire representing an area fifteen times the size of Great Britain have hoisted the cross of Lorraine? General de Gaulle's attitude in June, 1940, was one of supreme moral courage ; he has shown since then that he also possesses great organising capacity.
* * * * Yet we were perplexed at first and hesitant ; it has taken us two years to understand de Gaulle. Our democratic prejudice against all soldier-politicians led us to wish that General de Gaulle would confine himself to purely military matters and would not aspire to the role of a political leader. We see today that this leadership was thrust upon him, and that had he remained no more than the officer commanding the French volunteers his representative function would have been diminished. We regretted that he should be so difficult, so unaccommodating, so authoritative ; we see today that unless he had asserted himself in season and out of season he would have become no more than a foreign officer in the pay of the British Treasury. We distrusted those by whom he was at first surrounded, and disliked the methods which on occasions they pursued. We realise now that he was bound to improvise his National Committee, and that today it is composed of men whom all can respect. We were hurt by the emphasis which he placed upon his own inde- pendence, attributing his criticism of our methods to some dislike of English ways ; we see now that his determination to remain essentially and combatively French was a wise determination, and that when he returns he will not return in the baggage of the Allies. Had de Gaulle sought always to be convenient he would have ended by being ignored ; the force of his personality, highly inconvenient though it has proved at moments, renders it impossible that either he or France can ever be disregarded. The fears that we once entertained lest he might on his return establish some military dictatorship have been dissipated by his own utterances and by the wider composition which he is now seeking to give to his National Committee. We see today that the apparent arrogance of his person embodies and defends the wounded pride of France ; and in his faithful ruminative eyes is reflected the eternal patience of her wisdom.
* * * * In the Marseillaise recently, Monsieur Andre Philip, who has just joined General de Gaulle's National Committee as Commissary for Internal Affairs and Labour, gave some account of the present con- dition of French public opinion. Monsieur Philip, who is a Left Wing politician of the Christian Socialist type, has done courageous work in France and can speak with intimate knowledge of the functioning of the gaulliste movement in both the occupied and the unoccupied zone. He states in this article that the stage of pro- paganda is ending and that the stage of action has arrived. The overwhelming mass of the population in both zones are outspoken or tacit adherents of de Gaulle and the convinced enemies of Vichy and of collaboration with the Germans. France has now recovered from the torpor of 1941 and no longer regards the victory of the Allies as problematical. Let us hope that this new spirit of resist- ance will be neither imprudently nor prematurely released. That it should exist is a cause of hope and congratulation. The wireless, with the assistance of such underground papers as Pere Duchesne, Le Coq Enchaini and Combat, will keep the embers smouldering. And no fifth column that has ever existed will be so potent and so disturbing as that which today works for us in France. I do not believe that this great result could have been achieved but for the dynamic, the symbolic, personality of the man who, on that sad night of June 18th, 1940, said, "It is I, General de Gaulle, who am speaking to you from London."
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