MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON HE British public during the last week have had the opportunity
to examine and compare the memoranda exchanged between General de Gaulle in London and General Giraud at Algiers. This examination has left them in a state of bewilderment. They assume from their perusal of these documents that there exists little difference tither of purpose or principle between the two Generals. They note that General Giraud has admitted that the armistice of 1940 must be regarded as null and void ; that all legislation passed since then by the Vichy Government must be abolished ; that all oaths of allegiance exacted by Vichy must be regarded as no longer applicable ; and that any authority which may be provisionally established out- side France cannot claim legal validity and must on the first reason- able occasion surrender its power to the French electorate. They note also that General Giraud by implication accepts the basic principles of the Republican Constitution of 1875, and that he realises that once the territory of metropolitan France is liberated, " the French people will become the masters of their own destiny." Realising these important points of similarity, the British public naturally assume that the points of difference between the two Generals are comparatively trivial. And since (at the very moment when the destiny of Africa is being decided among the rocks of Bou Arada in the pools of the Mejerda valley) they cannot conceive that French unity is being hampered by mere points of procedure, they conclude that the postponement of the Union Sacree must be due to some personal rivalry between the two protagonists. To jump to any such conclusion is to ignore the complexity and serious- ness of the issues involved.
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It would be foolish to deny that the personal factor plays a part in these negotiations. It is, in fact, operative in three different categories. There is in the first place the personal relationship between Generals de Gaulle and Giraud. The latter is an honest soldier, whose political convictions, though few and simple, are rigid. He rightly regards himself as the senior French officer in North Africa, and he naturally assumes, being trained in the hier- archical automatism of the French tradition, that he is justified in aspiring to the supreme direction of the whole movement of resist- ance. Were General de Gaulle an ordinary man, he might con- ceivably admit this theory ; but the point is that General de Gaulle is not an ordinary man ; he is an extraordinary man, and one who in years of trial has much increased in stature. It may well be that in the first year his actions and his advisers were not always well chosen: we may regret Dakar even as we may regret the two Muselien incidents: we may regret also that General de Gaulle's desire not to be classified as a puppet of a foreign Government may
have led him at moments to offend the susceptibilities of those who regarded themselves as his friends and his allies. But the fact remains that in the hour of our deepest darkness he alone of French-
men risked everything in his faith in our final victory. And the fact remains that to an immense majority of the people of France,
General de Gaulle appears today not merely as a young and brilliant
general, who on June 18th, 1940, made a very famous speech, but as the saviour of French dignity, as the embodiment of French
courage, and as the hope of a new France, purified by suffering, and determined to assume again her historic and legitimate position in world affairs. We are not, in fact, considering some question of personal vanity, some transitory legend : we are not discussing a Boulanger: we are dealing with a symbol, a name, a personality, which will echo down the corridors of time.
* * * * The delicate problems of adjustment which arise between the two generals are cut across and distorted by other personal factors. Owing to an unfortunate chain of events, an embarrassing myth has arisen that General Giraud, in some way, is the candidate of the State Department at Washington and that in some way General de Gaulle is the candidate of Downing Street. This theory, dangerous and ill-informed though it be, has attracted to itself all manner of subsidiary legends, such as the suggestion that the predilection for General Giraud attributed to the State Department is due to Catholic influence. It is earnestly to be hoped that neither British nor United States opinion will be gulled by Dr. Goebbels into taking such silly sides. More dangerous, since more substantial, ;s the personal animosity which undoubtedly exists between the Free French and those Frenchmen, recently liberated, who in the dark hours swore allegiance to Vichy. However much we, as outsiders, may deplore that animosity, it is scarcely to be expected that the French (who have never possessed our amazing gift of forgetfulness) could have passed through these discordant years without ex- periencing much profound emotion or expressing much mutual reproach. It is, in fact, inevitable that the Fighting French, who have eaten the sour bread of exile, should regard all those who bowed to Vichy as opportunist, unpatriotic and even treacherous. It is inevitable that those who did not share our forms of danger in the dangerous days should excuse themselves by denigrating the Fight- ing French as mutineers and emigres. These personal factors do undoubtedly constitute obstacles to the Union Sacree ; but they are not the only obstacles, nor are they, in fact, the most important. It is not a mere form of words, even as it is not personal vanity, which impedes immediate union. It is a deep divergence of opinion upon what, in this spring of 1943, the people of metropolitan France in fact need, expect or desire.
General Giraud's idea is that some unnamed general should become Commander-in-Chief and Head of the Free French, and that he should be assisted in his functions by a " French Overseas Council " composed of the governors and residents-general in French Africa, assisted by such admirals, generals and civil servants whom they or he may select. If and when the Allied armies liberate French metropolitan territory, the Commander-in-Chief and his Council would land in France and establish some form of military rule until such time as sufficient French departments were liberated to enable the Conseil Generaux (which for this purpose we may equate to our own County Councils) to assemble, to choose a provisional govern- ment and to prepare for elections to a National Assembly. General de Gaulle feels that it would be a political mistake, and highly obnoxious to French tradition, thus to subordinate the civil to the military authority ; his idea seems to be that some 'Provisional Executive should be formed out of those Frenchmen—Deputies, Senators and others—who have always represented the core of resistance against Germany ; that to this Executive should be added those who, as Monsieur Andre Philip, have good claims to represent the resistance movement in France itself, and that it should be this civilian body which should act as representative of France until such time as the French people can elect an Assembly and frame a Constitution for themselves.
* * * * I do not question the motives or intelligence of either side. I merely point out that the essential conflict is between General Giraud's belief that it will be in the interest of France to create a Central Authority headed by the Commander-in-Chief and backed by leading officers and officials of the old system, and General de Gaulle's belief that what the French people would prefer would be the subordination of the military authority to some civilian body as representative as is feasible of the many formative if conflicting tendencies in France today. Thus whereas General de Gaulle came to represent the young France which has emerged from three years of suffering, General Giraud thinks rather in terms of the former hierarchy. That is the essential divergence. It is a conflict which only Frenchmen can themselves resolve. It is not for us to display impatience, to attribute false motives to the protagonists, or to make criticisms which may well be impertinent and which would certainly be based upon insufficient understanding of what is being thought and felt and desired in France itself. It would be preferable if we were to adopt towards that great nation the tact of those who watch a friend recovering from a mortal illness, and_who note with gladness the irritated stirrings of convalescence.
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