LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
THE ALLIES AND FRANCE .
Simon pleads, in your issue of January 16th, for Allied -ognition of the Free French Comite National as " the representa- on of France with the Allied Powers," until free elections are again ssible in France. This suggestion, frequently heard lately, would In to raise more difficulties than at first appear.
One difficulty is finely expressed in a recent letter to the Daily elegraph from " An Officer of the Free French Forces." He writes: . we Frenchmen have not rallied to the Free French cause in order to ' represent ' our country among the Allied nations. . Most of us are certainly not willing to oppose to France's
actual Government a Free French Government. This is not our duty: we have to fight for France, and not to speak for her... . At the best we can consider ourselves as being an essential part of French resistance to Nazism."
or is it so certain, as M. Simon implies, that " the maintenance of iendly relations with the Vichy Government, whose allegiance to rmany is clear to everyone, may cast doubts in the minds of the at French masses as to the real intentions of the United States d Great Britain concerning Vichy France. . . ."
After France fell, and her Government made the great fundamental stake of not moving to North Africa, two courses were open to renchmen. A few, by reason of temperament or simply opportunity, aped from France in order to continue the fight from outside. is was the heroic course, often involving immense personal anguish
d loss, and there is nothing to be said against it. But the great ajority of Frenchmen, either by choice or by lack of alternative, mained in France and awaited their uncertain fate. This course, , has involved them in constant anxiety and suffering. In most untries, when the collapse came, it was the scum that came to the p But in France there emerged Marshal Petain, and beside him eneral Weygand: men who may have made many mistakes, and ho have been forced into contact with some of the scum—but who ve tackled a formidable job, and followed a subtle, complicated and tuous policy, which has by no means been unsuccessful. Somehow,
e scum has been forced under, and Laval does not rule France. ehow, after eighteen months, the French Fleet and the French orth African Colonies are not at Hitler's disposal. Somehow, the om trials have dragged on, and the former leaders are still alive, spite the howls of rage from the German and Paris Press. Nor the material condition of Unoccupied France conspicuously worse n that of the occupied countries—or even unoccupied countries ch as Spain. It would be foolish to regard the Vichy Government the willing and eager accomplice of Hitler, when in fact it has own extraordinary powers of resistance. Petain, indeed, has come represent the internal resistance of France, just as General de Gaulle nds for external resistance. To insist on their being alternative, ther than complementary, leaders of French resistance to Germany surely to neutralise the real meaning of both, and to play into tier's hands. The leadership of Petain has been sorely tried and-- pite all its faults—it has not always, or in its final effect, been and wanting.—Yours sincerely, DAVID THOMSON. Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
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