THE CONTINUING CONFLICT
THE capitulation of France is complete. There is no room for illusion about that. Nothing would be gained, and a great deal would be lost, by resort to any kind of recrimination, but still more would be lost by any attempt to conceal unwelcome truths. France has put herself, or the Bordeaux Government has put her, by a tragic prodigality of surrender, unreservedly in Germany's hands. With pathetic credulity Marshal Petain appealed to the enemy to conclude with him " as between soldiers after the fight, and in honour " an agreement putting an end to hostilities. The reply was the dictation of terms reducing France to impotence and vassaldom and requir- ing that her territory, and in part her resources, should be at Germany's disposal for the prosecution of the war against Britain, the ally without whose assent France had pledged herself never to conclude a separate peace. Those terms were at once accepted. Marshal Petain has agreed that Germany shall occupy more than half France, includ- ing Paris and the most valuable industrial regions and the whole of the northern and western seaboard ; that French forces shall be demobilised ; that all arms, munitions and service aircraft shall be surrendered on demand ; that the French fleet shall be collected in ports to be specified by Germany and Italy and there demobilised and disarmed, on a " solemn promise " that it shall not be used for German purposes during the war ; and, pitifully enough, that all German and Austrian and Polish and Czech refugees shall be handed over.
What the Bordeaux Government conceives itself to have gained by thus deciding to end the war instead of con- tinuing it, as it might have been continued most effectively from Morocco or some other part of the French Empire, is undiscoverable. Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Norway, Holland, Belgium as distinguished from King Leopold, have all refused resolutely to make compromise with sin. Their countries have been lost for the moment, but what can be mustered of their armies and navies and air forces is fighting on—though part of the tragedy of France is that Polish and Czech and Belgian troops have been involved against their will in Marshal Petain's surrender. They have kept their souls and won honour for themselves throughout the world. The Bordeaux Government has kept a fragment of the soil of France on sufferance, but the enemy's grip is still on its neck. Both Germany and Italy have included in their armistice terms the ominous stipulation that the armistice " may be denounced at any moment if the French Government do not fulfil their obligations." A pretext for acting on that proviso, which Marshal Petain has not hesitated to accept, can be devised at any moment at five minutes' notice or less. In any case the peace itself will be exactly what Germany, with Italy snapping up the jackal's share, may decide it shall be. Meanwhile, it will be Marshal Petain's business to urge the French Empire insistently to accept the same humiliation as the mother-country has suffered. The veto on resistance by French Generals in the French Empire is being imposed by a Marshal of France.
The decision regarding the future of the French fleet and the French Empire has a most vital, though, as the Prime Minister said on Tuesday, not a decisive, bearing on the conflict still to come. The effect of Allied sea-power on Germany and Italy is still immense, and the French navy, unlike the French army, is unbeaten. It has done gallant, effective and uniformly successful service through- out the war ; its traditions and our own navy's are inter- woven ; its officers and men are left with the choice •-)f ending their career, with their ships interned at German 's will, and fighting on with the British to a victory whie, will restore their country as it preserves ours. To son e extent the navy's action in such a crisis will deper on the Empire's. When, for example, both Civil Governor of Syria, M. Puraux, and the Commander - in-Chief, General Mittelhauser, have proclaimed the r resolve to fight on, it is inconceivable that the units c f the fleet operating in the Eastern Mediterranean should prefer surrender. Immensely much may hang on the decision, still in some doubt as these words are written. of General Nogues, the Governor of Morocco, who is in a position to determine the action of Algeria and Tunis as well. Under the terms of the Armistice with Italy, which have evidently been given an appearance of moderation in the hope that the soldiers on the spot will prove as amenable to them as Marshal Petain, the whole of French Northern Africa is to be put at Italy's mercy by the demilitarisation of the naval bases of Bizerta and Oran and all the frontier zones. If the French Governors assent to the armistice they are lost, for Italy can dictate unlimited annexation when it comes to peace-terms. If they resist, the prospect that either Germany or Italy can defeat them is negligible so long as the British and French fleets in the Mediterranean remain intact.
Behind all this is a larger question, whether those Frenchmen who still reject submission to Nazi domina- tion and the permanent reduction of their country to vassaldom can form a rallying-point round which effective resistance can be organised. General de Gaulle, the enlightened soldier whom M. Reynaud called in as collaborator in his last Cabinet, has done invaluable service in declaring against surrender the first moment it was threatened and eliciting pledges of support from Frenchmen great and small throughout the world. His promptitude may prove, in the event, to have saved the situation. But that, as General de Gaulle would be the first to recognise, is merely an improvisation, essential and invaluable, but simply a step to a broader-based political organisation. A number of leading French politicians, including M. Herriot, M. Paul-Boncour and M. Blum, as well as several deputies and men prominent in other branches of public life, have reached, or are expected shortly to reach, England. They are capable, if they are ready to face the task, of forming a French National Com- mittee which would command greater popular confidence even in France itself, much more in the French Empire, than the present administration at Bordeaux. It would be certain of the unstinted support of the British Govern- ment, which has very rightly guaranteed all necessary financial help to French dependencies which fight on, and it would, no doubt, for reasons of practical efficiency, begin its work in London. But the sooner it moved to French soil, whether North Africa or elsewhere, the more effective it would be in animating Frenchmen everywhere to continued and unflinching resistance to aggression.
But on none of that can we in this island count. At the best the French fleet will fight with us. At the worst it will be used against us, for the pledge that the Germans will not so employ it is worth exactly as much as all Nazi pledges. We may be left completely alone except for the splendid, increasing and inspiring support which every British Dominion and colony is hastening to proffer. Our first task will be to repel invasion and attack from the air. The danger is serious, for whether Hitler gets any large number of French aeroplanes or not he will certainly get many aeroplane factories. The task of establishing numerical superiority for the Royal Air Force will therefore be formidable. Severe air-raids on this country are inevitable, and both those that have already taken place and the ceaseless R.A.F. raids into Germany suggest that the odds in favour of the bomber getting through at night are considerable. But they suggest also that personal casualties to a population disciplined to take full advantage of opportunities for shelter are likely to be surprisingly small. There is no ground for believing that invasion by sea is a serious menace. It might even be better for it to be attempted and fail than not be attempted at all. The nature of the next stage of the continuing conflict is clear, but of only the next stage. When we have survived it, as we shall, our policy and our purpose must be shaped in the light of the situation then existing. There will be many factors, in both hemispheres, that may affect it.
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