NEWS OF THE WEEK
p HE negotiations between General de Gaulle and General Giraud, I, conducted through General Catroux, have dragged on over many cdcs, and have served rather to emphasise differences which to any Frenchmen must seem academic than the supreme and vital portance of unity between men opposed alike to the Germans and Vichy regime. It is high time that the leaders met. The tinge in the military situation in Tunisia, on account of which meral Eisenhower requested postponement, makes it more rather an less urgent that they should come to an understanding. General fraud has now invited the Fighting French leader to meet him nhout further delay in North Africa. That is the essential fact, General de Gaulle makes no good impression by his insistence at the meeting shall take place at a venue of his own choice- Ig.ers, where he hopes for popular demonstrations in his support— :her than of General Giraud's ; for the two leaders to reach agree- ent first and then go to Algiers united (as General Giraud suggests) obviously the wise course: General Giraud has now taken any steps designed to satisfy both the Allies and the de Gaullists,
last of them being an order designed to suppress political intern-
e To those outside the immediate entourage of the two adcrs the degree in which Frenchmen within metropolitan France ould be first consulted on the rapidity with which Republican stitutions are to be restored seems secondary to the necessity of common front. The one thing imperative is to clear the Germans it of France and establish a constitutional Government. If the Gaullists feel that this aim is in doubt, then surely the essential nag is a meeting to resolve it.. That cannot take place too soon. etermination on both sides not to put personal feeling before untry would ensure agreement and put heart into the Frenchmen 1) are fighting now, and those in France who soon may be.
