De Gaulle and Giraud
Disappointingly slow progress is being registered in the negotia- tions between General de Gaulle and General Giraud. General Catroux, representing the French National Committee in London, has, after full discussion with General Giraud, brought to London a plan for which there is a great deal to be said. That the armistice of 1940 should be repudiated, and all Vichy legislation subsequent to June 22nd of that year regarded as null and void, is common ground. But as to the nature of the temporary administrative council which is to unite all Frenchmen there appears still to be considerable disagreement. The Giraud scheme, as presented in Wednesday's France, provides for a French Council of Oversea Territories, which shall be responsible at present for the administra- tion of those territories, and consist in the main of their governors, but which, entering France with the invading armies, shall organise temporary administration, at first military and as soon as possible, with the co-operation of the Conseils Generaux in each Department, civil, pending the convention of a National Assembly, and the promulgation of a new or amended constitution. While General Giraud's present concern is for some body to govern the overseas territories that are today in French hands, General de Gaulle is understood to favour the constitution here and now of a provisional government for France itself, with any Senators or deputies who are available as nucleus, and with a less essentially temporary and provisional character than General Giraud's Council. There is a good deal to be said for either plan, and it should not pass the wit of the diplo- matists and jurists in London and Algiers to co-ordinate the two.
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