Facts From France
France in Torment. By Madeleine Le Verrier. (Hamish Hamilton. 6s.)
MADAME LE VERRIER left France last spring to join General de Gaulle as the "high symbol of resistance, accepted as such by the overwhelming majority of Frenchmen in the occupied area." She is working at Fighting French Headquarters, yet what seems to me of principal importance in her book is the fact that she reveals herself as a completely non-party French patriot, and thus represents what is ultimately decisive for the emergence of France after the war. French re-entry into -it is the supreme cause that appeals to her, and she brushes personalities—even that of General de Gaulle— aside as subsidiary. Here is a definition from inside France of what gaullisme means and does not mean: "It signifies the uprise of an entire nation against the invader, the hope of freedom for tomorrow and revenge for the humiliations we have suffered. It is an act of faith. When people ask me whether in France de Gaulle is regarded as the future head of the Government, I can find no answer, so little is sUch a rationalist view comprehensible to those who have lived under the reign of terror, cold and hunger." It is just as well to be reminded of such realities from time to time, especially at the present juncture.
Madame Le Verrier was a very well-known journalist in Paris in view of her connexion with ?Europe Nouvelle, the organ in which Pertinax relentlessly pressed upon successive French • Govern- ments the necessity for taking a realistic view of German war preparations. She was thus a resister even before the war began. Her 167 pages are rather artlessly written—and none the worse for that—but the book is definitely the worse for being carelessly translated : "Vans belonging to the sanitary service" is, for example, the quaint term used to describe ambulances.
There is one major revelation: M. Alibert, who was chef de cabinet (this is also wrongly translated) to Marshal Pitain, told her on May 21st, 1940, that the Marshal had said, "I have been deputed to make peace," and M. Alibert himself was already talking of "settling accounts" with the Popular Front, the Jews and the Freemasons. Madame Le Verrier characteristically reminded him that there was a war on. The view that Marshal Petain and General de Gaulle were working hand in glove was one she frequently met• and the whole book is full of reflections of French opinion which are particularly valuable coming from this source, since a politically experienced Frenchwoman can necessarily adjust what she hears
and sees into a more fitting framework than some of the non-French writers of similar books have been able to do. The story of Hitler's far-reaching plan in connexion with the return to the Invalides of the remains of the Duke .of Reichstadt, Napoleon II, is worth re- reading as told by an observer who was in Paris at the time.
The Legion and its subsequent manipulation by the Petain Government is also well explained : it is still an important factor, and was responsible in North Africa for much of the confusion of thought still persisting there. Altogether a very good book.
BERNARD FOLEY.
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